Where they started
A pet-supplies store with a healthy backlink profile and a frustrating plateau: traffic had been flat for a year despite steady link building. The tell was in the rank tracker. For their biggest head term, the URL Google chose to rank changed 14 times in 90 days: one week a category page, the next a tag archive, then an old “best of” blog roundup from 2022. Nine near-duplicate pages targeted that same term, and Google rotated between them instead of committing to any. No single URL ever held position long enough to earn CTR, links, or trust.
What we did
- Mapped the cannibalization across the whole site. One keyword-to-URL sheet exposed 40+ head terms with two or more pages fighting for each. Made the invisible problem visible.
- Picked one canonical target per keyword and 301’d the losers into it. The strongest signals (links, age, conversions) merged onto a single URL instead of splitting across nine.
- Repointed internal links so every mention of a term linked to its one canonical page, with no more contradicting Google’s read of which URL was primary.
- Kept building links at the same pace, now aimed only at the surviving pages. 30 links over the span, all reinforcing consolidated targets rather than diluting across duplicates.
The first three months stayed choppy. 301s take time to settle and the rotation didn’t stop overnight. Once the head term locked into position 4 in month three, the rest followed fast. The DR barely moved; this was never a link problem. It was nine pages doing the work of one, badly.