Canonical tag: how to deal with product variations in the music industry?
-
Hello here.
I own a music publishing company:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/
And we have several similar items which only difference is the instrument they have been written for.
For example, look at the two item pages below:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/Canon2Vl.html
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/Canon2Vla.html
They are the exact same piece of music, but written in a different way to target 2 different instrumental combinations. If it wasn't for the user reviews that can make those two similar pages different, Google could see that as duplicate content. Am I correct? And if so, how do you suggest to tackle such a possible problem? Via canonical tags? How?
To have a better idea of the magnitude of the problem, have a look at these search results on our site which give you product variations of basically the same piece of music, the only difference is in the targeted instruments:
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Canon+in+D
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Meditation
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Flight
And, similarly, we have collections of pieces targeting different instruments:
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Wedding+Collection
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Christmas+Collection
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Halloween+Collection
Any thoughts and suggestions to tackle this potential page duplication issue are very welcome!
Thank you to anyone in advance.
-
Thank you, I think you clarified the problem very well.
Appreciated your help!
-
If you combine these topics you will have a loss of relevance for each of them individually..
The only way to avoid the loss is to write substantive and unique content for each keyword variant.
There is no way to get out of this work unless you give up and allow your site to suffer from the thin content and duplicate content.
-
Any ideas about what I just asked?
Thanks.
-
Well, what I am trying to understand is if consolidating 2 or more pages into a "main" page via canonical (in my case would be possibly 2 to hundreds of similar pages sharing the same piece of music for different instruments) will keep the same potential as having single indexed pages from a user search stand point.
I hope my question/concern makes sense... thanks!
-
This is not a simple question.
Keyword research, knowledge of how YOUR visitors search, and information about the content potential of your site should all be considered to arrive at an optimal decision.
Since I don't know much about your website, traffic, visitors and keywords I should not give poorly-considered advice.
-
Good point Danrawk, I am currently in a "thin content and duplicate content cleaning-up" phase of my website due to Panda issues, and I am getting rid (via noindex meta-tag) of thousands of very similar and thin content pages that may have hurt me (gradually, Google takes time to noindex pages), and I plan to keep just the best products and special items inside the index, but even by doing so I will end up having still similar pages due to the above "variations" issue, which in the long run could still give me trouble.
-
Yes, I think the best way to move for me, in the long term, will be to add unique contents to each page, but in the short term the Canonical tag could help to consolidate similar page.
I have an additional question though about using canonicals for this kind of music pieces:
If I have 3 versions of a piece named "Wedding Collection" like this:
1. Wedding Collection for violin and piano
2. Wedding Collection for cello and piano
3. Wedding Collection for guitar
And I consolidate all three pages with a canonical pointing to a main "Wedding Collection" page that lists those 3 different versions, what happens if someone search for "wedding collection for violin and piano"? Will I be able to rank for those specific keywords? And if so, what page will show-up in the index? Here is how the use of the canonical can become confusing to me... thanks for any further help!
-
Only thing i would be to add is to review your google webmaster account and seomoz spidering results to see if any of this is already showing up as duplicate. that way, you know for sure that you have a problem "right now". You're ahead of the game though in recognizing that the thin-ness of your product pages will cause an issue.
-
There are a few ways to solve this problem when you are offering very similar products.
-
Spend what it takes to write unique and substantive content for each product variant. I use this for my most important products, often writing over 1000 words and adding several photos and sometimes a video.
-
Combine similar products and offer them all on the same page. I do a lot of this with color, size, material variations.
-
Publish pages similar to what you currently have and risk a duplicate content problem. (this is called "take your chances with Panda)
-
Noindex similar pages or use rel=canonical to assign the duplicates to a single URL. I have a site with lots of pdf documents. All similar documents are offered via an image and a download button on the same page. The pdf documents are blocked from indexing and assigned to a single .html page using rel=canonical via htaccess. (I had a Panda problem on this site because of the many pdfs and their host pages. Rankings went down across the domain. After I noindexed pdfs and assigned each pdf to an html page with rel=canonical via htaccess my rankings came back in a few weeks)
-
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
-
Is it possible that Google would disregard canonical tag?
