A lot of product pages with very similar content
-
I'm working with someone who's setting up an online jewelry store. The jewelry is available in many metal types, so we're creating filters to provide a good user experience in trying to narrow down their choice.
Let's take an example of a wedding ring that's available these options:
10kt yellow gold
10kt white gold
18kt yellow gold
18kt white gold
Palladium
PlatinumThese are all entered as separate products, so that they can be used in the filtering system. However, apart from some minor changes to the title and description most of the content will be identical, across these 6 product pages.
Also, many wedding ring styles are going to be very similar, so we're going to have very similar descriptions for a lot of the rings.
We're concerned about problems this might cause with the search engines in terms of duplicate content. There's 2 issues that I an see (there may be more!):
- They will not index many of the pages and we'll leak link juice to those pages that will never get indexed
- They do index all the variations, but the content is so similar, that we have different pages competing for essentially the same keywords
Also, these products are likely to come and go, so investing heavily on creating really unique content for them isn't really sustainable, affordable.
Any advise?
Thanks,
-
Thanks Ricko. That's is what we're thinking. Put it up and see what happens before blocking pages or anything like that.
There is an existing site there already. We're doing a redesign, using a new eCommerce platform. The site currently has a domain authority of 27, and all the category pages urls we'll be able to maintain, and they have page authority, which is good. So, it shouldn't take long for us to see what will happen with the new pages.
Thanks.
-
Ahh, I better understand your initial comment. Your concern makes complete sense.
I'd still go with the form technique and apply it to title tags as well (see EGOL's comment). It will help you better target longer tail which may be your best bet anyway (unless you're already a link powerhouse and can compete for the more general search phrases).
I wouldn't go an hide/canonical/disallow anything until i knew G was having a problem with it. But that's just me.
Is this site replacing an old one? What's that structure like and is anything working there?
-
Thanks for comprehensive reply, Ricko.
First, just to address what you mentioned about getting 2 listings: my concern was more about 2 of my pages competing for keywords, when actually 1 page with more page rank (rather than page rank being split over 2) would have a better chance of ranking. Do you know what I mean?
The form optimization solution sounds interesting, and this is stuff that we're planing to do, but manually. My concern is though: will this make the pages unique enough? It seems from what you said that it might just be?
On the last thing you mentioned about customer reviews: this is something that I've considered. The problem is the high number of products, and the relatively low level of sales volume (initially at least) making this a more long term solution.
Thanks,
Leigh
-
Nice reply... thumbsup!
-
Hey Leigh,
First off, I'd say that your #2 concern would be a great problem to have! I'd rather own 2 of the top listings than just 1!
In scenarios where product-level optimization is not feasible/efficient/etc, I'd try to get as many data points on each product as possible and do 'form optimization'. I see that your initial descriptions are going to be similar. You should enhance them a bit using product attribute info. It takes a bit of programming but worth it in the long run!
Do you have other product attributes which can be worked into each product page template?
Maybe stuff like:
- Size availability (2,3,4,etc.)
- Color/style options (white, gold, pink, etc.)
- Seasonal availability (winter, spring, year-round, etc.)
- Parent category names (wedding ring, anniversary necklace, etc.)
- Material (gold, sterling, etc)
- Fulfillment time [1 week, immediately, etc.)
- Weight
In this case, you can enhance your descriptions with that data. For example, your product page template would look like:
The [Insert Ring Name] is a [Insert material] [Insert parent category name] available in a variety of sizes including [insert size options, comma separated]. The [insert product name] is available [insert availability attribute] and usually ships [insert fulfillment time].
Would yield something like this on a specific product page:
The 14k yellow gold ring is a yellow gold wedding ring available in a variety of sizes including 1,2.3 and 4. The 14k yellow gold is available year round and usually ships in 1-week.
We're still seeing form optimization work pretty well as long as:
- The content is pretty useful and not just a bunch of keywords and attributes stuffed onto each page (aka, provide value, especially to the customer!)
- You have at least a few different data points for each product which can be utilized to hide the appearance of 'form optimization'
O yeah, not sure of your sales volume but push the h*ll out of getting customers to write reviews and make sure the reviews appear in a SE friendly way on the product pages themselves for added uniqueness.
See where I'm going with this? Hope this helps and good luck!
-
Thanks EGOL.
I agree. The problem is that each metal type needs to be a separate product in order for the filter system to work correctly. And the filtering is very important so that we can provide the best user experience possible.
-
When we have a group of products that have very similar descriptions we display all of them on one page. This allows easy customer comparisons and gives you a page with very substantive content. Also, sometimes google will say in the SERPs... "6+ items".
I believe that reducing the number of pages from six to one helps you run a more compact site that will compete better in the SERPs.
As for your title tag... you might be able to be creative and communicate that you have a nice selection of rings...
