Keyword cannibalization - blog posts vs. site content
-
As an example, I am trying to rank for the term "ice cream". I have site content pages that relate to "chocolate ice cream", "vanilla ice cream", etc.These content pages have been SEO optimized using best practices.
Would I be ruining my SEO work if I begin to publish blog posts for the same keywords that my content pages target? Am I basically forced to find alternative keywords and only target one page per keyword?
-
Gotta disagree with this one. Creating high quality blog content with the same keywords you are targeting on your products page can be a good strategy. The blog post will add more content related to your keyword on your site, increasing relevancy. It's also a lot easier to build links to a blog than a product page.
Just make sure to link from the blog post to the product page, and the product page can get a boost. If you rank really high in Google, you could even get 2 listings for that keyword. If for some reason the blog content outranks the product page, you can just take that same content and throw it on the product page with a canonical from the blog post. If all else fails, you can 301 redirect it.
-
Ice cream is a broad and deep topic and you could write a lot of blog posts without running out of unique material. Every blog post that you write should be about a topic that is different from anything else that is already on your site and be interesting, informative and perhaps humorous as well.
If your site (and pages) are powerful enough google will display two, three or more of your pages in the top ten.
I spend a lot of time writing content that most people would consider to be cannibalizing - and it brings in a lot of longtail traffic and takes traffic away from my competitors. I do it intentionally. There's no sin about it.
-
I understand. So basically my evergreen content page can be domain.com/chocolate-ice-cream (targeting "chocolate ice cream")
My blog post page can then be domain.com/blog/top-10-chocolate-ice-creams, which is in effect targeting for "Top 10 Chocolate Ice Creams". Additionally, within the post it would be ideal to reference and link to the evergreen content page as is appropriate.
This method would in effect be targeting the keywords:
- chocolate ice cream
- Top 10 Chocolate Ice Creams
By doing so this will help the site rank for these 2 terms, and overall for the head term Chocolate Ice Creams.
-
Hello,
By creating blog posts on the content your trying to rank for is a very smart move, actually, if it is done right. When your writing a blog post on Vanilla Ice Cream, every time you write about a page that relates on other content on your website, for example, if you mentioned ice cream, place a link there to your ice cream page. Also, with blogs, a very powerful tool is to have a "related posts" section, not only does this help build an internal linking structure, it also can interest readers to read other articles or content on your website.
Remember not to go overboard with focusing on keywords, you need to make sure that your website is friendly to the readers. If you are forcing yourself to change the structure of the content to change the keywords your optimizing for, it may lose it's readability. Google, along with many other search engines have put a lot of time into semantic cues, so they may infer that even though your not using the same keyword (something like Popsicle instead of ice pop), they can infer that your referring to the same thing.
My recommendation is to place a link on the blog post to the page you want to rank, and you should be okay,
Hope this helps
Zach
-
Would I be ruining my SEO work if I begin to publish blog posts for the same keywords that my content pages target? Am I basically forced to find alternative keywords and only target one page per keyword?
In short, yes.
When Google provides search results they need to search trillions of pages to determine which result is most likely to satisfy a user's query. One of the key components of their algorithm is relevancy. If you have a page titled "chocolate ice cream" and then a blog article with the same title, which result should be returned to a user who searches in Google for "chocolate ice cream"?
If you offer multiple pages with the same keyword focus you run into an issue called cannibalization. You can solve that issue by narrowing the focus of one of the pages. For example, the main page on your site is what I would refer to as "evergreen" content. 10 years from now someone can read that page and the information is likely still valid. Your blog often offers fresh content which is more time sensitive. Some possible topics for an article:
Top 10 Chocolate Ice Creams in the world
Lowest Calorie Chocolate Ice Cream
Chocolate Ice Cream Recipes
I would also recommend being very careful when providing content on two similar keywords. It takes a level of expertise to do it in such a way that it adds value to your site. One helpful step is to use anchor text. If you write an article on "Chocolate Ice Cream Recipes" then one time in the article when you refer to "Chocolate Ice Cream" present it as an anchor link to your main page.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Hard to rank difficulty level 25 - 35 keywords for brand new blog?
