Meredith's Husband: 0:32

Hey, this is Meredith husband. I've got some SEO advice for you. But I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it. So make sense. And most importantly, so you can actually use

Meredith: 0:48

what are we going to talk about

Meredith's Husband: 0:49

today? Today? Yeah. Oh, you know what, Welcome to Season Two. Season two. That's so exciting, isn't

Meredith: 0:57

it? That's so very exciting. Look at that. Congratulations.

Meredith's Husband: 1:02

We're gonna kick it off with a big topic. Oh, keyword cannibalization? That's just a, that's a that's a pretty scary sounding term. For something that's pretty common, to be honest, for something that's pretty what pretty common. This happens all the time. The latest I've seen this happening is this week, a couple days ago, I've seen my absolute biggest clients do this. I've seen my smallest clients do this. It happens all the time. And what it means is basically, you're competing against yourself, you're not specific enough, you're not telling Google, hey, I want this page to rank. And I, you know, for this particular keyword, you're just dumping keywords on your page. And it sends conflicting signals to Google. Google doesn't know which page to rank for which keyword and so you end up harming your own rankings. That's what

Meredith: 1:54

it's kind of like putting in color wash with a whitewash and just throwing it all in there. And then can you tell them doing laundry today? It and then everything comes out pink?

Meredith's Husband: 2:11

Kind of? Kind of? Yes. Yeah. No kidding. Anyway, I'm gonna split this up into three. This is gonna we're gonna cover keywords in three episodes. Oh, because there's a little because there's more than you can then I can cover in just bite sized chunks. Yeah. So today, we're gonna I'm gonna do the summary Licious buys chess chunks chunked? Of course, by Chase, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cover what we're trying to do the problem, what we're trying to do. And then the next, we're gonna do that in two parts. We're going to actually implement it in two parts. Those will be the next two episodes. Okay. So first, yeah. What are what are the signs? How can you tell if this is happening to your site? There's a few different ways you can tell number one,

Meredith: 2:56

that there's there's a keyword cannibalization?

Meredith's Husband: 2:59

Yes. That you're cannibalizing your own keywords, you're hurting, you're shooting yourself in your foot eating. You're no you're not eating,

Meredith: 3:07

cannibalism is eating your own shot.

Meredith's Husband: 3:09

Right? What you're shooting yourself in that we're going down. It's a different analogy.

Meredith: 3:14

Oh, that maybe this symbolism isn't the right word. Right could just be

Meredith's Husband: 3:18

your key or key words. The The idea is that your key words are eating each other's opportunity. They're competing against each other, you're eating up your own rankings, you don't want to, if you're trying to get into Google and you want to good ranking, you don't you don't want to compete with yourself. The last thing you want to do, yeah. So I had so as an example of how you how you spot this, how you can tell if this is happening to your site, I had a really big client not too long ago, and I started and they were in an industry that is not all that competitive. Like, and they and they were to be honest, one of the leaders like you really would have expected them to be on page one for kind of whatever they wanted to be on page. They were one of a handful of companies that should actually be there. And yeah, for mice. That's exactly what it was. I knew it. And yet, their main keyword was on page two. And they didn't they didn't know why that was there. That was their biggest concern. So I started started this project, and a week after I started, so we are tracking keywords. So we're looking at their rankings. Okay, this page is ranking here. You know, they were appearing on page two a week after I started that page that was showing up in Google changed and a different page started showing up in Google. That is the most classic sign of that you're cannibalizing your own keywords. Google doesn't know which page to rank. And so they fluctuate, they go back and forth. In this case, it went from like an inner page to the homepage. Wow. And then a week later it was it was a different like a different page.

Meredith: 4:46

That's like a what's it called a bouncy house filled with

Meredith's Husband: 4:51

throwing up keyword I guess, I guess so. I guess there are other signs however, that's not the only way that's not the only way this kind of appears in Google. Sometimes if you if you have a keyword that you do a search for and you set you see your site coming up, but it's the wrong page like you feel like that's just not the page that should be appearing for that keyword. Yeah, that's also a sign

Meredith: 5:12

interesting. How do you know how do you know? Well,

Meredith's Husband: 5:16

he if like for you any of this? If you did if you did a search for children's photography, Brooklyn and your tenancy petts Page came up. That would be that would be, you know, that's obviously that wouldn't happen. That's a little too extreme. But let's say your pricing page came up, or your testimonials page came up, that would be a case of this happening. Also, sometimes if you're if your rankings are just fluctuating a lot, if they're constantly going like on and off page one, or they're going to have big swings, then this can be an issue. Also, sometimes it's just when you don't have good rankings, this is what is happening. Okay. So there's so this happens a lot. Yeah. Anyway, for that client back to that story. So what I had to tell this client to do was their for their main keyword, I had to convince them to take that keyword off of their homepage, if you can believe it. No, as they wanted to have that one. Well, it did. It did not. It did not go over well, no, no, no, they were using that they were using that keyword a whole bunch of times on their homepage. But they had an inner page that was specifically dedicated to that keyword. And that was the page that that we kind of wanted to have optimized for that keyword. So we had to take that keyword off of the homepage. Not completely, it was still there. But you know, they were they had it on there like 10 different times that we took half of them away. Like a month later, they got onto page one, they were page one. Now, what's funny, what's funny, though, is we can't ultimately guarantee which page is going to appear in Google search. So we had an inner page that was totally optimized for this term. And we had reduced the focus on that term with their homepage. What ultimately ended up happening Google was the homepage displayed now sometimes, what is the inter page and enter your system inside page? And what does that mean? It's a page inside your website. It's any page other than your home page. Okay. And inner page. Interpret that is an inner page inner page inner I Nn. Er, not? Ion? Yeah,

Meredith: 7:19

like my last name, except for the Z.

