Keyword Targeting / Cannibalisation
-
Hi Guys
We're about to launch a very large website for a flooring company and would like to find out more about _key word _cannibalisation - to put my mind at rest. I know Rand posted a Whiteboard Friday early last year about this topic and mentioned using part of the same keyword was ok to use.
All our keywords are specifically geared for "user intent" meaning each keyword has relevance and the content to back up the keyword. We've ensured the keywords are located within each url, placed at the start of the page title, h1 etc.
-
Hi Steve
Having unique content for each product page is a must! I guess sofa beds are individually unique to a degree in terms of brand, size, functionality, design etc.
If you could elaborate about what it is exactly you are trying to do, I'll try to help?
Gary
-
Hi there
I am an Ecommerce manager and I find the whole keyword cannibalisation topic fascinating.
We sell furniture - beds, sofa beds, dining tables, chairs etc.
I am trying to add value to each product description - as much important and factual information as possible - as opposed to superlatives etc
We have about 12 sofa beds and I am working at each sofa bed targeting specific keywords so that they don't compete for the same keywords.
In regards to the keyword "sofa beds", I am working at this keyword being more dominant within the category page.
In the modern SEO context, I would love to know if this is the right approach?
Steve
-
Hi Gary, Samuel has raised some good questions. Did you see his response? Let us know, thanks!
Christy
-
Gary, thanks for the question. Based on the little that I've seen here, I would worry more about a Panda penalty than keyword cannibalization.
Here's the history in a basic nutshell. Years ago, webmasters would aim to have one page target one keyword. There would be one page for "red t-shirts," one for "green t-shirts," and so on. All of the text on those pages would be exactly the same -- except that "red or "green" may change based on the page. In such a context, webmasters did not want to have keyword cannibalization -- if the word "green" was used on the page for "red t-shirts," then Google might not know which page to rank for each desired term.
However, this created bloated websites with many more pages than were actually needed. Does a t-shirt website really need 50 pages (one for each color) when only one would be enough (and then the visitor could choose which color to buy)? In Google's eyes, such websites created bad user experiences -- and Google wants to eliminate bad user experiences.
So, in case you don't know, Google's Panda penalty targets websites that -- among other issues -- have a lot of "thin" or "duplicated" content such as in the t-shirt example above. (You can see more information in this Moz post by Cyrus.)
Before going further, I would have to ask you some questions: Does you website really need a separate page for each and every single one of those topics? Are the products really that entirely different? Are the text and images on each page completely different and unique -- in other words, does each page offer true value to the visitor, or are you just trying to rank highly in Google straight away as in the t-shirt example?
If many of those pages above are on similar topics, then you may want to have one page per topic (rather than per keyword) where by each topic consists of a group of related keyword phrases -- see this Whiteboard Friday on modern, semantic SEO for more information.
Please let me know your thoughts, and I'd be happy to respond further!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Homepage not showing up for Brand/Any keywords (on Google) all of a sudden
The homepage to this website is crawled and indexed, however, it's not showing up for any searches, even brand searches (eg: Klay schools). This happened overnight. Do you know what the underlying issue could be? Link to the homepage: https://www.klayschools.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vishesh10104 -
Follow/NoFollow?
I run Magento 2 and have two stores, one intended for the EU and one for the US. 99% of the products available appear on both stores, there is an automatic redirect in place to either store depending on your location. But I think Google is seeing these as duplicate products/stores. Should I add the Index,NoFollow tag to one of the two stores? My issue is that I want both stores to rank in their geographical locations and I am concerned that by adding the NoFollow tag is will stop that dead in its tracks for one location. Any advice would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots2 -
What Constitutes Keyword Stuffing?
