Product Has Many Fitments - Is it ok to create a page for each fitment?
-
Hello
We are working on a site that sells motorcycle parts. The site sells some parts that fit several different motorbikes e.g. a motorcycle cover that fits many bikes. We know that when a customer searches they usually search for "BIKE MAKE & MODEL Cover" e.g. "Yamaha R1 Cover".
It would be silly to simply list every bike the cover fits in one advert as the list would be far too long so my question is would it be acceptable to create a separate product page for each fitment e.g. "Yamaha R1 Cover", "Yamaha R6 Cover", "Kawasaki ZX9 Cover".
I realize it is duplicate content and yes I suppose it will affect Google search results so would we be in line for a penalty? There could be hundreds of pages. We do not want the site to be removed from the index but we do feel that this is a sensible way of doing it as it would help the sites customers no end.
Thanks
-
Specific to your industry or similar industry no. But as you suggest - in principle across ecommerce, yes.
If your title tags and product descriptions are not unique enough, you will get flagged for duplicate content in Webmaster tools. If you've got a bunch of products with a couple of words or product numbers or colors that make up the difference, you'll most likely get dinged - we have.
Will you get a site wide penalty drop in rank, product drop in rank or failure to improve rankings probably depends on how widespread your duplicate content is.
You'll want to use rel canonical tags on all your pages. There are other advanced steps to take in terms of identifying product landing pages, % exit pages and sales. Index the producers and no-index others etc.
I would also look at top ranking competitors and glean what you can from their structural delivery. If they're page 1, they're doing something right.
I'd also do a keyword search of this site for duplicate content and you may find other suggestions more specific to your products and industry. Good luck.
-
Thanks for the responses. Listing for each make/model does increase sales and traffic. How likely do you think it is that this strategy would result in a penalty?
It seems logical that this is in the customers best interest since most people will search for "BIKE MAKE MODEL Motorcycle Cover" as opposed to just e.g. "Medium size motorcycle cover". I guess this must be the same for many product ranges e.g. laptop chargers which fit different models.
Has anyone tried these tactics and been penalized?
-
Thanks - I have my moments :). Winnowing the field is the hard part. You've got to lay it all out there in a well-structured way that won't get you banged for duplicate content.
Then you've got to give it time for the products to percolate to the top.
If you've got a site with some authority I suppose the process will move more quickly, but if you're a start-up or a few years into it, you need the money now so you hang on to as much low hanging fruit as you can.
Its challenging.
-
You said it much better than I did.
-
Like most retail there are gonna be about 20-30% of your products doing 80% of your business. Attack those.
-
First thing to find out is if there is sufficient traffic to any of the individual searches (Yamaha R1 Cover). I'm going to assume that some motorcycles are more popular than others. If that's the case, then I would start with the most popular motorcycle, and start creating landing pages specifically about that. Maybe do this for the top 10 types that are purchased.
Make sure the content on these 10 pages is pretty convincing on why they should buy from you, but also make sure they are optimized for search. Then it's the simple part:
- Get ranked
- Get traffic
- Study analytics
If they lead to sales, keep going with other pages! If not, then forget about it. It's easy for one of us to tell you what to do, but the reality of the situation is that you could possibly benefit from this additional traffic, or it could just be a learning experience.
-
Hi Simon,
When faced with stuff like this, I try to vary the keyword research as best I can and start with broad match and narrow it down from there.
You used a conversational keyword in your question: "motorcycle cover" albeit a short tail. Would creating and optimizing a page for motorcycle covers be an option and then in the drop down put the different bikes they would fit?
Edit: Yamaha Motorcycle Covers exact match looks pretty good. Maybe parse it that way.
Its ironic you say, "I know say its silly to list all the bikes the cover fits", because your alternative is to create a whole page for every other option and as you suggest, there is inherent risk in that.
I'd try to identify the best option for generating traffic that will convert and minimize your exposure to duplicate content.
Ultimately, you'll probably find your solution will be a combination of doing things both ways depending on the product and traffic patterns.