Meredith's Husband: 7:23

Right? That's exactly Yeah, I kind of familiar with the spelling. Okay, so that's an inner pages inside. Okay, I just want to make sure. So sometimes, even even though we have a, now we have a page, I had a page for this client that was optimized really well for that keyword. Sometimes Google is going to display your homepage first. And Google will make that decision. But what we have of what we can avoid is having some different inner page having a test to having some other page having the pages conflict. So like I said, we can't always guarantee which page Google is going to rank even if we have a really well optimized page, it might show the homepage, sometimes it will show both which is even which is great.

Meredith: 8:07

Great. So ideally, you want to be ranked for the

Meredith's Husband: 8:11

ideally you want to be you want the you want to have a page on your site, that is that is really well optimized for a keyword. Okay, let's take your site, for example. Okay, your your children's photography page is the page that's optimized for children's photography. Good. Your your homepage is more about just family photography, and in photography in general. But then your your children's page is really focused on the children's photography keyword. Now, sometimes if if somebody does a search in Google for children's photography, they're gonna see your homepage first. Right? Ultimately, Google is going to make that call. Do I show them? Let them do it? Yeah, do I show them? Do they show the page that's really well optimized, or just the homepage, and there's not much you can do on your end to to change that just kind

Meredith: 8:59

of make them both as good as possible? Yeah. But if the site is Google's home, gifts

Meredith's Husband: 9:05

website, if we tried to optimize your site, if we tried to optimize the homepage for children's photography, and also your children's page for the keyword children's photography, it would probably they would probably bring both rankings down in Google, you would start

Meredith: 9:20

kind of like being nominated for an Academy Award for two different films, you end up canceling yourself. That's excellent. Exactly. Right. Why, why did I even do any of it? Except for the money?

Meredith's Husband: 9:35

That's it? That's a very

Meredith: 9:37

nice experience in the art of it, but thank you. Yeah, see,

Meredith's Husband: 9:40

every time you start a sentence with, it's kind of like I'm like, Oh, no. Oh, Jesus. But

Meredith: 9:45

interestingly, that was great. pretty much always right. But initially, you're like, oh, no, what

Meredith's Husband: 9:54

are you talking about ice cream.

Meredith: 9:56

I love ice cream.

Meredith's Husband: 9:58

So this tends to happen on it happens most frequently with a couple different types of sites. Big sites like that one I was talking about, like, has they have a lot of content and so they're gonna have their they have the potential for competing against themselves with a lot of different pages. And then very small sites, kind of like yours, like independent people. Who don't you know, if you didn't have, you know, an SEO consultant working on your site like you do, can your husband that's then then I see this big because what people do is they say, Okay, this is my keyword, I just need to put this keyword on all of my pages. And that's like, that's a very bad thing to do. I see that. That's what I saw earlier this week. There is a kind of, there's a sweet spot. Like, over the years, I've had a lot of like, mid range clients that are kind of regional. And so are you still talking?

Meredith: 10:50

What? Nope, I could you me talking? Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 10:54

I do. The so clients that have like, you know, sweet spot, us Yeah, sweet spot. So they the so I had one company that was a regional company is a good example of this. They have maybe half a dozen different services, they have pages for those services. And then they have a blog. And the blog talks about very specific stuff. That type of company tends to not run into this issue. Right? What you want to avoid? This is the reason why when you write a blog, don't blog about children's photography, right? Don't blog about your main keywords, your blog should be about very specific questions and niches,

Meredith: 11:35

and it should be a Oh, what did you call it?

Meredith's Husband: 11:40

Your Blog should be a resource

Meredith: 11:43

resource. I knew it was really a resource.

Meredith's Husband: 11:48

Okay, so that's what we want to do. That's the issue. That's the it's a common issue. Okay. And here's what we want to avoid. And what we want to do is, is we want to have specific pages optimized for specific Yes, we do. The next two episodes, we're going to do two things. We're going to number one, the next episode, we're going to talk about how to choose your keywords.

Meredith: 12:12

Very good. Very good.

Meredith's Husband: 12:15

Because I guarantee you, you're probably not going to be correct in what you think your keywords are. Almost I can't I can't even tell you over the years. I can't even tell you how many people they come to me and they want to start projects and they're like, don't worry about keyword research. We already have them. That is never the case. They are never correct. So don't assume that you know your keywords, do you want to do at least a little bit? You want to do some level of keyword research. I'm going to show you how to do that. Okay. That we covered. That's what we're gonna cover in the next episode. Excellent. And then part three of this keywords. Part three is then what do you do with it? Where do you put it on your website? Oh,

Meredith: 12:53

that is very good. Pretty good way to very, very, very exciting season two.

Meredith's Husband: 12:59

So things to remember, do not assume that you know your keywords. Do not assume you know your keywords, don't assume, just don't assume that you know, you need to do a little bit of research. I'll tell you how to do it. Do listen to the next episode is very important. Talk to you then. Hope that helped. I hope that helped your website. I hope that helped your business. I hope that helped give you a little bit of confidence that SEO is not this convoluted, cryptic, crazy thing that nobody can understand. If you did like it and you found it helpful. Please share it with a couple of your colleagues. Tell them what you like or more importantly, tell me what you liked. Let me know interview leave a review on Apple. Tell me what parts you like and I'll try to do more of those parts. Again. Thanks for listening.