How do I avoid this issue of duplicate content with Google?

[kirbyfike]

I have an ecommerce website which sells a product that has many different variations based on a vehicle’s make, model, and year. Currently, we sell this product on one page “www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001” and we show a modal to sort through each make, model, and year. This is important because based on the make, model, and year, we have different prices/configurations for each. For example, for the Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Cherokee, we might have different products:

Ultimate Pet Liner - Jeep Wrangler 2011-2013 - $350

Ultimate Pet Liner - Jeep Wrangler 2014 - 2015 - $350

Utlimate Pet Liner - Jeep Cherokee 2011-2015  - $400

Although the typical consumer might think we have 1 product (the Ultimate Pet Liner), we look at these as many different types of products, each with a different configuration and different variants.

We do NOT have unique content for each make, model, and year. We have the same content and images for each. When the customer selects their make, model, and year, we just search and replace the text to make it look like the make, model, and year. For example, when a custom selects 2015 Jeep Wrangler from the modal, we do a search and replace so the page will have the same url (www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001) but the product title will say “2015 Jeep Wrangler”.

Here’s my problem:

We want all of these individual products to have their own unique urls (cargoliner.com/products/2015-jeep-wrangler) so we can reference them in emails to customers and ideally we start creating unique content for them. Our only problem is that there will be hundreds of them and they don’t have unique content other than us switching in the product title and change of variants. Also, we don’t want our url www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001 to lose its link juice.

Here’s my question(s):

My assumption is that I should just keep my url: www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001 and be able to sort through the products on that page. Then I should go ahead and make individual urls for each of these products (i.e. cargoliner.com/products/2015-jeep-wrangler) but just add a “nofollow noindex” to the page.

Is this what I should do?

How secure is a “no-follow noindex” on a webpage? Does Google still index?

Am I at risk for duplicate content penalties?

Thanks!

[_nitman]

Hi Don,

Using these generic blocks for multiple products is an awesome idea, but don't you think it'll end up creating almost duplicate content section on all these product pages?

Does bots consider duplicate content across the page, or section wise?

[CraigBradford]

The only thing I'd add to this is to that nofollow isn't secure enough. I would recommend blocking the individual product pages that you don't want search engines to find. Thanks Donford for the detailed response.

Craig

[kirbyfike]

Thanks for your response Don. I have a followup question for you.

I did understand your your t-shirt example but I think it's even more refined in our case. Since there are so many different variants, we do have to count them as different products, and we would like to avoid creating custom content right away (there's just so much we would have to create). I'm still thinking our perfect solution would be custom links but with a canonical tag pointing back to "www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001".

Here's my solution based on your advise:

I'm going to keep my main page where people can sort to find there make, model, and year (www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001).

Then I plan to have specific product pages per make, model, and year which will have duplicate content except for the make, model, and year searched and replaced. ie Jeep Wrangler 2015-2016 will be "www.cargoliner/products/jeep-wrangler-2015-2016" and in that page I will have a canonical tag point back to "www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001" so I don't get hit with duplicate content.

After this and over the next 6-9 months, I plan to fill in all of the custom content for each product. Then I plan to remove the canonical tag once I have custom content on that page.

Does this sound like the correct approach?

[donford]

Hi Kirby,

What you have here is a common hurdle to many online businesses. Just like a company selling T-shirts, they may have a smiley face t-shirt in s, m, l, xl, xxl and in 5 different colors. So how does one optimize their content to be found when somebody searches for XL red smiley face t-shirt?

You can take one of two approaches.

Option 1: You can optimize a page for the "main item" in my example it would be "smiley face t-shirt". Then try to get the long tailed keywords on the page by listing colors, sizes, on the page a couple times. The goal of this page would be to rank #1 for the broad keyword Smiley Face T-Shirt, and high on longer keywords like XL Smiley Face T-Shirts, and Red Smiley Face T-shirt. With this approach you would use parameters for items, so you could generate a unique url, but you would canonical it back to the main page.

So the main page would look like this:
url: thetshirtShop.us/mens-tees/smilely-face-tshirt
Title: Smiley Face T-Shirt, Men's Small Through XL
H1: Men's Smiley Face T-Shirt, S,M,L,XL, 2XL, Select A Color & Size

Then for each option you would have your parameters (example red, XL)
url: thetshirtShop.us/mens-tees/smilely-face-tshirt?size=XL&color=red
Canonical: thetshirtShop.us/mens-tees/smiely-face-tshirt

That is the basic structure, but be sure in your content you include the color's and sizes at least twice so when the page is crawled the crawlers see the sizes and colors.

Option 2: which in my opinion is the better of the two would be to create unique content for each item. I know this may seem like it would be difficult or time consuming, and to a degree it is. Again how much different is a red t-shirt from a green one? Aside from the color not much, but there is opportunity here.

Example option 2 color red / xl
url: thetshirtShop.us/mens-tees/smilely-face-tshirt?size=XL&color=red
Title: Red Smiley Face T-Shirt Men's Size XL
H1: Men's Red Smilely Face T-Shirt Size XL

Content Block (Smiley Face T)
By artist Harvest Ross Ball the smiley face t-shirt puts a smile on your chest and a positive attitude by on-lookers. Staying true to the original creator the smiley face tee has been digital optimized and transferred to the tee using our proprietary screen process that insures the image will last. This is one of best selling iconic tees and available in colors, yellow, red, black, white and green. Men's U.S standard sizes, small, medium, large, extra large, and extra extra large.

Content Block (Color-Red):
The T-Shirt Shop using the finest natural dyes in creating our vibrant red color for {Smiley Face T-Shirt}. Using red hibiscus, sumac berries and beets. Our red color is formulated to last for thousands of washes with no fading or wash bleeding. The end result we get true red {Smiley Face T-Shirt} which is quality tested to be HEX #FF0000 RGB 255,0,0 +- within 2 shades.

Content Block (Size XL):
Our Men's Size XL for our {Red} {Smiley Face T-Shirt} follows U.S sizing standards; width 24" (61 cm), length 31.25" (80cm). Sleeve length for the {Red} {Smiley Face T-Shirt} is 9" (22cm), and can accommodate up to a 16" (40cm) bicep comfortably. All our T's are pre-washed and pre-shrunk to ensure our high sizing standards are meet.

Okay, so let me break down what I did here. I created 2 different "specific" code blocks with dynamic elements inside them noted by the { } brackets. Along with the original description block. You can reuse these blocks for other t-shirts, and still achieve a unique page. For example:
Smiley Face T (red/xl) Content Blocks = Smiley Face T, Red, XL
Smiley Face T (green/large) Content Blocks = Smiley Face T, Green, Large

Using these code blocks with dynamic insertion of product details you can achieve a unique page. However you need to get creative in writing these blocks, and do some back end coding or extra work in getting them uploaded to the thousands of different products properly. Just to note I have no knowledge of t-shirts or how best to market them, I just used this for an example to help you identify possible areas of creativity in your product.

In summary I have laid out 2 options for this problem. You can use parameters with canonical and a single page, or get creative and make some unique content pages. Each option will achieve unique urls for your email campaign, and follow SEO best practices.

Hope this helps,

Don