Nuanced SEO questions
Questions: 1. Only a few Keyword searches are used for a huge variety of products in my industry. Google recognizes that and auto-returns appropriate search results. For example, “Two story” brings “double deck” results interchangeably. If two or more pages use one of those words each, will they cannibalize each other?
2. Size-specific product results do come up in searches, even if their keywords are the same as those on other pages. What is the degree of cannibalization if pages have the same keywords but are distinguished by size?
3. If 70 products have meta titles and descriptions, each on a separate page, will those products result in cannibalization?
I'd appreciate meeting a true professional, not just an amateur pressing a button or using an automated report to sell themselves.
Help would be much appreciated! My 4 sites are 150% legit, with more individual product content than anyone in my industry.
If you doubt so then you can interlink those pages with the keyword from the doubtful page to the actual page. The linked page will prevail in the search engine rankings.
- It may or may not happen. It doesn't work like I put a keyword here and there and I'll start ranking for that keyword. Google algorithms decide which keywords are relevant and eventually make your site ranking for it. You can't control it on this side. But you can fully control your site structure and topics on respective pages. If you can isolate topics (keywords) on respective pages, you can eliminate it.
- If you have size-specific pages (living on their own URLs), keyword cannibalization is a normal behaviour and it happens. People often link those pages without even knowing and link juice does the job. Technically what's happening here is you are spilling your juice here and there instead of having single strong page, so you're ending up with multiple weak pages.
- If products are distinctive (not size/colour/etc variants of the same product) then no. Each of them is living on their own URL and those are all different products.
Hope it helps.
Thanks all. To confirm, It sounds like cannibalization is not occurring. So, the three-size category landing pages receive link juice from their 7-12 respective product pages and combine (on that site) to one main navigation landing page. The structure is appropriate for that site. The home page then combines all link juice.
Another site has separate main navigation tabs for each of the 3 sizes, but they probably just support the home page ranking because there are only 6-8 products each (all products have h1, meta title, and description, a small amount of word content, but lots of pictures and diagrams).
Currently, I don't have word content on that master page because its purpose is to guide visitors to the size they want but sounds like I should... and beef up word content on the category landing pages. It's not easy when all that distinguishes them from one another is size, but I can do a little.
I rent trade show displays, and clients pretty much search for variations of those words only, and Google recognizes them as the same.
Probably, the most important thing is to have the word "rent" in an h1 and meta title on the category landing pages (and size as appropriate).
Interchangeable keywords on different pages won't necessarily cannibalize if each offers unique content. Cannibalization risk varies based on how well pages address user intent. Unique meta titles and descriptions mitigate cannibalization by signaling relevance.
@nicholasdrance sounds like "rent" is very important keyword there. Even though you may convert someone in the market looking to buy to rather rent and save them money/time...
Title + H1 of course, little bit of text will help too. Forget about minimum x words etc. Keep it short and simple, but there is always something worth mentioning.
