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Cannibalization

What is page cannibalization in SEO?

The goal of this report is to detect a common phenomenon that can have a negative effect on your Joomla SEO: page cannibalization.

Page cannibalization happens when several pages of your website are all competing together for the same keyword and the same search intent in Google search results.

Multiple pages showing for the same keywords can be totally fine. But it's also sometimes the source of SEO performance losses as these pages reduce each other's ability to rank if they are meant for the same keyword and the same search intent.

Signs of these issues are:

  • pages from your site ranking for a given keyword change often over time
  • average position in the search results for a keyword changes often
  • the page ranking for a keyword is not the one you want

What's in the Cannibalization opportunities report

4SEO builds a report that shows all keywords for which 2 or more pages from your site are being displayed by Google in their search results:

Sample pages cannibalization report built by 4SEO

When pages are listed for a keyword, you can click on it to open another window where the list of pages showing up in search results for that keyword:

Pages found as showing up for the same keywords in search results

What to do?

The general idea is that if several pages are often displayed for the same keyword and search intent, you may want to consolidate them.

Consolidation means trying to direct search signals to one pages and have the other pages reinforce the "main" page.

This reinforcement process can be achieved through, for instance:

  • replacing multiple page by a single one
  • redirecting older pages to more recent ones
  • linking from these additional pages to the selected one, increasing the target page authority

Multiple pages raking for the same keywords is not necessarily a problem

It is worth repeating that cannibalization is not always a problem. Many pages will rank for multiple keywords and so it's inevitable that some overlap exists on your site. It is important to evaluate each situation on a case by case basis before taking any action.

Cannibalization can become an issue when multiple pages ranks not only for the same keywords but also for the same intent. When that happens, these pages are indeed competing with each other.