Lesson 4 of 4
Content Cannibalization and the Year-in-URL Trap
Content cannibalization happens when two or more pages on the same site target the same topic and compete with each other for the same search rankings, instead of one strong page winning clearly. A very common, very avoidable cause is publishing a fresh page every year for the same evergreen topic - "Best Running Shoes 2025" followed by "Best Running Shoes 2026" - while the old page stays live and indexed.
When this happens, Google sees two pages trying to rank for the same query and has to choose between them, or worse, splits ranking signals and between both, weakening each one. Neither page ends up as strong as a single, consistently updated page would have been. The old page often keeps ranking too, sending users to outdated information, which damages trust and signals.
The fix is simple and high-levee: use one evergreen URL per topic, without the year baked into the address (for example /best-running-shoes/ rather than /best-running-shoes-2026/). Update the content in place each year, change the visible "Last updated" date on the page, and update the dateModified field in your . If old year-specific URLs already exist from a previous mistake, 301 redirect them to the current page so the authority they built up transfers over instead of being wasted.
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