SEO - Stop Eating Your Words - Avoid Cannibalisation Of Your Sites
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Transcript of SEO - Stop Eating Your Words - Avoid Cannibalisation Of Your Sites
STOP EATING YOUR WORDS TO AVOID SEO SITE CANNIBALIZATION
IT’S A MYTH -DUPLICATE CONTENT PENALTY
- THERE’S NO SUCH THING
EXACT DUPLICATES ARE FILTERED OUT IN THE SEARCH ENGINE SYSTEM TO ARRIVE AT A ‘SINGLE URL / CONTENT FINGERPRINT’
BUT…DUPLICATE VERSIONS(HTTPS/HTTP/NONWWW/WWW)-‐ IT’S NOTALWAYS THE ONE YOUWOULD PREFER THAT GETS CHOSEN AS ’THE ONE’ AND INDEXED
’AND…TOO SIMILAR CONTENT’ CAN BE A ‘BALL AND CHAIN’ TO YOUR WEBSITE
BUT…WE ARE DROWNING IN A SEA OF CONTENT…
WHAT’S WORSE THAN DUPLICATE CONTENT?
MAKING GOOGLE PLAY SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
‘TOO SIMILAR CONTENT’ ISONE OF THE CANNIBALS
WE ARE ALL PUBLISHERS
SOURCE: http://wordpress/activity/posting
“Make more content” can have a down side
A LOT OF THE CONTENT IS ‘KIND OF THE SAME’
“There’s a needle in here somewhere”
“It’s an important needle too”
GOOGLE CAN GET CONFUSED AS TO WHICH PAGE IT SHOULD RANK FROM YOUR SITE FOR KEY TERMS FROM TOO SIMILARS
The Four Main Types Of Cannibalisation –Slideshare @jonearnshawhttp://www.slideshare.net/jonathanearnshaw/seo-‐46813620
AS ONE PAGE GOES UP… OTHER ’TOO SIMILAR’ PAGES GO DOWN… SOMETIMES A LOT
SOME SYMPTOMS
• Different pages ranking for the same term
• Hanging around on page 2
• Never quite achieving those top spots
• Different URLs ranking for the same term in your industry seasonal periods
• Not getting the CTR (click through rate) despite ranking reasonably well
• Shared impressions in Google Search Console for different pages for the same terms
IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM
SOME SYMPTOMS
PRIMARY TARGET KEEPS LEAPING AROUND
CHECK PAGE SIMILARITY %
http://www.webconfs.com/similar-‐page-‐checker.php
ARE MANY URLs FIGHTING WITH EACH OTHER FOR THE SAME QUERY?
CAVEAT: CONTEXT OF QUERY WILL ALSO COME INTO PLAY BUT GENERALLY YOU DON’T WANT SEVERAL URLS IN THE LIST
TOOLS
SITELINER DUPLICATE & COMMON CONTENT CHECKER
SEMRUSH DUPLICATE CHECKER
DEEP CRAWL DUPLICATE & WRONG VERSION CHECKER
TOOLS
ON PAGE DUPLICATE
DO A SITE:YOURDOMAIN.COMSEARCH IN GOOGLE SERPS
DO A SITE: www.YOURDOMAIN.COMSEARCH IN GOOGLE SERPSCHECK THE DIFFERENCEREPEAT WITH HTTPS
JUST A FEW OF THE CAUSES OF CANNIBALIZATION
• ‘Too similar or wrong version content’
• Skewed votes of ‘awesomeness’ from within your own site
• Anchor text inconsistency
• Lack of logic within site structure
• Not enough ‘environmental context’ surrounding the content
• Placement in site structure
• Sharing relevance for queries with other pages (even those which are not that similar)
• Optimising several pages for the same terms (even unwittingly)
• Incorrect use of canonicalisation and hreflang
SKEWED ‘IMPORTANCE’ VIA INTERNAL LINKINGSTOP VOTING FOR THE WRONG TARGETS FROM WITHIN YOUR OWN SITE
THE MOST IMPORTANT PAGES SHOULD BE TOWARD THE TOP OF THE LIST…
NOT YOUR BLOG OR BLOG CATEGORIES IDEALLY
BAD VERY SIMILAR CONTENT CAN BE GENERATED VIA ‘WRONG PARAMETER’ PICKUP
SOMETIMES GOOGLEBOT PICKS UP ONTHE WRONG PARAMETER FIELDFROM DYNAMIC URLS AND HEADS OFFINTO THE MAZE.
