Location page cannibalisation: stop your branches competing

You stop your branches competing by making each location page clearly own its own location term and nothing else's, then using internal links to reinforce which page belongs to which area. When two of your pages chase the same keyword, Google cannot decide between them and tends to rank both weakly - that is cannibalisation, and it is one of the most common things holding multi-location sites back.

It is a frustrating problem because it is self-inflicted. You are not losing to a competitor; you are losing to yourself. Two of your own pages are splitting the vote.

What location page cannibalisation actually is

Google generally wants to show one best page from your site for a given search. When it finds two pages that look equally relevant to "physio Newmarket", it has to guess which one you meant to be the answer. Sometimes it picks the wrong one. Sometimes it alternates. Often it ranks both a few places lower than a single strong page would have ranked. Your effort is divided instead of combined.

This ties directly into how Google chooses which page to rank - it reads the page's content, its title, and the links pointing at it to work out what each page is for. Cannibalisation is really just those signals being ambiguous across two pages. The cure is to make the signals unambiguous.

When your branches compete, you are not losing to a rival. You are losing to yourself - two of your own pages splitting a vote that should have gone to one.

How to spot two branch pages competing for one term

Before you fix it, confirm it is happening. A few reliable checks:

• In Google Search Console, look at a location query and see if several of your URLs show impressions for it - that means multiple pages are being considered for the same term.
• Search your own location terms and watch whether the ranking URL keeps changing between pages over days - flip-flopping is a classic sign.
• Compare your location pages side by side: if two of them target the same broad phrase in their titles and headings, they are set up to collide.

The fix: one page, one location term

The core fix is to give each page a distinct target and hold the line on it. The Newmarket page owns "Newmarket", the Takapuna page owns "Takapuna", and neither reaches for a broad, location-less term like "physio Auckland" that they will both fight over.

In practice that means each page's title tag, main heading, and body clearly and consistently name its own suburb and no other. If your Takapuna page mentions Newmarket three times, you have blurred it. Keep each page disciplined about its own patch, and make the pages genuinely different - which comes back to filling each one with real, site-specific content rather than duplicating it.

Use internal links to break the tie

Internal links are your strongest tool for telling Google which page is which. The anchor text (the clickable words) and the way pages connect all send signals about what each page is for.

• Link to each location page with anchor text that names its location - "our Takapuna clinic", not "our clinic".
• Have every location page link up to its city or region hub, and the hub link back down to each specific location.
• Where two nearby branches genuinely serve different areas, link between them so it is clear they are distinct, not duplicates.

Consistent, location-named linking is what resolves the ambiguity. It tells Google, over and over, that this page is the Takapuna one - so when someone searches for Takapuna, there is no contest left to lose.

Adding pages is how cannibalisation creeps in

Cannibalisation often creeps in as businesses add pages - a new branch, a new suburb page, an extra service page that overlaps an old one. It is worth remembering that more pages can mean worse rankings when the new ones overlap the old ones. Every time you add a page, ask what unique term it owns. If you cannot answer that cleanly, you are probably about to create a new competitor for one of your own pages - and you will be back here fixing it.

Sort out the overlaps, give each page its own patch, and back it with consistent internal links. Do that and your branches stop fighting each other and start pulling in the same direction - each one winning its own town.

Cannibalisation is the first thing to fix on a multi-location site, and everything else is worth more once it is sorted. The rest of the sequence is in the full multi-location local SEO guide.