Greeting MOZ Community: I have been attempting to add certain keywords phrases to the home page text of our real estate web site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). When I check the keyword density and look at the keyword cloud, the frequency of certain terms appear substantially higher than they should be (see attached keyword cloud and keyword density chart. Certain terms like "office space" have a 5 or 6% frequency which seems high. Last thing we need is a Panda penalty. When I viewed the code for the home page (see enclosed), I noticed HREF tags, SRE tags and ALT tags repeating certain keyword phrases, driving up their density. I have attached a keyword cloud for the home page of a competitor and the use of language seems more diverse. Does Google take the text in these various tags into account? I know the ALT tag is important for SEO, but how about the others? Does the use of text in the tags for this page make the overall page look spammy? Also, there are text and tags for the carousel in the home page that appear in the code for the home page. If this code were somehow concealed, would we be better off from an SEO perspective? Thanks, Alan pkM7CZG 1DFFMZ0
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
New Website Look/Structure - Should I Redirect or Update Pages w/ Quality Inbound Links
This questing is regarding an ecommerce website that I hand wrote(html) in 1997. One of the first click and buy websites, with cart/admin system that I also developed. After all this time, the Old plain HTML look just doesnt cut it. I just updated to XHTML w/ a very modern look, and believe the structured data will index better. All products and current category pages will have the identical vrls taken from the old version. I decided to go with the switch after manual penalty, which has since been removed... I figured now is the time to update. My big question is that over the years, a lot of my backlinks came from products/news that are either no longer relevant or just not available. The pages do exist, but can only be found from the Outbound Link Source. For SEO purposes, I have thought a few things I can do but can't decide which one is the best choice. Any Insight or suggestions would be Awesome! 1. Redirect the old link to the most relevant page in my current catalog. 2. Add my new header/footer to old page(this will add a navigation bar w/ brands/cats/etc) 3. Simply add a nice new image to the top of these pages linking home & update any broken/irrelevant links. I was also considering adding just the very top 2 inches of my header(logo,search box, phone, address) *note, some of these pages do receive some traffic. Nothing huge, but consider the 50+ pages, it ads up.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Is there any importance in including http:// in the url?
I have seen some sites that always redirect to https and some sites that always redirect to http://, but lately I have seen sites that force the url to just the site. As in [sitename].com, no www. no http://. Does this affect SEO in anyway? Is it good or bad for other things? I was surprised when I saw it and don't really know what effect it has.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Could a HTML <select>with large numbers of <option value="<url>">'s affect my organic rankings</option></select>
Hi there, I'm currently redesigning my website, and one particular pages lists hotels in New York. Some functionality I'm thinking of adding in is to let the user find hotels close to specific concert venues in New York. My current thinking is to provide the following select element on the page - selecting any one of the options will automatically redirect to my page for that concert venue. The purpose of this isn't to affect the organic traffic - I'm simply introducing this as a tool to help customers find the right hotel, but I certainly don't want it to have an adverse effect on my organic traffic. I'd love to know your thoughts on this. I must add that in certain cities, such as New York, there could be up to 450 different options in this select element. | <select onchange="location=options[selectedIndex].value;"> <option value="">Show convenient hotels for:</option> <option value="http://url1..">1492 New York</option> <option value="http://url2..">Abrons Arts Center</option> <option value="http://url3..">Ace of Clubs New York</option> <option value="http://url4..">Affairs Afloat</option> <option value="http://url5..">Affirmation Arts New York</option> <option value="http://url6..">Al Hirschfeld Theatre</option> <option value="http://url7..">Alice Tully Hall</option> .. .. ..</select> Many thanks Mike |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mjk260 -
Keyphrase / Keyword arrangement
Hi all, What are your thoughts on the arrangement of keyphrases / words? For example, does it make a difference if the words are arranged in the following way: "Keyword 1 Keyword 2" or "Keyword 2 Keyword 1" Both ways make a phrases which is favourable in the search engines. Can I stick with 1 way or should I be going with both arrangements. Hope that is clear 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wtfi0 -
Keyword weight in Domain Name
Hi All, I'm looking for some advice on URL structure. Our domain name includes 1/2 of many keyword strategies that we're considering. For example our domain is like, dive.com Keyword strategies that we're looking at targeting would include things like, "dive shop", "dive equipment" etc etc Are we competitive to have a structure like this? dive.com/shop/ dive.com/equipment/ Or will this structure yield stronger results? dive.com/dive-shop/ dive.com/dive-equipment/ Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks! Malcolm
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0