If you are running a website, it is important to make sure that you are doing everything you can to improve your SEO in Sri Lanka and elsewhere through a reputed SEO company in Sri Lanka. One of the things that can hurt your SEO, whether it is website or ecommerce SEO services, is keyword cannibalisation. This occurs when multiple pages on your website are targeting the same words or phrases.
What is keyword cannibalisation and why should you avoid it in your SEO strategy?
Keyword cannibalisation occurs when multiple pages on your website are targeting the same words or phrases. This can happen for a number of reasons, but it generally happens when a website is trying to target too many at once, or when different sections of a website are targeting the same ones.
There are a few reasons why you should avoid this situation in your SEO strategy:
- It can hurt your search engine rankings – If you have multiple pages that are all targeting the same words or phrases, it can be difficult for search engines to determine which page is the most relevant. As a result, your pages may end up competing against each other and none of them may rank as highly as they could if there was no keyword cannibalisation occurring.
- It can confuse search engine crawlers – When search engine crawlers are trying to index your website, they may get confused if they find multiple pages that are all targeting the same keyword. This can lead to lower rankings for your website as a whole.
- It can waste your link building efforts – If you have multiple pages that are all competing for the same keyword, you may end up spreading your link building efforts too thin. Instead of having a few high-quality links pointing to each page, you may end up with a lot of low-quality links.
So how do you avoid this?
- Do your research – Before you start optimising your website, it's important to do some research and identify which words or phrases you want to target. Once you have identified your target keywords, you can create a map.
- Create a keyword map – A map is simply a list of all the pages on your website and the words and phrases that they are targeting. This will help you to see at a glance which pages are competing for the same ones and it will also help you to come up with new ideas for other potential keywords that you could be targeting.
- Use canonical tags – If you have multiple pages that are targeting the same keyword, you can use canonical tags to tell Google which page is the main page that should be ranking. This will help to avoid any confusion and it will also help to boost the rankings of your main page.
- Use 301 redirects – If you have pages that are no longer relevant or if you have duplicate content, then you can use 301 redirects to send users and search engines to your main page. This will help to clean up your website and it will also help to boost your SEO.
- Noindex tag – If you have pages that are not relevant or if you have duplicate content, you can add a noindex tag to tell Google not to index those pages. This will help to clean up your website and it will also help to boost your SEO.
By following these steps, you can easily identify and eliminate cannibalisation on your website which will, in turn, boost your SEO.
How do you identify if you have a problem with keyword cannibalisation on your website or blog?
Identifying this issue is an important first step in being able to fix the issue. There are a few key steps you can take:
- Check your Google Analytics account to see which pages are getting the most traffic. If you have duplicate content, you will likely see that some pages are getting more traffic than others.
- Use a research tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner or Moz Keyword Explorer to find out which keywords your website is ranking for. If you are ranking for the same keyword on multiple pages, then you have a problem with keyword cannibalisation.
- Use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to crawl your website and find all of the instances of duplicate content. This will help you to identify where the problem lies.
- Make sure that you have a unique title and meta description for each page on your website. This will help search engines to understand what each page is about and index them accordingly.
- Use canonical tags to tell search engines which version of a piece of content is the original. This will help to prevent duplicate content from being indexed and penalized by Google.
How can you fix the issue and improve your search engine rankings once and for all.
Fixing keyword cannibalisation is not difficult, but it does take some time and effort to do it right. Here are a few tips:
- Use research tools to find long tail keywords that you can use to target specific pages on your website.
- Create unique and compelling content for each page on your website. This will help search engines to understand what each page is about and index them accordingly.
- Use canonical tags to tell search engines which version of a piece of content is the original. This will help to prevent duplicate content from being indexed and penalized by Google.
By following these steps, you can fix the issue of keyword cannibalisation on your site and improve your search engine rankings once and for all.
Bonus tip: Keep an eye on your competitors and mimic their best practices!
It is always a good idea to keep track of what your competitors are doing. If they are ranking highly for certain keywords, chances are they are doing something right. Try to mimic their best practices and learn from their success.
By following these tips and working with an experienced partner for SEO services in Sri Lanka, you can fix the issue of cannibalisation on your website and improve your search engine rankings in no time!
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