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
-
Product Page Links
I have a product category page at https://www.hurtlegear.com.au/s1000rr/ which currently has 38 products on it. Problem is, all the product titles start with the name of the text: "bmw s1000rr" (because that's what they are) - so that means there are 38 anchored internal links on that page, all starting with the same keyword. You can see how that might look to the Google crawler. Recently that page dropped from around 15 to outside the top 100, and Moz tells me that the page is keyword stuffed with "bmw s1000rr" (no suprise) so I'm guessing that may be the reason the page has disappeared out of the SERPs. I don't really want to change all the product titles (then they wouldn't make sense) so I'm just wondering if there is any way around this? Is there some way of telling Google that this is a product category page and therefore to ignore the anchor text in all of those product links? Can/should the links have some kind of markup on them? Or is the page beyond help? Basically I'm looking at a way of keeping the product titles as they are, but avoiding a page penalty from Google somehow. I'm a bit of a newbie, any suggestions would be most appreciated. Cheers, Graeme
On-Page Optimization | | graeme720 -
How many keywords for home page?
I am a close up magician based in the UK and have just signed up for Moz Analytics and looking through the info now. The first issue was that it says my home page had an F grade for "table magician" My home page is not really optimised for table magician but Moz is suggesting I do. So my question is do I go with Moz and adjust my home page to match even though I have a dedicated page for table magician. Is this title tag for the home page too much. Roger Lapin: Wedding Magician - Close up Magician - Table Magician ?? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | rnperki
Roger
http://www.rogerlapin.co.uk0 -
Does having more products in a category than others help with ranking that page with a particular keyword like iphone cases. We have thousands of products and wondered if it would hellp these all being on the website.
does having more products in a category than other websites help with ranking that page with a particular keyword like iphone cases. We have thousands of products and wondered if it would help these all being on the website.
On-Page Optimization | | Casefun0 -
Removing OLD pages
Dear all, I was removing tons of old pages from my directory (about 400 pages), I was setingup a 404 custom page, all is fine, so when I go to an existing page I get a 404 and redirected to my 404 page. The problem is Google Webmaster tools list all these pages as 404, and never clean my list (1 year til now), so I assume something is wrong. Question what is the best way or natural to remove old pages from one directory? Note: previously I tryed add on these pages the NOINDEX/NOFOLLOW meta tag and I got from google Soft-404. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | SharewarePros0 -
Break-up content into individual pages or keep on one page
I am working on a dental website. Under menu item "services" lists everything he does like.. Athletic Sports Guards
On-Page Optimization | | Czubmeister
An athletic sports guard is a resilient plastic appliance that is worn to protect the teeth and gum tissues by absorbing the forces generated by traumatic blows during sports or other activities. Digital X-Rays We use state of the art digital x-rays and digital cameras to help with an accurate diagnosis of any concerns. Digital Imaging On initial visits, and recall visits, we take a series of digital photographs to aid us in diagnosis as well as to give you a close-up view of your mouth and any oral conditions. Smile Makeovers
We offer a number of different options including bleaching, bonding, porcelain veeners, and in some cases, implants and/or orthodontic care is utilized in our smile makeover planning. Nitrous oxide for your Comfort Would it be better to break these services up into individual pages? I was thinking I would because then I could add more pictures and expand on the topic and try to get an "A" grade on each page. I'm not sure how I could rank a page if I have 35 services listed on the page. That would be an awfully big H1! Suggestions?0 -
How could I avoid the "Duplicate Page Content" issue on the search result pages of a webshop site?
My webshop site was just crawled by Roger, and it found 683 "Duplicate Page Content" issues. Most of them are result pages of different product searches, that are not really identical, but very similar to each other. Do I have to worry about this? If yes, how could I make the search result pages different? IS there any solution for this? Thanks: Zoltan
On-Page Optimization | | csajbokz0 -
Too many on page links
Our home page (and 1400 of our other pages) have well over 100 links, going beyond the recommend amount. Our competitors have less on page links (to other pages on their site) and way more link popularity so we are trying to figure out the best solution for this without hurting our sites conversions and usbaility.
On-Page Optimization | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5