undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Repeatedly target a rolling list of kws..or is that cannibalization? Biggest Confusion in SEO Ive found

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Repeatedly target a rolling list of kws..or is that cannibalization? Biggest Confusion in SEO Ive found

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
4
8
1.5k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • RickyShockley
    RickyShockley last edited by Sep 24, 2015, 12:13 AM

    Also suggesting a WBF topic. Ive read and researched with no luck here... would love a Moz staff reply too!

    Is it better to blog repeatedly on the same topic (writing multiple blogs around the topic of "content marketing" for example in hopes Google sees you as an authority on the topic over time) OR is this keyword cannibalization? Is it better to have one powerful and comprehensive page on a topic if it makes sense.

    Thanks!

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • ronell-smith
      ronell-smith last edited by Oct 12, 2015, 11:25 AM Oct 12, 2015, 11:23 AM

      Ricky,

      It's impossible to get around using the same and/or similar phrases in multiple pieces of content on a website. As long as your writing the content your audience craves, this should be of little concern.

      To become an authority on/in a given topic or area, you will need to create a deep collection of similar but varied content.

      In a nutshell, your worries about cannibalization in this sense, are unfounded.

      RS

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • RickyShockley
        RickyShockley @ronell-smith last edited by Oct 6, 2015, 1:11 PM Oct 6, 2015, 1:11 PM

        Hi Ronell, definitely appreciate the insights but still not sure I have an answer!

        My question is really on the most technical side of this issue as I mentioned above targeting the SAME keyword and not different variations of a keyword. I've heard two completely opposite schools of thought with one side insisting that creating blog posts (for example) regularly on a specific topic geared toward the same exact keyword phrase target can actually help SEO efforts. I assume that theory goes something like this: Google wants to see that you're an expert on the specific topic you're hoping to rank for, so writing about the exact topic (with essentially the same keyword target) several times can actually help establish the correlation that you may be an expert on the given topic/keyword phrase. On the other hand, I've always viewed this as cannibalization. If you have something to write about "link building" for example, it's better to have all of that content in one powerful, comprehensive page vs creating 3-4 posts per year about "link building" in general. Now, I understand that if you want to write about a specific aspect of link building, like "link building for local businesses" you may want a different page, but I'm referring to having several blogs targeting the exact same keyword phrase for SEO.

        Thanks all! I actually heard back from Rand and he mentioned they may be adding this as a WBF topic so hoping we get some clarity soon.

        Ricky

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • ronell-smith
          ronell-smith last edited by Oct 6, 2015, 12:51 PM Oct 6, 2015, 12:51 PM

          Hi Ricky,

          I'm going to break your question up:

          1 - First, I'd like to see a brand creating and sharing content about/around and area they can own in the mind of prospects and customers. This means the brand has a staff that contains experts on the topic, and who can write with passion, depth and empathy for the audience. If you have this mindset and these people in place, you need not worry about writing too much about a given topic. For example, a plumbing site might want to rank for "Tulsa plumbers," "water leaks Tulsa" "emergency plumbers Tulsa" and "24 hour plumbers Tulsa." The competition will likely be fierce. But that same brand could focus on building the brand through creating recognizable personalities and creating educational content, such as videos. This way the content being shared gains the attention from a wide swath of prospects, and the brand personality - now associated with that shared information - is top of mind when an emergency repair occurs. Try this: (a) Pull your team together and brainstorm educational content ideas, with the idea of helping one person: Who is she? What does she desire in the way of worthwhile information? What information is you brand uniquely qualified to provide? Where should it be shared? Who can help you amplify it? After you build out four or five of these personas, you should have a long list of content ideas.

          2 - At the page-level on your website, you don't want multiple pages competing for the same keywords. For example, that same plumber wouldn't want two main pages competing for "Tulsa Plumbers." However, it's unlikely you'll be able to avoid including some of the same keywords on other pages. An approach that I follow, and that is summed up here, is to have main pages be more generic - Tulsa Plumbers - and use subcategory pages be more specific, Tulsa Plumbers Emergency Repair.