For the brand new blog, Is it hard to rank keywords using difficulty level 25 - 35 keywords?
Keyword Research | | OECSL20190 -
When I use the Google search console to discover keyword phrases being used to drive visitors to my site I see some keywords that have the city name repeated (ex: web design sarasota sarasota, fl). Why?
When I use the Google search console to discover keyword phrases being used to drive visitors to my site I see some keywords that have the city name repeated (ex: web design sarasota sarasota, fl). Why does this happen?
Keyword Research | | Noblemoz1 -
A Solution to Keywords Being Grouped in Google Keyword Planner
Hi guys, I am trying to get search traffic for a list of keywords which I put together a few years ago for one of my clients, this was before Google made changes to their Keyword Planner. When I am adding the list into Google Keyword Planner it is "grouping" a number of the keywords/phrases together, and therefore removing 13 of the keywords from the original list of 59 keywords. Is there a way around this so I can get search volume for the original list, and not the cut down one? I am specifically using Google Keyword Planner as I want to get search volume for a number of specific locations in the UK. Any comments/feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! Jack. I19Op
Keyword Research | | ChemistryMarketing1 -
Decide which keyword to check
Hi. I made 3 different keywordlists. based on the following rules: list 1: top 50 of best ranking keywords of this campaign list 2: Top 50 keywords with highest volume in adwords and related to the website list 3: Top 50 last month used keywords by our clients from GWT Now i want to make one top 50 list keywords i want to track and optimize the landingpages for it. What is the best way to choose from these three lists. There are a lot of overlaps (especialy in list 1 and 3.) so those keywords have preference. But how about keywords with high volume and high difficulty, related to the website, and low ranking? i leave the conversion out of it for now, first goal is to get much traffic as possible.
Keyword Research | | Leonie-Kramer0 -
Is the Adwords keywords planner accurate ?
Hey guyz,
Keyword Research | | atakala
As you guyz do, I base all my seo effort into the keywords' traffic and quality which I can get from Adwords Keywords Planner.
But this post has confused my mind .
It' says the average searches doesn't exactly the average searches.
And everything is okay here now I can say that of course it's not %100 accurate.
But the shocking part is he gives an example of how a big gap there is between real searches number and adwords keywords planner tools give us . What do you think guyz?
Can it be true ?
(And also last time I asked a question, Randy has replied me, If possible please Randy do it again :D.)
Best wishes.0 -
Used 'wrong' keywords in blog posts, should I go back and edit?
I have a bout 70 blog articles spanning about 2 years. Because I hadn't done proper SEO research, I used the term I thought made the most sense when talking about my services. However now that I have done my homework, I realize that the term I like, is not actually the term most people use to search. Very few of these articles are time sensitive and mostly generic best practice kind of stuff. I'm not talking about keyword stuffing, simply going back and replacing one poorly chosen keyword with one that people are actually searching for where it occurs naturally in the course of the article. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Keyword Research | | sea2dca0 -
Bulk keyword competition tool?
The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool is great, but the 5 keyword limit is too small. I need a tool that will allow checking the organic competition level of 100's of keywords (to help in selecting blog topics). Anyone know of such a tool?
Keyword Research | | AdamThompson1 -
Keyword cannibalization in ecommerce sites
I'm assuming this is a common problem in ecommerce sites. Lets say we have a "sleeping bags" which has all types of sleeping bags on it. Then build a brand page "The North Face" with a subpage for The North Face sleeping bags. Is it possible to target the sleeping bags page for "sleeping bags" while targeting the branded sleeping bag page for "The North Face sleeping bag"? how would you suggest doing this while avoiding keyword cannibalization?
Keyword Research | | Hakkasan0