Milgrain Wedding Band: White/Yellow Gold, Palladium, Platinum
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Very wierd pages. 2900 403 errors in page crawl for a site that only has 140 pages.
Hi there, I just made a crawl of the website of one of my clients with the crawl tool from moz. I have 2900 403 errors and there is only 140 pages on the website. I will give an exemple of what the crawl error gives me. | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | http://www.mysite.com/en/www.mysite.com/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/en/index.html#?lang=en | | | | | | | | | | There are 2900 pages like this. I have tried visiting the pages and they work, but they are only html pages without CSS. Can you guys help me to see what the problems is. We have experienced huge drops in traffic since Septembre.
Technical SEO | | H.M.N.0 -
150+ Pages of URL Parameters - Mass Duplicate Content Issue?
Hi we run a large e-commerce site and while doing some checking through GWT we came across these URL parameters and are now wondering if we have a duplicate content issue. If so, we are wodnering what is the best way to fix them, is this a task with GWT or a Rel:Canonical task? Many of the urls are driven from the filters in our category pages and are coming up like this: page04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3F (See the image for more). Does anyone know if these links are duplicate content and if so how should we handle them? Richard I7SKvHS
Technical SEO | | Richard-Kitmondo0 -
Can Google show the hReview-Aggregate microformat in the SERPs on a product page if the reviews themselves are on a separate page?
Hi, We recently changed our eCommerce site structure a bit and separated our product reviews onto a a different page. There were a couple of reasons we did this : We used pagination on the product page which meant we got duplicate content warnings. We didn't want to show all the reviews on the product page because this was bad for UX (and diluted our keywords). We thought having a single page was better than paginated content, or at least safer for indexing. We found that Googlebot quite often got stuck in loops and we didn't want to bury the reviews way down in the site structure. We wanted to reduce our bounce rate a little, so having a different reviews page could help with this. In the process of doing this we tidied up our microformats a bit too. The product page used to have to three main microformats; hProduct hReview-Aggregate hReview The product page now only has hProduct and hReview-Aggregate (which is now nested inside the hProduct). This means the reviews page has hReview-Aggregate and hReviews for each review itself. We've taken care to make sure that we're specifying that it's a product review and the URL of that product. However, we've noticed over the past few weeks that Google has stopped feeding the reviews into the SERPs for product pages, and is instead only feeding them in for the reviews pages. Is there any way to separate the reviews out and get Google to use the Microformats for both pages? Would using microdata be a better way to implement this? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | OptiBacUK
James0 -
Why is the Page Authority of my product pages so low?
My domain authority is 35 (homepage Page Authority = 45) and my website has been up for years: www.rainchainsdirect.com Most random pages on my site (like this one) have a Page Authority of around 20. However, as a whole, the individual pages of my products rank exceptionally low. Like these: http://www.rainchainsdirect.com/products/copper-channel-link-rain-chain (Page Authority = 1) http://www.rainchainsdirect.com/collections/todays-deals/products/contempo-chain (Page Authority = 1) I was thinking that for whatever reason they have such low authority, that it may explain why these pages rank lower in google for specific searches using my exact product name (in other words, other sites that are piggybacking of my unique products are ranking higher for my product in a specific name search than the original product itself on my site) In any event, I'm trying to get some perspective on why these pages remain with the same non-existent Page Authority. Can anyone help to shed some light on why and what can be done about it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | csblev0 -
Pros and Cons of Rel Author on Product Pages
I've heard that having rel=author enabled on your pages can be great for increasing click through rate but you should not use it on every page on your site. What are the pros and cons of using rel=author on product pages? Do you use rel=author on your product pages or just on your blog articles?
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe1 -
See any issues with this tabbed content page?
When I view source, and view as Googlebot it's showing as 1 long page of content = good. However, the developer uses some redirects and dynamic page generation to pull this off. I didn't see any issues from a Search perspective but would appreciate a second opinion: Click here Thanks!
Technical SEO | | 540SEO0 -
Htm vs. aspx page extensions & duplicate content
We have a client whose site is fairly new. There isn't much in the way of SEO results so far. In their content management system they have implemented friendly URLs and changed the extensions from aspx to htm. Now the htm pages are all indexed in Google but when I run a campaign report in SEOmoz it shows that all pages are duplicated with there being both htm and aspx pages for each page. Should we do 301 redirects from the aspx pages to the htm pages? Or would we be safe by removing the htm pages and letting Google reindex the site with the aspx page extensions? Does Google have any kind of preference as to what the page extensions are as long as the URLs include keywords?
Technical SEO | | IvieDigital0 -
Page title vs page element
Hello! I'm new to SEO as my question would imply. Can someone show me the difference between a page title and a page element? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | atrenary1