Merged 18 thin categories into 6. Rankings up across all 6.

Merged 18 thin categories into 6. Rankings up across all 6.

Store had 24 categories, 18 of them with under 5 products. Each was a thin, near-empty page competing for overlapping terms — classic cannibalization through structure.

What I did:
— Merged the 18 thin ones into 6 logical parents
— 301'd the dead category URLs to their new parent
— Beefed up the 6 survivors with intro copy + the combined product sets

10 weeks: the 6 merged categories averaged +12 positions. No more self-competition — Google had one clear page per intent instead of four weak ones.

Map your 301s by search intent, not by what's alphabetically close. Send each dead category to the page that actually matches its keyword.