Merge posts that compete with each other

Sometimes two or more of your posts answer the same search. Google then has to choose between them, and often shows each one some of the time, so neither ranks as well as one strong post would. SEO people call this cannibalisation: your pages competing with each other. The fix is usually to merge them: fold the useful parts of the weaker posts into the strongest one, and send visitors from the old addresses to it.

A merge costs 3 credits, charged only when the proposal is ready. Applying it is free.

How Blog AI spots competing posts

From your Search Console data, Blog AI looks for searches where two or more of your pages each get at least 10% of the times shown, and both rank in the top 30. Those appear:

• on the Actions page as Your pages competing with each other
• in the content audit, as the finding Competing with another of your posts, with the action Merge with the stronger post when a merge is the best move

Blog AI keeps the post that Google shows most for that search (and, if that's a tie, the better-ranked one). That page has the most to lose, so it stays, and the others are merged into it.

Merge posts

1. Start the merge. Click Refresh on the Actions page card for the competing pages, or Merge with in the content audit. The audit asks you to confirm first, and shows which posts are involved.
2. Wait a few minutes. Blog AI reads all the posts, researches the topic, and writes a proposal for the kept post that includes the best of the others. You can leave the page.
3. Review the proposal. The review page is titled Merge posts and lists what it Merges in. Like a refresh, it shows each section of the kept post as kept, updated, expanded or new, with the reason and the changed words highlighted.
4. Choose your sections. Untick anything you don't want. A section with a fact-check flag can't be applied as written; untick it and apply the rest.
5. Choose how to handle redirects (see below).
6. Apply. Click Apply selected & update live post (or Accept all & update live post). The kept post is updated on your site; its web address doesn't change.

Redirects: sending old visitors to the kept post

After a merge, the old posts still exist on your site. Blog AI never deletes or unpublishes them for you. That decision stays yours. What you'll usually want is a 301 redirect from each old post's address to the kept post: a permanent forward that sends visitors, and Google, to the right place, and passes on most of the old post's ranking.

• WordPress with the Redirection plugin: tick Send visitors of the merged posts to this one automatically (301 redirects) before you apply. Blog AI creates the redirects through the plugin. This needs at least one merged section to be accepted.
• Everything else: after applying, you'll get the exact redirects to add: from each old address to the kept post's address. Add them in your SEO plugin, your host's redirect settings or your website's code.

Then, once the redirects work, you can unpublish or delete the old posts on your site if you like. Each merged post gets a note on its performance chart, so you can see what happened to its traffic.

Before you merge

• Check the posts really answer the same question. Two posts can share a search but serve different readers (for example, a beginner's guide and an advanced one). If so, don't merge. Make each post clearer about who it's for instead, and dismiss the card.
• Look at the numbers. The card and the audit show how often each page is shown and where it ranks. If the weaker post gets real traffic from other searches, a redirect passes most of it on, but check its top searches first.
• Merges work on posts published through Blog AI's connection. If a post can't be rewritten safely (it has embeds, forms, custom HTML, shortcodes, galleries or tables), Blog AI tells you.

What changes and what doesn't

Common questions

Can I choose which post to keep?

Blog AI keeps the post Google shows most for the search. If you'd rather keep a different one, dismiss the card and merge by hand: copy what you want into your chosen post, update it with Update live post, and redirect the other.

Can I merge more than two posts?

Yes, up to a few at a time, when Google shows several of your posts for the same search.

What if I apply the merge but don't redirect?

The kept post is improved either way. But until you redirect or remove the old posts, they keep competing for the same search, so the merge only does half its job.