Identify potential keyword cannibalization

It’s vital for organic marketers to know when multiple pages on their site rank for the same keyword. Knowing this can identify your pages that compete with each other to hurt the site’s overall organic performance. (For a more in-depth dive into keyword cannibalization, check out this post on Conductor's blog.)

It’s not always bad for multiple pages to rank for the same keyword. Consider the following examples:

• If you have multiple high-ranking pages, your ranks aren’t being hurt by both pages targeting the same keyword.
• You might expect multiple pages on your site to rank for your branded keywords.
• You might rank for multiple result types (not just traditional “blue links”).

If any of these are the case for a particular keyword, you probably do not need to take any action to "fix" it.

You can use the “Number of Results” column in the Keywords report to easily identify keyword cannibalization.

1. In Conductor, go Keywords↗️.
2. At the top of the report, switch True Rank to Standard Rank. This will ignore universal result types so you can see keywords where cannibalization is more likely.
3. Scroll down to the table and view the Number of Results column. Any value greater than 1 means that multiple pages on your web property rank for the keyword, which could indicate cannibalization.
4. Expand the table row to see which pages are ranking for the keyword and where. 
   

What's next?

Use what you learn from your ranking pages to decide what to do next. Is it cannibalization or do you just dominate the SERP? Not sure how to proceed? Read on below.