Cannibal content - Stopping Your Website from Eating Itself

Cannibal Content

Chris Green - SEO & Content Manager

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

What is cannibal content?

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Content that eats itself

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Like this...

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No

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Web pages that compete with each other

in search

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Or...

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Sites you own that compete with each other

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What does this look like?

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Cannibalisation at work

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@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Cannibalisation at work

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Too many competing categories

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@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Size/Colour Filters

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Blogs & Reviews

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And many more!

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But isn't this just duplicate content?

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Duplicate content causes cannibalisation issues

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... but you can have cannibalisation problems without duplicate content!

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Shut the f...

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

What damage does this cause?

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store.three.co.uk - “latest mobile phones”

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

store.three.co.uk - “latest mobile phones”

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

store.three.co.uk

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

www.currys.co.uk - “Apple iPad with retina”

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@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

www.currys.co.uk & www.pcworld.co.uk - “Apple iPad with retina”

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

The easiest way to understand cannibal content on your site?

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Think like Google

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Crawl it (w/ Screaming Frog)

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Keyword targeting (URL, title, h1 etc)

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Internal links

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Contextual links

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Anchor text

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Check the backlinks

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Check the social shares

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Look at all of that data, are there any overlaps?

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If you're in any doubt, Google might be too!

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Don't let Google guess!

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

How do you fix it?

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“On-page”

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A strong, clear sitemap (content silos)

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@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Keyword mapping

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@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Internal/contextual linking

(Support the keyword mapping!)

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Canonical Tags (your new best friend)

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<link rel=“canonical” href=“http://www.example.com/” >

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One thing I have missed...

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Monitoring is key!

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Rank checking

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Landing page reports in Google Analytics

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Google Webmaster Tools

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@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Where is the traffic going, and are those

pages working?

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This isn't just an SEO concern

(high bounce/low engagement)

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It's good for UX too!

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But prevention is better than a cure!

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Know your user needs/journey

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Ensure the IA reflects that!

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REMEMBER

Any page (potentially) can be the start of the user journey

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Also, remember what the O in SEO stands for

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Test, Monitor, Change = Optimisation!

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Prepare to be surprised!

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Any Questions?

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@chrisgreen87 [email protected] www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk

Get in Touch!

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Special thanks to Pi Datametrics for use of examples