          Thanks for the question, Ricky. Please let me know if this helps.

          RickyShockley 1 Reply Last reply Oct 6, 2015, 1:11 PM Reply Quote 0
          • EGOL
            EGOL last edited by Sep 24, 2015, 4:09 PM Sep 24, 2015, 4:09 PM

            Yes, both of those pages earned a position on page one.  If you launch another version of the free CAD software or free CAD templates, vector files, etc. then you might earn three positions on the first page.   I have two, three and four positions on the first page for lots of small money terms.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • RickyShockley
              RickyShockley @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by Sep 24, 2015, 4:02 PM Sep 24, 2015, 4:02 PM

              Hey Guys,

              I understand where you're coming from in terms of competitive analysis and figuring out whether you'd be hard-pressed to have multiple pages ranking for more competitive terms. I also understand that there are certain aspects of a topic that may justify different pages (for example, water filters, home water filters and under sink filters may require different page urls while water filters vs. water filtration may not) but I'm more referring to the algorithmic aspect of this.

              In general, does Google LIKE to see that you're creating multiple pieces of content on a topic to deem you an "expert", or is there no benefit to doing so from that standpoint? I've seen similar terms that I believe require different pages/urls competing against each other and hurting the top ranking page in the SERPS.

              For example, I had a client who had sold CAD software. Their home page was optimized around that term and ranking middle of page one. They had ANOTHER page that was for a free CAD software (stripped down version) that initially didn't rank for the "CAD software" term. At some point, this free CAD page starting creeping up into the top 25 on Google, and as it did we saw a direct correlation with a drop off for our home page. Instead of having one page ranking at #4, we now had TWO pages ranking #10 and #11.

              Make sense?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Andy.Drinkwater
                Andy.Drinkwater @EGOL last edited by Sep 24, 2015, 5:20 AM Sep 24, 2015, 5:20 AM

                Spot on as always Egol - and the biggest takeaway here...

                Don't waste your time with the big comprehensive page if you can't beat the quality of the content that already exists.

                Everyone could learn a lot just from remembering this.

                -Andy

                RickyShockley 1 Reply Last reply Sep 24, 2015, 4:02 PM Reply Quote 0
                • EGOL
                  EGOL last edited by Oct 6, 2015, 11:50 AM Sep 24, 2015, 12:44 AM

                  I would not attack "content marketing" with repeated posts.  It is a difficult topic to rank for and the sites that you will be competing against are very strong.   There are tons of sites competing.

                  I would not attack "content marketing" with a big comprehensive page but for other less competitive subjects I would attack with a big comprehensive page if I can beat the other content that is already out there.  Don't waste your time with the big comprehensive page if you can't beat the quality of the content that already exists.

                  ....  Now... about KW cannibalization....

                  Saturating a market niche with content works well in tiny niches with naive competitors.  You can have three pages from one domain on the first page of the SERPs - each presenting different content to read or different products for sale.  Saturating a market niche doesn't work well if multiple big brands are your competitors.  It's too hard to produce two or three pages on the same topic that are good enough to earn the first page of the SERPs.  (Lots of people think that KW cannibalization is bad because you are "eating your own"... but in my view you are "eating your competitors" with same-keyword content.  :|)  <-- that pipe is a bone in the nose.   Kick them out of profitable SERPs by loading the top three positions with your own pages.

                  So, making the decision to produce multiple pages of content for the same keyword or keyword niche should not be guided by generic advice.  You must consider the niche, the strength of sites in the niche, the amount of content already out there in that niche, your ability to compete with the quality of the content already in the niche.  Being able to make money from the traffic that you do get is the crux move that determines profitability and the only reason to do this other than vanity or proselytization.  The people giving generic advice about this topic (or just about any topic) are blathering.

                  (My post above discusses keyword cannibalization on a single domain that you control.  See Rand's Whiteboard Friday from last week and on August 28. He does not mention "keyword cannibalization" in those videos (putting up multiple pages about the same topic), but, in my view, it  is doing it through the use of multiple domains that other people control.  Often they are very strong or very popular domains that earn your content visibility or authority.)