Hi all, I was wondering if it is possible for Google to diregard the canonical tag, if for example they decide it is wrongly put based on behavioural data. On the Natviscript Blog's individual blog posts there is a canonical tag for the www.nativescript.org/blog/details (printscreen - http://prntscr.com/e8kz5k). In my opinion it should not be there, and I've put request to our Engineering team for removal some time ago. Interestingly, all blog posts are indexed and got decent amount of organic traffic despite the tag. What do you think? Could it be that Google would disregard the tag based on usage data from let's say GA? Thanks, Lily
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
How to handle brand description on product pages?
Hi Mozzers, Hope you're doing good. I have a content placement related question. Assume, I have 1000 products of brand A, 1000 of brand B, and so on. Now, if I want to put brand specific 200-words description on each of these product pages. I'm creating duplicate content across the site by putting absolutely same brand description on these product pages i.e brand A description on first 1000 pages, brand B description on next 1000 products and so on. Looking for an expert advice around placement of content here i.e how can I add brand description on product pages and avoid duplicate content penalty? Any help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _nitman0 -
Product Schema & Google Guidelines
Hi We have product mark up on our site, data-vocab rather than schema. I can't see it showing in Google SERPs, but when testing it appears to be correct. Are Google still selective with what schema they show for a site? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Tagged URL ranking organically
I've noticed that one of our GA tagged urls are ranking organically & therefore is skewing the referral data. The campaign that we were tracking is no longer active but the link still works, but it's going to an old landing page. I asked our developers if we could redirect it but they said that it didn't work. Does anyone have some advise or a solution for this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Elihn0 -
Confusion about forums and canonical links
Like many people, I get a lot of alerts about duplicate content, etc. I also don't know if I am hurting my domain authority because of the forum. It is a pretty active forum, so it is important to the site. So my question is, right now there could be 50 pages like this <domain>/forum/index.php/topic/6043-new-modular-parisian-restaurant-10243-is-here/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrickPicker
<domain>/forum/index.php/topic/6043-new-modular-parisian-restaurant-10243-is-here/page-1
<domain>/forum/index.php/topic/6043-new-modular-parisian-restaurant-10243-is-here/page-2
<domain>/forum/index.php/topic/6043-new-modular-parisian-restaurant-10243-is-here/page-3
all the way to:
<domain>/forum/index.php/topic/6043-new-modular-parisian-restaurant-10243-is-here/page-50</domain></domain></domain></domain></domain> So right now the rel canonical links are set up just like above, including the page numbers. I am not sure if that is the best way or not. I really thought that all the of links for that topic should be
<domain>/forum/index.php/topic/6043-new-modular-parisian-restaurant-10243-is-here/ that way it would passing "juice" to the main topic/link. </domain> I do have other links setup for:
link rel='next',link rel='up',link rel='last' Overall is this correct, or is there a better way to do it?0 -
Canonical vs noindex for blog tags
Our blog started to user tags & I know this is bad for Panda, but our product team wants use them for user experience. Should we canonizalize these tags to the original blog URL or noindex them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Multilingual sites: Canonical and Alternate tag implementation question
Hello, I would like some clarification about the correct implementation of the rel="alternate" tag and the canonical tag. The example given at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 recommends implementing the canonical tag on all region specific sub-domains, and have it point to the www version of the website Here's the example given by Google. My question is the following. Would this technique also apply if I have region specific sites site local TLD. In other words, if I have www.example.com, www.example.co.uk, www.example.ca – all with the same content in English, but prices and delivery options tailored for US, UK and Canada residents, should I go ahead and implement the canonical tag and alternate tag as follows: I am a bit concerned about canonicalizing an entire local TLD to the .com site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Amiee0 -
Canonical and optimization
Hi, I was thinking: If I had 4 pages, each of them optimized for an especific keyword, but set a canonical url to another page, would this another page rank for the 5 specific keywords? Ex: Page 1- Shoes
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroVillalobos
Page 2- Snickers
Page 3- Socks
Page 4- Feet
All set the canonical url to Page 5 Page 5 will rank for all this four keywords?0