Feeling all happy after reading the various tips on keywords analysis and Google keyword placement strategies? but wait ! I had told you I will come back with more on it and half knowledge is harmful! So what do we have in our store here.
What Is Keyword Cannibalism
If you have heard this term for the first time , keyword cannibalism is a very complex and dreaded after-effect of a search engine optimization campaign gone wrong ,where the wrong posts get ranked higher than your preferred posts. Scared ? I wont say you shouldn’t be!
Digg Bookmark Ranking Higher Than Original URL
Why Does Keyword Cannibalism Take Place
Your keyword basically cannibalize your posts when when you over optimize a post and the wrong posts in the same or other of your domain. When I say other links I mean to refer to either your social media profiles like digg , stumbleupon and web 2.0 properties and article directories. In an attempt to create a middle layer to blast your web 2.0 profiles with backlings to get your secondary backlinks a higher ranking , those links might end up ranking above your main site in the search results.
Keyword Cannibalism : Google Bot Gets Confused
How To Avoid Your Keywords From Being Cannibalized
1)Never Use the same title
Always try and make your individual posts rank for different long tail keywords instead of hitting on your main keyword in all your articles.While submitting to social media sites or while making a new post make sure the titles don’t overlap or you will end up loosing a well written post and traffic to Digg for ranking above your home URL since they have a higher authority and PR.
2)Optimize for different keywords
Thats right ! If you are wondering what happened to keyword targeting and anchor text optimization, its still there , but try to use synonyms while optimizing individual posts and avoid confusing the search engines with recurring custom permalink structure .
3)Never Over Optimize
People tend to do this a lot of the times and as a result end up ranking a lot of the unwanted posts higher than the required post. So, never over optimize with thematic anchor text links.
4)Diversify Your Blogs Keywords
while it is advisable to stick to a niche it is not a wise move to use the same keywords all over again and again in all the posts you make just to stuff in your primary keyword in an attempt to rank high . Sprinkle in some diversity and this will not only keep your blog from keyword cannibalism but also keep your readers interested .Remember – Variety is the spice of life !
5)Use Nofollow & Noindex
It is the most under rated tag in the blog community but believe me, a Nofollow attribute can make or break your blog completely. If used efficiently the nofollow is a boon like no others and ithas been designed for the same .People misht argue why a blogger even uploads content if he does not want to get it indexed , there are some exceptions which people conveniently miss out. Use nofollow attribute for pages which should ideally not be followed because they either dilute your search results or conversely result in keword cannibalism if you have not spared them from keyword optimization.
Ideal pages to exclude are your “About Us” page and similar pages like your services and coment policy page, which will do you no good when picked up by search engines. I will cover in my next article how to effeciently use these tags to filter your search results.
Conclusion-
Don’t be greedy ! We all want to optimize for that shiny keyword with hundreds of thousands of monthly searches and get more traffic to blog and go berserk optimizing it , avoid doing that or you will end up losing search engine rankings for your ‘good deeds’
Have you ever noticed a drip in your SERPs when you over-optimized several posts and ended up in being a victim to keyword cannibalism?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I rarely heard this Cannibalism word in SEO world, I was not aware about this, but now I think it’s one of the important factors of SEO.
Now we have to optimize each page for separate keyword right?
Not exactly to ‘optimize each post for different keyword’ , but avoid over doing SEO for one keyword . targeting is important too , so the best way is to select a moderate competition niche keyword as your primary keyword for your homepage URL and optimize the homepage for same , and select long tail low competition but related posts as your single posts , so you get the advantage of the main niche at the same time you are optimizing to rank for different keywords. Say for example we have a aquarium site , then our aim is to optimize the homepage for generic and a little difficult to rank keywords like aquarium , fish etc and when you make individual posts , target niche long tail keywords like ‘fresh water goldfish for fish tank’ that will give you the benefit of the homepage primary keyword plus you are diversifying your SEO campaign.
That’s interesting and nice idea! I will try to cover these things in my upcoming posts.