In a hangout submitted Question and Answer segment, John Mueller answered a question about keyword cannibalization.
One SEO pro asked John about this. They had a question about targeting the same keyword on two different pages. One is a feature page and the other is an informational piece about that feature.
Is it okay to target the same main keyword on these two different pages?
John explained that yes, it’s perfectly fine to target whatever keywords you want.
From Google’s point of view, they are not going to hold you back.
However, John would caution against the following: are you competing with yourself? And this is more of a strategic question rather than a pure SEO question.
And definitely not something where they would say there are guidelines where you shouldn’t do this.
But, it’s more about: if you have multiple pieces of content that are ranking for that same query with the same intent, then you’re basically diluting the value of that content that you’re providing across multiple pages.
They are, in essence, competing with each other. And this could mean that these individual pages themselves are not that strong when it comes to competing against other people’s websites.
So this is something that John would watch out for: if you have two pages, and they’re both targeting the same keyword, and they have very different intents, then from his point of view, this seems kind of reasonable.
Because people may be searching for that keyword with extra text added for one intent, and extra text added for another intent.
They are essentially unique pages. And this can make sense for either both of them to appear in search or the best-matching one.
But, it’s not something that is an iron-clad requirement for Google that you have to observe this particular practice.
This happens at approximately the 29:36 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 29:36
I have a question about targeting the same keyword on two different pages. One is a feature page and the other is an informational piece about that feature. Is it okay to target the same main keyword on those two different pages?
John (Answer) 29:49
So first of all, it’s totally okay to target whatever keywords that you want. From our point of view, we’re not going to hold you back. The thing I would watch out for is kind of like, are you competing with yourself? And that’s almost more of a strategic question rather than kind of a pure SEO question.
And definitely not something where we’d say, there are guidelines that you should not do this. But it’s more that if you have multiple pieces of content that are ranking for the same query with the same intent, then you’re essentially kind of diluting the value of your, the content that you’re providing across multiple pages, they’re competing with each other.
And that could mean that these individual pages themselves are not that strong when it comes to competing with other people’s websites. So that sometimes is something that I would watch out for. If you have two pages, and they’re both targeting the same keyword, and they have very different intents, then from my point of view, that seems kind of reasonable, because people might be searching for that keyword with kinda like extra text added for one intent and extra text added for the other intent.
And they’re essentially unique pages. And it can make sense for either both of them to appear in search or kind of the best matching one to appear in search.
So that’s kind of my take on it. And like I said, it’s not something that we require or that is like, okay, or not, okay, it’s really a matter of kind of your strategic positioning on how you want to appear in search.
