Keyword cannibalization can harm your website’s performance by splitting your authority, reducing click-through rates (CTR), and confusing search engines. Instead of helping your site rank better, competing pages dilute your SEO efforts, potentially hurting your rankings and wasting resources.
By resolving keyword cannibalization, you’ll:
Boost rankings for your target keywords.
Increase organic traffic by focusing efforts on the most relevant pages.
Improve user experience with more precise, more targeted content.
Save your crawl budget for more important pages.
Surfer: Topical Map to generate a Cannibalization Report
Google Sheets: For organizing and analyzing data
Do a keyword cannibalization check quarterly to be sure your site stays optimized.
Run the check after the algorithm updates.
Run cannibalization audit after major content releases.
Cannibalization Report is a feature available for some of the plans only - if you are unsure if your plan has the access, feel free to reach out to our Support Team - we'll help you verify!
Go to Surfer and navigate to the Topical Map.
If you don’t have a Topical Map for your domain, create one and wait a few minutes for Surfer to prepare it. Here's how ->
Open a Topical Map for your Domain.
Click Export → Select Generate Cannibalization Report.
Once processed, download the report (CSV).
Open the CSV and add 3 new columns:
Number of URLs:
=COUNTIF(A:A, A2)
Total Impressions for Keyword:
=SUMIF($A$2:A, A2, $D$2:D)
% of Impressions (per URL):
=(D2*100)/E2
We advise the following order:
Create a Pivot Table:
Select all data → Insert → Pivot Table → New Sheet
Rows:
Keyword
URL
Values:
Impressions
% of Impressions
Position
Sort:
For keywords → Descending by SUM of Impressions
For URLs → Descending by SUM of % of Impressions
Filter:
Exclude brand keywords
(Filters → Text does not contain → “Your Brand Name”)
What to look forYou’re looking for overlap—keywords split between multiple URLs.
It’s a problem if:
Two or more URLs share similar % of impressions and similar positions
It’s not a problem if:
One URL dominates (70%+ impressions)
It’s a branded keyword
Extra URLs rank poorly (page 3+)
Start where it matters most:
High priority: Pages tied to conversions, product, revenue.
Medium priority: Pillar, service, or high-traffic pages.
Low priority: Supporting or long-tail content.
Option A: Merge
If the topic is very similar and the user intent is clear, merge the articles into a single piece of content.
→ Remember to 301 redirect the removed URL.
Option B: Internal linking (signal the target)
Point the search engine in the right direction with internal linking. Use exact-match anchor text in the cannibalizing article to link to the target page. This way, you will give a clear sign that there is a pair of keywords and URLs that you are targeting.
Option C: Separate the intent
Rewrite one of the articles to focus on a different (but related) intent.
→ Check SERPs to validate the difference in search intent.
Options B and C send strong signals to search engines about which page deserves to rank.
That's it! Now, let's show you how to track and measure your progress in Surfer ->
