Finding keyword cannibalisation with SEO by Zaweba

Keyword cannibalisation is when two or more pages on your own site compete for the same search term. SEO by Zaweba checks for it during the site crawl and shows which of your pages are going after the same term. Then the decision about what to do is yours, which is how it should be.

It's a common problem on sites that have grown over time. A blog post from three years ago, a newer guide and a service page can all end up aiming at the same phrase without anyone planning it.

Why it matters

If several of your pages target one term, search engines have to choose between them, and they may not choose the one you'd like. The page that turns up might be the old blog post rather than the service page that brings enquiries. Links and attention are also split across several pages instead of building up one strong one.

It isn't always a problem. Two pages can sometimes rank well for related terms. But when the wrong page ranks, or none ranks as well as it should, cannibalisation is one of the first things to look at.

How the check runs

The check needs the site crawl, which is an optional part of Step 4. With it on, SEO by Zaweba crawls your site up to the page limit (up to 500 pages by default, a setting) and looks across the pages for ones competing for the same term. The result becomes a check like any other, with a severity, an effort, a category and a plain reason.

If you've imported Search Console data on the Logs and Search Console page, it also reports queries ranking with the wrong page. That's real evidence from your own site's performance, and a useful companion to the crawl check.

Deciding which page should win

Start by asking which page best answers the search. Look at the comparison of intent and format: if the pages winning the results for this term are guides, your guide is probably the right one to push, not your product page. If they're service pages, the reverse.

Then make the choice obvious. The winning page should be the one that uses the term in its title, H1 and opening, and the one your other pages link to with that phrase. The search term placement check shows where the main term appears on a page, which makes it easy to see which page is currently the strongest match.

Adjusting the others

The other pages don't have to disappear. Often they can be given a different focus: a longer-tail variation, a different question, a different stage of the buyer's decision. Their internal links can point to the winning page. Where two pages say much the same thing, merging them into one stronger page is often better than keeping both.

Checking the fix

After the changes, run the audit again. The to-do list carries any task you marked done into the next scan, where it's checked and reopened if the problem is still there. History lets you compare two scans to see what improved, what was fixed and what regressed. Give it time: search results take a while to reflect changes, and the position you record from pasted results pages over several scans will show whether the right page has started to win.