Noob Question About Cannibalization

[Kriger]

I've recently read about content cannibalization and had a question ahead of writing my next batch of content.

Let's say I'm building my website around car parts and the next section on my list is the steering wheel. I want to write a guide to steering wheels which will be an info post and then build some commercial posts around it for terms like "best steering wheels", "best steering wheels for Range Rovers" etc - would there be a risk that the information post would be cannibalized but the "best steering wheels" post?

 

[Nargil]

Even if, ignore it.

Though your main piece of content, or "pillar" article in this case should be focusing on "best steering wheels" directly.

Then continue with the other stuff:

- Best steering wheels for teens
- Best steering wheels for cats
- Best steering wheels for covid
- Best steering wheels for Dalajlama
- Best steering wheels for Fiat Uno

And properly interlink everything.

Might some of your articles cannibalize each other? Yes.
Should you care? No.
Why? Because one of your pages will be ranking for that particular keyword anyway.
Would it be too time and energy consuming to avoid this? Yes.
Would there be any benefit out of it? No.

 

[Ryuzaki]

All you really need to worry about is not optimizing more than one post around the same term. If you have a short-tail and then a long-tail, like you guys are talking about, it does get a little wonky, but I agree with @Nargil's advice, which is to ignore it. Google can sort it out most of the time. The only time it gets weird is if the long-tail page becomes more authoritative than the short-tail page, which shouldn't happen unless you get obsessed about a long-tail ranking.