How can we detect SEO Cannibalization in our projects?
Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2025 8:53 am
Now that we have seen what cannibalization is and how it can affect our rankings, let's see how we can detect it.
There are various tools that can give us an idea of whether we are suffering from cannibalization problems, but it is then implicit in the work of an SEO to really check what is happening.
The tool does not show us manna fallen from the sky, and we should not be insurance leads for seniors email database guided solely by the information it transmits to us, but we must investigate and really understand what is happening.
Detect cannibalizations through Sistrix
Here's a good ally! Sistrix lets you easily and intuitively see potential cannibalization problems.
To do this, once we have entered the domain we want to analyse, we go to the keywords section and apply the “show keywords cannibalization” filter. The set of keywords that could be cannibalizing will then appear.
In this case we see that for the keyword “seo plugins for blogger” two different URLs appear. We see that one is in position 2 and the other in position 3.
This may already make us suspect that it is a nested result or a sitelink that Google shows in our snippet.
We check the result of our snippet on Google and see that this is the case. One of the URLs that Sistrix marks is actually a sitelink, so in this case it would not be cannibalizing that keyword.
Let’s now look at the case of another site, where we find another possible cannibalization. In the following image, we find the keyword “decoration with sweets” that ranks for three different posts on the blog, which are in position 26, 27 and 72 respectively. Also, if we look at the titles of the pages we see what they look like:
Decorating with candy
Candy table: 6 tips for setting it up
Decorate cocktails with sweets and candies
Without going into too much detail about the content of the posts, we can already see from the titles that the topic seems to be closely related.
We can also see the history of the ranking and URLs that are positioned for that query.
Thanks to this feature we have verified that, over the last few weeks, there are 2 different active URLs that have been gaining positioning.
At this point, we should also check that there is no canonical URL that would tell Google which one is relevant. We can do this quickly using one of the Chrome extensions such as “Robots Exclusion Checker”.
Once verified and seeing that there is no canonical for such a case, we can determine that for this query we have cannibalization problems.
Grow with us!
Detecting cannibalizations through Google Search Console
Another simple method that we can use to obtain clues about cannibalization is through Google Search Console. By accessing the search results performance and filtering for a specific query, we can see the pages for which that query has ranked.
In this case, we see that for the query “online cuches” they are ranking different pages, so we could think that they are cannibalizing.
We must keep in mind again, not to understand the data from the tools as a mantra, but to understand what really happens.
We see that in this case, the home page appears with 1,041 clicks and 12,848 impressions, and then there are different product category URLs with numerous impressions and hardly any clicks. All of this indicates that these are sitelinks again.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Which links in this Snippet will have a lower CTR?
There are various tools that can give us an idea of whether we are suffering from cannibalization problems, but it is then implicit in the work of an SEO to really check what is happening.
The tool does not show us manna fallen from the sky, and we should not be insurance leads for seniors email database guided solely by the information it transmits to us, but we must investigate and really understand what is happening.
Detect cannibalizations through Sistrix
Here's a good ally! Sistrix lets you easily and intuitively see potential cannibalization problems.
To do this, once we have entered the domain we want to analyse, we go to the keywords section and apply the “show keywords cannibalization” filter. The set of keywords that could be cannibalizing will then appear.
In this case we see that for the keyword “seo plugins for blogger” two different URLs appear. We see that one is in position 2 and the other in position 3.
This may already make us suspect that it is a nested result or a sitelink that Google shows in our snippet.
We check the result of our snippet on Google and see that this is the case. One of the URLs that Sistrix marks is actually a sitelink, so in this case it would not be cannibalizing that keyword.
Let’s now look at the case of another site, where we find another possible cannibalization. In the following image, we find the keyword “decoration with sweets” that ranks for three different posts on the blog, which are in position 26, 27 and 72 respectively. Also, if we look at the titles of the pages we see what they look like:
Decorating with candy
Candy table: 6 tips for setting it up
Decorate cocktails with sweets and candies
Without going into too much detail about the content of the posts, we can already see from the titles that the topic seems to be closely related.
We can also see the history of the ranking and URLs that are positioned for that query.
Thanks to this feature we have verified that, over the last few weeks, there are 2 different active URLs that have been gaining positioning.
At this point, we should also check that there is no canonical URL that would tell Google which one is relevant. We can do this quickly using one of the Chrome extensions such as “Robots Exclusion Checker”.
Once verified and seeing that there is no canonical for such a case, we can determine that for this query we have cannibalization problems.
Grow with us!
Detecting cannibalizations through Google Search Console
Another simple method that we can use to obtain clues about cannibalization is through Google Search Console. By accessing the search results performance and filtering for a specific query, we can see the pages for which that query has ranked.
In this case, we see that for the query “online cuches” they are ranking different pages, so we could think that they are cannibalizing.
We must keep in mind again, not to understand the data from the tools as a mantra, but to understand what really happens.
We see that in this case, the home page appears with 1,041 clicks and 12,848 impressions, and then there are different product category URLs with numerous impressions and hardly any clicks. All of this indicates that these are sitelinks again.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Which links in this Snippet will have a lower CTR?