Keyword cannibalisation: when your own pages compete with each other
Cannibalisation is when several pages on a site serve the same user need and compete against each other in the results. The signals split, none pulls ahead, and the search engine picks a different one each time — often not the one you'd have chosen.
An important caveat: similar topics aren't a problem in themselves. The problem starts when the pages are interchangeable from the user's point of view.
How to find it
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Group queries by intent, not by word overlap. "Order a website" and "how much does a website cost" are different stages of the same decision.
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For each group, check in Search Console which URLs get impressions. If two or three pages alternate on one query, that's the signal.
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Compare what those pages are for. If both answers solve the same user task, that's cannibalisation rather than topical proximity.
Five ways to fix it
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Merge with a 301. If both pages are about the same thing and one is clearly stronger, move the unique content into it and redirect.
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Separate the intents. Rewrite the headings, structure and calls to action so the pages answer different stages of the decision — informational and commercial.
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Keep both. If the words overlap but the user tasks differ, there's nothing to fix.
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Canonical. Only for genuine technical duplicates that must stay reachable.
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Noindex. For utility pages with no search value — but not as a way to hide a bad site structure.
How to choose which page stays primary
On the balance of: relevance to the query, stability of rankings, inbound links, conversions. Not on the page's age, and not on which one you like more — neither criterion has anything to do with what the search engine sees.
How to stop creating it again
A simple register helps: page — primary intent — query cluster. Before creating a new page for a keyword variation, check whether that need is already covered by an existing one. More often than not the right move is to strengthen the page you have rather than add another.
It's worth revisiting the cluster map after launching new services and new language versions — that's exactly where cannibalisation appears unnoticed.
If the site keeps "jumping" between pages on important queries, we can go through the clusters and suggest what to merge and what to separate.