Can several informationpages compete with categorypages and hurt my ranking and cause keyword cannibalization?
I have a question regarding if several informationpages can hurt the ranking for more important pages like homepage and categorypages? Maybe causing keyword cannibalization?
I have a webshop. In my shop I have 2 main categories. Lets call them:
category-sofa
category-bed
There are also 3 subcategories:
category-sofa-small
category-sofa-medium
category-sofa-large
(they are actually not sofas or beds, just an example).
I also have 12 information-pages. 6 pages regarding sofas and 6 pages regarding beds. The information given in those information pages are useful for the customers.
They look something like this:
sofa-information-general
sofa-information-where to put your sofa
sofa-information-how to lie in in a sofa
sofa-information-how they are manufactured
sofa-information-how to take care of your sofa
sofa-information-guide to choose your sofa
Could it be that all these information-pages have a negative impact on the ranking for my homepage and my categorypages?
The information-pages contains many of the keywords like sofa/sofa-small/sofa-medium/sofa-large/beds etc. Can this lead to my homepage and categories gets less attention and drop in ranking because of keyword cannibalization?
I find it disturbing that for some search queries some of my information pages ranks better than my homepage and category pages. Because of this I feel that the information pages hurts my ranking for the "moneypages".
I won't skip all the information-pages as they are useful to my customers. Many visitors land on some of my information-pages as the first page they visit on my site. Some of them continue to my categorypages and make a purchase, but the majority just land on the informationpages, gets the information they need, and then leave the site.
Would it be better if I merge all my 6 sofa-informationpages on one single page? Would it be better in the aspect of avoid letting my information-pages compete with my homepage and categorypages?
If I merge the informationpages into one I'll have the 6 subjects shortly explained at the top with anchor links to the topic in question. Each topic separated with dividers. I think that won't look to messy even though it will be a long page.
The purpose of me merging these pages is to avoid having 6 informationpages for sofas and 6 informationpages for beds competing with the homepage and the categorypages. I also wants to minimize the risk of keyword cannibalization.
I don't mind if my informationpages loose ranking if I can get better ranking om categorypages. After all the purpose is to sell and not giving out information.
What's your opinion, is it a good idea to merge these pages or is there a better solution?