THE IMPORTANT URL IS LOST
CHECK LOGS FOR STRANGE URLS
THE IMPORTANT URL
LOSES IMPORTANCE WHEN GOOGLEBOT ENCOUNTERS DYNAMICALLY GENERATED RANDOM BUT ‘LOGICAL’ CONTENT FROM PARAMETERS
INCONSISTENT ANCHOR TEXT INTERNAL LINKINGBE CONSISTENT IN INTERNAL ANCHOR LINKS
BUT DON’T BE SPAMMY EITHER
MAKE SURE THAT THE CONTEXT AND LINK IS USEFUL TO THE VISITOR AND ALSO TO THE SEARCH ENGINE
IF YOUR ’INTERNAL ANCHOR CLOUD’ SCREAMS ‘SPAM ON MONEY TERMS’… NOOO
AVOID BEING ’FORMULAIC’
USE BREADCRUMBS TO EMPHASISE IMPORTANCE & RELEVANCE IN SITES
Image credit: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/breadcrumbs-‐in-‐web-‐design-‐examples-‐and-‐best-‐practices/
HOMESITE
SECTIONCATEGORY
PRODUCT / ARTICLE
MOST
FEWER
FEWERSINGLE TEXT OUTPUT ONLYBREADCRUMB
SOME NOTES ON CANONICALIZATION1) Duplicate or ‘very near duplicate’ content should be canonicalized2) You can’t no-‐index a URL and then canonicalize it to something else3) With and without a trailing slash is different4) Don’t forget to switch you canonicals when moving to HTTPS5) Self referencing canonicalization can help if your content gets scraped6) Avoid canonicalizing URLs to another if it’s too different7) Don’t canonicalize paginated URLs to the first page of the set – use next/prev8) Remember that Google is looking for a single version of a URL to index –canonicalization is key to this9) Don’t canonicalize just for rankings. Canonicalize to reduce duplication10) Consider whether a 301 redirect would be the best fit11) Review ‘URL parameters’ on dynamic sites to help choose canonicalsSOME CANONICALS MAY BE IGNORED IF GOOGLEBOT / THE SEARCH ENGINE THINKS YOU MADE A MISTAKE (e.g. too different a URL)
”PICK YOUR TARGETS”“Let your target pages be a clear winner always”
BUT… DO NOT OVER OPTIMISE ANYTHING EVER
YOU DON’T NEED TO OPIMISE EVERYTHING
MAKE YOUR TARGET PAGE ‘THE MOST RELEVANT’ON A TOPIC
MERGING OF ‘TOO SIMILAR’ CONTENT FOR CONCENTRATION (BULK UP (DON’T STEAL) THE POWER)
1) Variants2) Stemming3) Synonyms4) Associated keywords5) Theme level, section and page level6) Silos
DO A CONTENT AUDIT
Find variants for a keyword in Google Search Console in content keywords
They’re potentially the same thing
You need to merge pages if they can’t stand on their own two feet alone
CONCENTRATE RATHER THAN DILUTE
THEM CRAZY CRAZY RANDOM BLOG SECTIONS
NO ORDER OR LOGIC
ORGANISE TO SOME ORDERED LOGIC TO ADD FURTHER MEANING
‘MAKE LIKE A LIBRARY’
A BLOG IS NOT A LIBRARY IT IS A RANDOM COLLECTION OF MANY UNRELATED THINGS
INTENT TO CONTENT MAPPINGBOTH HUMANS AND SEARCH ENGINES NEED A LOGICAL STRUCTURE AND SIGNS TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTENT WHICH MATCHES QUERY INTENT. THIS CAN HELP TO AVOID CANNIBALISATION
THE LOGIC RELEVANCE DIRECTOR ‘THE PERMANENT TOPICAL HUB PAGE’
CATS
GALLERY
(Pictures of cats)
Queries: cat pictures
Cat picture categories
Kitten pictures, etc
FORUM
Chatting cat lovers
Long tail community question answering
Builds the buzz around the rest of
the site too
BREEDERS
A directory of breeders
categorisedinternall by cat
type
Cat breeders
PET CARE
Lots of help and advice on the care of cats
Queries: My cat is ill, cat care, sick cat
THE CAT PAGE IS MOST POWERFUL– but relevance & queries are clearly matched with intent
‘Wall-ties of semantically ‘related’ relevance
INTENT TO CONTENT FRAMEWORK
HUB CONTENTHERO CONTENT
THE BRAND FRONT DOOR
HELP CONTENTAn environment related to ‘support’, ‘questions’, ‘technical q and a’s, ‘opening times’ANSWER QUESTIONSOn PRODUCTS ETC, ideas, solutions, styles
This is where the community, blogs, trends, fashion, opinions, thoughts, ramblings and content less focused on transaction and sales. Don’t compete with your hero pages here. Build the buzz to support the sales. UGC ideas too
CAT CAT CAT
sc sc sc sc
e.g. Query: Shoes, buy shoes, red shoes, etc
E.g. US shoe sizes, shoe size charts, shoes don’t fit, shoe styles, shoe reviews
The Shoe Site
Strong power here
P P P P P
21 WAYS TO AVOID SITE CANNIBALISATION1) Utilise Internal linking connecting related items & sections, navigation, breadcrumbs and some contextual (BUT DO NOT BE SPAMMY) 2) Anchor text consistency (BUT DO NOT BE SPAMMY)3) Canonicalization of near similar content4) Page Title Differentiation5) H1, H2, H3 tag differentiation6) Intent to content mapping & topical permanent hub pages7) If you can’t improve (for now), noindex (temporarily) and then improve8) Exclusion of near duplicate non-‐preferred version from XML sitemap9) Exclusion of 301 redirects from XML sitemap10) Verify all possible versions of your site in Google Search Console (http/https/www/non-‐www)11) Choose 1 version of your site (HTTPS/HTTP/WWW/NONWWW) and 301 redirect other versions12) Review your pages for duplicate body content13) Check for multiple similar URLs sharing impressions for queries in GSC14) Keep boilerplate areas to a minimum15) Avoid ‘filler’ or ’placeholder’ content just for the sake of having content16) Avoid ‘spinning content around’ in different parts of your site without having decent unique content16) Use breadcrumbs to include site section to provide further context17) Review parameters and check to see that Googlebot is not crawling the wrong ones18) Fold up thin content and merge to make ‘great content’ which stands out on its own19) Review internal links and chop out any redirect chains to end target20) Check any hreflang tags to make sure right content is ranking in right language if internationalised21) Check server logs on larger sites to check for abnormalities & googlebot visiting strange places
”EMPHASISE IMPORTANCE”“Make sure you’re giving the right hints on URLs to Google from within your
own website”
ALWAYS REMEMBER ‘NUANCES’ ARE KEY
BIG TAKE AWAY
TWITTER -‐ @dawnieandoGOOGLE+ -‐ +DawnAnderson888LINKEDIN – msdawnanderson
MOVE IT MARKETING –www.move-‐it-‐marketing.co.uk
THANK YOU