About the Author
Corey is the owner and President/CEO of Voltage. He has spent 18 years working in strategic and leadership roles focused on growing national and local client brands with award-winning, ROI-generating digital strategies. He's a recent recipient of the KCDMA 2019 Marketer of the Year award.
This might seem like an odd topic or one that is hyper-specific and maybe not relevant to you. I want to take a moment and at least ask you to hear me out and consider it as it can be a hidden reason for wasted ad dollars and/or SEO efforts (which is also an investment).
Keyword cannibalization can take on a few forms. It can include bidding (and paying, per click) for an ad spot on a search results page where your free organic result is prominently ranked right below that ad. It can also be related to overlapping related terms within paid search or within organic search and not having the right level of control and oversight to make sure that you’re not wasting efforts, wasting dollars, or losing out on opportunities to engage your target audience.
I’m specifically focused here on cannibalization between paid and organic channels. Both are focused on the search results page and the same target audience who is coming there. For terms where you’re an authority and you’re the relevant subject matter expert–you want to get the click. That’s important. However, could you still have the click and save money that you could reinvest on other terms? Or, for other content you might want to create?
I got into this topic and unpacked this not often thought about, but important hidden issue recently.
Check out my full article on avoiding keyword cannibalization between your paid and organic search campaigns on Search Engine Journal.