Today, you’re getting two words for the price of one, because the word of the day is really more of what you’d call a phrase.  I’m not sure where this phrase originated, but I suspect that Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz might have coined it.

Keyword cannibalization refers to the practice of competing with yourself for the same keywords or key phrases when optimizing your site for the search engines.  That seems like a pretty stupid thing to do, but the fact is that a lot of people do it unintentionally and in some cases even think they’re helping themselves.  To understand why it might hurt you, it will help to briefly review some factors that search engines use to rank web sites.

Search engines use ”on page factors” and “off page factors” to figure out what each individual web page is about, and to then rank web pages relative to one another in the search engine results pages.  On page factors include things like the title tag (the words that appear in the usually blue bar at the top of the web browser) and the text on the page.  Off page factors include things like the number of links to the page, the anchor text of those links (the words you actually click on to follow the link), and the “authority” of the sites linking to a page. 

Now, if you have two or three pages using the same keywords, a search engine has to decide which of those pages is most important for those keywords.  Generally search engines don’t like to display multiple pages from a single site in a given set of results.  It’s not as useful for the user as displaying results from several different sites.  So, now the search engine is only picking one of your pages to “represent” your site in the results.

“That’s fine,” you might say, “as long as my site is ranked on the first page, preferably number 1″.

That’s where the problem comes in.  Links from other sites play a big role in where your page ranks relative to other pages about the same topic (also known as your competition).  If those links, and the internal links from your own site are spread over three different pages, instead of concentrated on one page, then your page is less likely to rank as well as your competition.

Make each page of your website about one thing, and make the content on that page great content about whatever that one thing is.  Look at each page as though it were a specialist in the one thing that it is about.  I’ll end with an example of how one might construct a jewelry website without cannibalizing keywords.

Homepage – “jewelry”

Subpage 1 – “bracelets”

   1a)  “Gold bracelets”

  1b)  “Silver bracelets”

  1c)  “Plastic bracelets”

Subpage 2 – “Necklaces”

  2a)  “Gold Necklaces”

  2b)  “Silver Necklaces”

  2c)  “Pearl Necklaces”

 In this case, we have four pages about necklaces.  One is the main necklace page with general information about the necklaces offered, and the other three are subpages about specific types of necklaces.  In theory, when someone searches for “necklaces”, the necklace page (subpage 2) should be well placed in the search engine results.  If someone searches for “gold necklaces”, the page specifically about gold necklaces (2A) should be well placed in the search engine results.  That’s good for the user because they get just what they’re looking for.  It’s good for the site owner because the user is more likely to convert to a buyer when they don’t have to navigate through a maze of pages to find what they’re looking for.  Finally, it’s good from a search engine standpoint because the search engines aim to rank sites that will provide the best user experience for a given search phrase.

I’ve received numerous emails and several irate phone calls over the last week concerning our lack of coverage of “the puzzle” over the last six months.  The final straw occured last night just before I left the office when I received a call from ABC action news claiming that I was not fulfilling my obligation to loyal blog readers who have a lot of money riding on when we will finish the puzzle, and what the puzzle represents.

Okay, in reality I’ve had a bit of writer’s block on a few recent projects and I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with the puzzle lately.  So, rest assured the puzzle still occupies R-Design’s “thotful spot”.  Sadly, the progress we’ve made on the puzzle over the last several months has been rather pathetic.  Carlos managed to separate all the pieces into four piles of basic shapes.  The overall puzzle strategy now consists of making an educated guess as to the shape of a piece in question, then picking a pile and trying every piece in that pile until the right piece is found.

The good news is that this process gets slightly easier with every new piece we find…

I’d like to say that all the projects we’re involved in go perfectly, but sometimes they end up a little like the puzzle.  In the case of one website, we developed everything and it looked great, but the client didn’t like the font.  We mocked it up with a few new fonts, but he didn’t like those either.  Finally, he came to the office, sat down with an intern and together they went through every font we had one by one.  He didn’t like any of them.  Of course, he didn’t want to pay for a new font, so we eventually got him to settle for one we already had.

Anyway, we’ve made a whole lot of progress on the right side of the puzzle and we’re I’m moving steadily toward the top left corner in a diagonal fashion.  For those of you who didn’t skip right to the photo, thanks for reading.