Keyword cannibalization: how to find it and fix it
Cannibalization is what happens when two pages on your own site target the same search. Google picks one, usually not the one you would have picked, and both pages rank worse than a single stronger page would have.
How to spot it
The fastest check needs no tools. Search for `site:yourdomain.com` followed by the phrase you care about, and see how many of your own pages come back looking like they answer it. Two or three near-identical titles is the signal.
Search Console is more precise. Open the Performance report, filter to one query, then switch to the Pages tab. If a single query is spread across several URLs, and the page ranking for it changes from week to week, that instability is the symptom.
Why it happens
Almost always through accretion rather than a decision. A blog post from two years ago, a service page written later, and a landing page built for a campaign all end up addressing the same question from slightly different angles.
It also happens when a site scales content production without a keyword map. If nobody owns the list of which page targets which search, the same searches get written about repeatedly — each time in good faith.
How to fix it
Pick the page that should win: usually the one with the most links, the best conversion rate, or the clearest commercial intent. Then either merge the others into it and redirect them with a 301, or genuinely differentiate them so they answer different questions.
Merging is nearly always better than deleting. A page with links pointing at it still carries value, and a 301 passes that to the page you kept. Deleting throws it away and leaves you with broken links you will find months later.
How to stop it recurring
Keep a keyword map: one row per target search, one owning URL. Before anything new is written, check whether the search already has an owner. If it does, the work is to improve that page rather than to add another.
This is dull and it is the whole discipline. Most cannibalization is not a subtle SEO problem — it is the absence of a list.
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