Keyword cannibalization usually happens when newbie bloggers or even seasoned bloggers publish multiple posts or pages with targeting a single keyword or phrase. Most often keyword cannibalization done by bloggers unintentionally or due to lack of knowledge about SEO.

Take a look at the image. Suppose, you have a blog about water sports. And, you promote a particular keyword Jet Ski on 99 odd posts or pages. Search engines will index most of the pages over a period of time. You must be thinking search engines will give more importance to your blog or pages and rank higher than your competitor blogs.

Nope ! You are wrong. Search engines will not think your site is more relevant to Jet Ski and rank higher than your competitor blogs only because you have used the keyword Jet Ski on 99 odd pages multiple times. Instead, it forces search engines to choose only one post or page from multiple pages which best suits the query. In this process, you are loosing out a number of rank boosting features for multiple posts and pages as well as the particular post or page picked by the search engine on its own.Out of 99 odd pages, if only one page is picked by the search engine then rest 98 pages will be waste which also targets the same traffic.

How to Fix Keyword Cannibalization

1. If your blog is comparatively new then instead of targeting a single word on every posts or pages, focus on unique and variables of that particular keyword and link back all of them to a single page or post with an original and canonical source for the particular word. Search engines now easily identify the most relevant page for each of the queries and give higher ranking to the page chosen by you there by improving the overall information architecture and user experience.

2. If you are blogging since long time and published more than 100 articles then instead of prevention you have to take curative action. List all the competing pages and choose one post or page which is the best. Then use 301( Permanent Redirect ) from each of the competing pages to the anchor page you have picked. In this way not only your anchor page gets higher rank by the search engines but also visitors arrive at the right page.

Keyword Cannibalization plays an important role for higher ranking of blog posts or pages in SERP ( Search Engine Results Page ) and it must be fixed.