What is Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages on a website compete for the same keyword. This causes confusion for Google, which struggles to determine which page should rank higher, often leading to lower rankings for all pages involved. In Bible-ish’s case, several pages were targeting the keyword "elevated faith," which resulted in an average ranking position of 47. This keyword has been consistently stuck at an average position of 45-47 for the past six months.
Using Search Console
Google Search Console is a tool that helps website owners track their site's performance in search results. By reviewing Bible-ish’s Search Console data, we found that multiple pages were ranking for "elevated faith," including one page that resulted in a 404 error. A 404 error means the page doesn’t exist or has been moved, which creates a dead end for users and search engines alike. We redirected this 404 page to one of the already ranking blog post optimized for "elevated faith," which led to an improvement in the keyword’s average position, moving it up from 47 to 32.
Updating the Remaining Blog Pages
To further improve rankings and reduce internal competition, we will focus on updating the remaining blog pages that were still ranking for "elevated faith." Here’s our approach:
Title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags (H1, H2, etc.) provide search engines with a quick overview of each page’s content. For example, we will change the title of “Wearing Elevated Faith Streetwear” blog to “Learn How Christian Fashion Can Elevate Your Faith,” and also update the title tag and meta description. Removing “elevated faith” exact match phrase from the metadata, so Google doesn’t treat them as competing for the same term.
2. Link to the Love Collection
We’ll add an internal link using "Christian fashion" keyword that points back to Bible-ish’s Love Collection. Search Console data shows that this collection already ranks for Christian-related keywords, so linking to it helps reinforce its relevance and supports ranking for similar terms.
To reinforce the shift, we will add "Christian Clothing" to the title tag and meta description on the Love collection page, and one of the H2 tags.
The following screenshot shows you how the Love collection page meta data currently reads (Oct 29, 2024) right now, but again, we will change the keyword focus to "Love Christian Clothing & Fashion".
For example Love Collection metadata optimization will be updated to the following after Nov 15, 2024):
- Title Tag - Love Christian Clothing & Fashion – Bible-ish (under 60 characters)
- Meta Description - Experience God's 3-fold love with our Love Christian clothing and fashion apparel. Embrace the ultimate love story, salvation, and a life devoted to Him. (under 155 characters)
In Mastering P.o.P’s membership, each member has a customized SEO strategy that they are actively executing. For any online business owner with a website, having a clear SEO strategy is important—it helps attract the right audience, rank well in search results, and drive traffic to the site. As part of this strategy, we track 100 keywords for each member. These keywords are carefully selected based on competitors performing well with them, alignment with our product offerings, and the expected traffic they can generate.
Members regularly receive tips like these within the community and during weekly Zoom calls, which are recorded, timestamped, and organized with agendas to make the guidance clear and actionable.
