What is cannibalization in SEO?

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In a simple way, we could define SEO cannibalization as the situation in which for the same query we are ranking more than one URL, so we would be competing against ourselves.

It also happens that we distribute the authority and relevance that a single page could have for a specific topic across several URLs, thereby influencing the organic position of our pages.

Having a solid web architecture and content planning can save us many problems in the future, insurance leads for seniors email database including avoiding cannibalization.

Please note, when we talk about cannibalization, we are not referring to these two cases:



In the image on the left we are seeing a nested result and on the right we see a URL with different sitelinks.

Both situations are marked by Google independently, depending on how it interprets your web architecture and which URLs it considers relevant to include for that search intent.

This is really cool, and it is another positive aspect of implementing a proper web architecture, since we occupy more space in the SERPs, while increasing the probability of increasing our CTR.

I mention this because many of the tools we rely on to detect possible cannibalizations could confuse us if we do not interpret the information they provide us correctly, and we could detect these cases as something negative, when in fact it is quite the opposite.

We must bear in mind that not all SEO cannibalization has to be negative. If we find ourselves in a case where two of our URLs appear in the first search results, we would be monopolizing a large part of the SERPs, thus taking a large part of the pie.

How can cannibalization affect SEO positioning?
Through cannibalization, we are making the search engine understand that we have different pages within our site that are equally relevant for the same search intent, which would confuse the search engine.

Confusing Google is never a good thing. The clearer and more precise we make things, the more it will be relentless with us. Therefore, cannibalizations affect our rankings over time.

It may be the case that an informational page is positioned above a transactional page, when the search intent for that query is purely transactional, so the purchase-oriented page would take a backseat.
By having 2 URLs that address the same purpose, we cannot carry out a correct internal linking or link building strategy. We will end up having anchor texts that overlap each other, when the ideal would be for all anchor texts that address the same topic to go to a single URL.
Continuing with the previous case, as I have mentioned, the authority and relevance of the URLs that try to attack the same query is distributed among all of them, thus making it difficult to obtain the necessary relevance for said search intention.
When suffering cannibalization, it may happen that Google ends up showing URLs that do not adequately solve the need that the user experiences when accessing our page. This is why the UX can also be affected and not adequately satisfy the users who visit our site.