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What does keyword cannibalization mean for news publishers on the Google SERPs

Once you have articles ranking in the desktop and mobile Google News Boxes – what’s next? One of the biggest challenges news publishers face is making sure they are not pushing one article already ranking in a News Box for a certain keyword out with the next article – otherwise known as keyword cannibalization.

The News Dashboard has a special feature that helps you avoid keyword cannibalization in Google. Below is an example of how it works.

How to avoid keyword cannibalization

In the Action View, when you have more than one article that is indexed (or connected) by Google to a keyword and at least one of those articles is ranking, a green bar in the “Keyword” column will alert you to the situation.

News Dashboard Action View

The News Dashboard’s Action View, showing articles published and republished in the last 24 hours, and the keywords that the articles are connected, or indexed, to by Google.

Why is it important to know if you have both articles that are ranking and aren’t ranking for the same keyword?

Using the above example of “california,” if an editor only saw the article “Pence arrives in California to tour border barrier while, miles away, migrants seek asylum” in the Action View, he or she might assume that is the only one of their articles ranking for that keyword. And if the article was to lose its desktop News Box ranking, the editor might take steps to update or optimize that article to get it back into the News Boxes.

Normally, this response can only help your SEO strategy and referrals. But in this case, there is another article – “The migrant caravan arrives at California’s doorstep, amid protests, cheers and questions” – ranking in the desktop and mobile News Boxes. You can click on the green bar to open a view showing only the article or articles that are ranking in the News Box.

News Dashboard Action View anti-keyword cannibalization screen

Clicking on the green bar in the Action View “Keyword” column brings you to a new screen that shows the other articles that are currently ranking for that keyword.

So, by working on the first article, the editor might push out the above article from the Desktop News Box. This would lead to a waste of resources to get the same ranking and visibility the publisher already had.

See if articles are ranking for more than one keyword on Google SERPs

You can also use this feature to look at the reverse: if an article ranks for more than one keyword.

In the Action View, if the green bar appears in the "Ranking in NB" column, it means that in addition to being indexed or ranking for this keyword, the article in this rows ranks for at least one other keyword.

In the Action View, if the green bar appears in the “Ranking in NB” column, it means that in addition to being indexed or ranking for this keyword, the article in this rows ranks for at least one other keyword.

Using another example, the article “We need to know if there is life on Mars before we send humans there” is indexed to the keyword “research,” but not ranking for that keyword. However, if we click on the green bar in the “Ranking in News Box” column for this keyword-article combination, we see the same article is ranking for the keywords “mars”.

We can see the other keyword or keywords an article is ranking for using the Action View.

We can see the other keyword or keywords an article is ranking for, using the Action View.

Now, the editor can decide what keyword he or she would want the article to rank for more, and tailor the optimization efforts to the correct keyword.

In either case, you can use the green “Back to previous view” button to go back to the original view, so you don’t lose what you were working on.

Remember that the News Dashboard is crawling for individual keywords every 15 minutes, and the automated keyword set is based on keywords from Google News.

If you would like to learn more about how the News Dashboard can help your newsroom or start a demo, reach out, and follow us on TwitterFacebook and LinkedIn.

Read more

See who’s in Google News Boxes for your top keywords using the News Dashboard Action View, keyword clusters

U.S. search index: Were you one of the most visible Google News publishers December-February?

Do you need to be indexed in Google News to appear in the News Boxes?

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