Keyword Cannibalization for Automotive Ecommerce site

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  • SEO
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Hello everyone I am hoping someone can help me out. I am new to SEO and I am having a hard time with keyword cannibalization. We manufacture automotive products and many times a product will fit multiple vehicles as well as multiple years. I am having a tough time figuring out a focus keyphrase as too little of a keyphrase will flag me for keyword cannibalization and too specific of a keyphrase it says I have too many words. I am using wordpress with yeost support and here is some examples.

We manufacture an engine mount for Mercedes vehicles that fits multiple models, multiple years, and multiple generations of the same car. On our website the product page will be based off of the model and generation of vehicle. Here is an example-

- 07-09 Mercedes E550 (W211 generation)
- 10-11 Mercedes E550 (W212 generation)
- 07-1 Mercedes S550

Each one of those would have its own engine mount product page as we can keep track of what vehicles are selling the best. With that said, how should I go about keyphrases for each of these?

- "engine mount" for each one of these would lead to keyword cannibalization.
- "mercedes E550 engine mount" will also be keyword cannibalization as I will have 2 or more pages with that same keyphrase.
- "07-09 Mercedes E550 engine mount" makes the most sense however nobody is searching for their year range in the search bar but rather their specific year of car.
- "2007 2008 2009 Mercedes E550 engine mount" would work however Yeost is telling me that I have too many keywords.

Thank you for anyone that has any insight to this. I have found that Amazon and Ebay like to have one page dedicated to all years, makes, and models but that would not allow us to keep track of what vehicles we should best target.
#automotive #cannibalization #ecommerce #keyword #site
  • Profile picture of the author savidge4
    Lets start with what I call the "Golden Rule to SEO", Top to bottom, and left to right. Titles, pages. links you name it are ranked in value based apon the Golden rule.

    Titles are rank left to right, so the text to the left is ( or should be ) more important than the text on the right. Looking at your examples...

    "2007 2008 2009 Mercedes E550 engine mount"

    #1 I would flip this around to "Mercedes E550 engine mount 2007 2008 2009" The reason for this is understanding the term "Mercedes" and then the term "E550" are more important than say the year ( 2007 ) And a good way to kind of figure this out is think about how many people may search "Mercedes" vs "E550" vs "2007". and when I say how many people think of searching those terms individually, just searching "Mercedes" or just searching "2007" - No one searches "2007" but a kick ton of people search "Mercedes" right?

    In this instance I would IGNORE Yoast - but see what happens when you flip the dates from the front of the title string to the back end.

    I think of Yoast as good for certain details within SEO like word count and Conical settings index no-index, and follow no-follow - those kinds of things - the rest at best are "Suggestions"

    As a side note... You might want to look at the SearchWP plugin. You can add "Make, Model, and Year search to your site. BIG fan of this plugin - been using it for years.

    And back to your post. "Keyword Cannibalization" is in my opinion one of the dumbest things to come out in the SEO world in recent years. By definition ( i guess ) it is when Search Intent is crossed with Searched Content - with the result being a pages being listed in the Serp, but the "preferred" page, listing below other pages.

    I personally teach and preach writing multiple pages of content for a single keyword... stuffing a keyword Serp with your sites pages is "Keyword Capitalization" which is a far cry from the idea of "Keyword Cannibalization".

    If you do a search for "Mercedes E550 engine mount 2007" ( at least when I search it ) I find the top results being for eBay. The Primary result ( 1st listing and kick all the way to the left ) is technically a listing of "Mercedes E550 engine mount(s)" regardless of year. The result right below is again an eBay listing that is kicked towards the right and specifically for the 2007 Mercedes E550 engine mount.

    The listing right below eBays happens to be advanced auto ( when I do the search - which might be biased because I search on eBay often, and look at Avanced Auto often ). The advanced Auto page is exactly the same as the eBay listing with 2 results, a Primary and secondary result.

    Something to consider... In an ideal SEO Development world you want a series of pages. A Make Page, that displays all of the models you have parts for;

    Mecedes Page:
    • A
    • C
    • E
    • G
    • S

    A Model page;

    Mecedes E
    • E350
    • E350 4Matic
    • E450 4Matic

    A model specific page
    • E550

    and Part page ( by model )

    E550 Parts
    • Engine Mounts
    • Brakes
    • Windshield Wipers

    Part specific general page

    Mercedes E550 engine mounts
    • 2007
    • 2008
    • 2009

    and lastly a part specific page

    2007 Mercedes E550 engine mount

    Looks like a lot of work, and indeed it is... but again look at what advanced Auto is doing in search results and this is the exact structure they follow.

    Hope that Helps!
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