                  Other recommended activities for cannibals between early May and late October.

                  Andy.Drinkwater 1 Reply Last reply Sep 24, 2015, 5:20 AM Reply Quote 5
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • FashionLux

                    AJAX requests and implication for SEO

                    Hi, I got a question in regard to webpages being served via AJAX request as I couldn't find a definitive answer in regard to an issue we currently face: When visitors on our site select a facet on a Listing Page, the site doesn't fully reload. As a consequence only certain tags of the content (H1, description,..) are updated, while other tags like canonical URLs, meta noindex,nofollow tag, or the title tag are not updating as long as you don't refresh the page. We have no information about how this will be crawled and indexed yet but I was wondering if anyone of you knows, how this will impact SEO?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 25, 2016, 2:59 PM | FashionLux
                    0
                  • seoman10

                    CDN for SEO (or not)?

                    Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 1, 2015, 10:00 AM | seoman10
                    1
                  • Atomicx

                    Yoast seo title question

                    I was referred to this plugin and have found it to be the most irritating and poorly designed plugin in the world. I want to be able to set my titles without it changing my page headers as well. For instance - If I set my title to be "This is my article name | site name" it will make my H1 tag read the same. I do not want or desire this nonsense. Why would they think this is something wise? Why would I want my site name on every single H1 tag on my site? How can I fix this? I only want my title to be my title. I want my H1 tag to remain the post/page name that I define in wordpress.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 29, 2015, 7:06 PM | Atomicx
                    0
                  • pnb567

                    Is .ME domain is effective in SEO ?

                    I am always listening about TLD. com. org .net but what about the .me domain. Can this will be effective in SEO. Can i able to beat down my competitors, if i choose .me . I also have a .com or other TLD option but if i am making my name than .me is for me but i need your suggestion for the seo purpose. Is there really domain affective in term of SEO.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 11, 2014, 12:29 PM | pnb567
                    0
                  • spiralsites

                    ECommerce product listed in multiple places, best SEO practice?

                    We have an eCommerce site we have built for a customer and the products are allowed to appear in more than one product category within the web site. Now I know this is a bad idea from a duplicate content point of view, But we are going to allow the customer to select which out of the multiple categories the product appears in will be the default category. This will mean we will have a way of defining what the default url is for a product. So am I correct in thinking all the other urls where the product appears we should add a rel canonical to these pages pointing to the default url to stop duplicate content? Is this the best way?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 11, 2013, 3:08 PM | spiralsites
                    0
                  • ATMOSMarketing56

                    How to Target Keyword Variations?

                    I have a list of keywords I'm trying to target and they are essentially different variations of each other: Example: blue yankees baseball hat yankees blue baseball hat yankees baseball hat in blue Should I be targeting all these on the same page, or should I be making a new page for each one? Thanks Mozzers!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 2, 2012, 2:57 PM | ATMOSMarketing56
                    0
                  • VividLime

                    Link Age as SEO factor?

                    Hi Guys
                    I have a client who ranks well within a competitive sector of the travel industry. They are planning CMS move which will involve changing from .cfm to .aspx We will be doing the standard redirects etc However Matt's statement here on 301 redirects got me thinking
                    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5UL3lzBOA&t=0m24s He says that basically you loose a bit of page rank when you do a 301 redirect. Now, we will be potentially redirecting 1000s of links and my thinking is 'a lot of a little, adds up to a lot'  In other words, 1000s of redirects may have a big enough impact to loose some rankings in a very competitive and aggressive space. So recommended that we contact the sites who has the link highest value and ask them to manually change the links from cfm to aspx. This will then mean that there are no loss value as with a 301 redirect. -But now I have another dilemma which I'm unsure about. So the main question:
                    Is link age factor in rankings ? If I  update any links, this will make said link new to Google, so if link age is a factor, would this also lessen the value passed initially?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 23, 2011, 4:27 PM | VividLime
                    0
                  • scanlin

                    Does capitalization matter for SEO?

                    Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 23, 2016, 9:30 PM | scanlin
                    1

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.