Internal competition? Here's how to spot it early

What is internal competition?

With internal competition, 2 or more URLs from the same website compete for a position in the organic search results for a particular keyword. This conflict arises when it is unclear to Google which page within the domain is the best match for the search query.  

What causes internal competition?

In an ideal situation, a website has a clearly defined page for each relevant search intent that covers that subject. In that case, all keywords associated with that search intent rank on that page, and the better the page is optimised, the higher the positions will be.

In reality, it is often slightly more nuanced. Relevant subjects are not so easy to distinguish and overlap with one another to a greater or lesser extent. In other cases, the website may not yet have a good page optimised for a specific relevant topic. Or perhaps Google (for example, following a new algorithm update) simply no longer understands that some keywords are actually synonyms of one another, or the search engine considers non-synonymous words to overlap.

Whatever the reason, it happens often enough that Google displays not one but multiple URLs from the same domain for a particular keyword, alternately or simultaneously. If different pages compete with one another and a different URL from the website ranks each time, we refer to this as internal competition. This can occur on any website, no matter how successful you are.

The danger of keyword cannibalisation

Why is internal competition such a problem? You rank for your relevant keyword, after all, don’t you? That is true, but essentially, keyword cannibalisation means that Google does not properly understand your website or that your website is not sufficiently optimised for the topics relevant to you. This comes at the expense of your performance, and the impact on your traffic and conversions can be substantial.

From problems to opportunities

If you already have a suitable page for the topic, Google displays other pages intermittently during internal competition that do not align well with the search intent. Perhaps one of your blogs ranks instead of the desired commercial page, causing you to miss out on a great deal of relevant traffic and potential conversions. This probably means that you need to optimise your desired page more effectively, or that a technical issue is occurring in the background and needs to be addressed.

Moreover, Google favours websites where only one page clearly matches the search query, which translates into lower average positions in cases of keyword cannibalisation. When internal competition is resolved, we often see this immediately reflected in the positions shooting upwards.

Can you identify the bottlenecks in time?

One way or another, you want to resolve internal competition. Before you can do that, the problem must first be identified, preferably as early as possible. The conflict often begins insidiously and you only notice it when it is actually too late: when your traffic has already started to decline.

Without the right tooling, it can be difficult to identify keyword cannibalisation in time. The most convenient way to detect this problem is to consult historical search ranking data, either as raw data or displayed in a graph. This allows you to check whether multiple URLs have been displayed for the same keyword in the recent period, and investigate whether this concerns sitelinks (positive) or a conflict (negative).

Need help spotting internal competition within your domain? Ask Aspen Digital for a no-obligation internal competition analysis . We have been building our own database with 2013 of daily historical ranking data since, from more than 25 billion SERPs across every industry. This collection of big data is perfectly suited to mapping internal competition at an early stage, enabling us to provide you with all areas for improvement straight away.