Cannibal Content
Chris Green - SEO & Content Manager
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
What is cannibal content?
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Content that eats itself
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Like this...
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
No
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Web pages that compete with each other
in search
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Or...
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Sites you own that compete with each other
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
What does this look like?
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Cannibalisation at work
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Cannibalisation at work
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Too many competing categories
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Size/Colour Filters
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Blogs & Reviews
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
And many more!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
But isn't this just duplicate content?
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Duplicate content causes cannibalisation issues
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
... but you can have cannibalisation problems without duplicate content!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Shut the f...
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
What damage does this cause?
@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 - “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”
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@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
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Crawl it (w/ Screaming Frog)
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Keyword targeting (URL, title, h1 etc)
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Internal links
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Contextual links
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Anchor text
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Check the backlinks
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Check the social shares
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Look at all of that data, are there any overlaps?
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
If you're in any doubt, Google might be too!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Don't let Google guess!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
How do you fix it?
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
“On-page”
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
A strong, clear sitemap (content silos)
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Keyword mapping
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Internal/contextual linking
(Support the keyword mapping!)
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Canonical Tags (your new best friend)
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
<link rel=“canonical” href=“http://www.example.com/” >
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
One thing I have missed...
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Monitoring is key!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Rank checking
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Landing page reports in Google Analytics
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Google Webmaster Tools
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Where is the traffic going, and are those
pages working?
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
This isn't just an SEO concern
(high bounce/low engagement)
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
It's good for UX too!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
But prevention is better than a cure!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Know your user needs/journey
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Ensure the IA reflects that!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
REMEMBER
Any page (potentially) can be the start of the user journey
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Also, remember what the O in SEO stands for
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Test, Monitor, Change = Optimisation!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Prepare to be surprised!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Any Questions?
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk @chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
@chrisgreen87 [email protected] www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Get in Touch!
@chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk @chrisgreen87 www.strategiqmarketing.co.uk
Special thanks to Pi Datametrics for use of examples