How to handle product pages with similar information
-
We have thousands of product pages with similar information but differentiating variables such as length/width.
Example:
We built individual products instead of grouped products because we recommend specific part numbers for specific make, model, year boats through our finder tool.
These pages have recently started showing up in SEOmoz as duplicate content and we are looking for solutions to solve it. We have considered creating a "parent page" that lists all sizes and then using a rel canonical on each individual page to tell google that the parent page is the preferred page.
Any thoughts or other ideas on this?
-
Hello Jim,
Ben's suggestion is typically what I would suggest as well, but I understand you have a situation that is unique to companies that sell parts to items like boats, vehicles, appliances, etcetera... in which case a single product page with variables won't work because you're dealing with completely different skus / part numbers.
In this case I like your idea of creating a single landing page and then using the rel canonical tag on the others. This way the other pages are still available to users who need a specific product part number, but search engines can see that these are all URL-variations of the same content.
Another, similar option would be to use variables in the URL and instruct Google and Bing to ignore those variables and treat them as if they were the base URL. Example:
And this would be the canonical / base URL:
www.savvyboater.com/store/p/Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-17-X-92-.aspx
That may be a problem from the development side because your standard URL includes the product's unique identifier at the beginning, as in:
http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2100-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-14-X-74-.aspx
An example of a problem that could arise is if you decide to just choose one product to be the main one, as in:
http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2100-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-14-X-74-.aspx**?variant=72217P**
http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/2100-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-14-X-74-.aspx**?variant=**72216P
But then what happens if 2100 goes out of stock or is removed? Would every other model then be inaccessible at that URL?
I'd have to know more about this before helping with that issue, but it may not be a problem at all. You'll have to discuss options with your developers and go from there.
Good luck!
-
Thanks for the response, Ben. The reason we have separate pages for size is because we recommend a specific part number (size) for specific make, model years. That's our main dilemma here...
Example: A customer goes through our boat cover finder and selects "Bayliner, Capri 160 O/B (Years: 2001-2004).
We would specifically recommend part number 77016 for that customer...if we group 77016 with 77017, 77018, 77019...there would be no way to recommend the exact cover that will fit the customers boat. Instead, we would be recommending a "group" of covers which is unhelpful to the customer (and could cause a lot of returns).
-
Unless there are other factors limiting you I would probably bring all of the variables onto a single page and treat size as a variable similar to the way you treat colours.
So you don't currently have separate pages for Burgundy and Caribbean Blue covers so why not do the same for size? You would want to adjust the copy to indicate that the product is available in different sizes and obviously this would require reworking the page but if you're going to create a parent page anyway then you might as well.
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Web page or blog ? Which one is preferable
Hello, For one of our sites, 19 keywords are ranking on Home page. But, the home page doesn't have content with those keywords. I am afraid that with Google updates, we will eventually lose all the ranking position for these keywords. Should we ask the client to create blog around those keywords or create separate pages ? Thanks
Content Development | | Johnroger0 -
Hi, on SEO article submissions, do I only include the link to the page I am trying to promote or is it best practice to also include a link to home page or parent page?
Good day. I am writing articles for submission, I would just like some help with the page structure. Do I only include the link for the page that I would like to promote or is it advisable to include other page links, such as home page or the parent category too? Any help would be appreciated
Content Development | | thebedguy0 -
Shortened page titles and changed urls to match, will this effect my page rankings?
In my recent crawl, I was given a bunch of 200 errors for having titles too long, i rewrote the titles and changed the URLs to match (using wordpress). I was then informed by my boss that changing the URLs like I did (www.website.com/abc ->www.website.com/xyz) may have changed our page rank for those pages and if so i should revert them to the old urls. There are about 14 titles in total that I made these changes to. Would it be quicker to change the URL's to their old names, or better for me to use 301 redirects to point the old urls to the new ones? Will either renaming the urls of the new titled blogs with their old titles or using 301 redirects have better SEO results? Does wordpress automatically make these redirects for me? When I click a link of the old urls I kept saved in a document it still goes to the page.
Content Development | | dclauser0 -
Product descriptions, when do they become classed as duplicate content, how different do they have to be?
I look after 3 sites which have a lot of crossover on products. We have 1000s of products and I've made it a requirement that we give each it's on description on each of the sites. This sounds like the right thing to but it's very hard for our content writers to write three different versions descriptions, especially when we have variations on the products so potentially writing unique product descriptions for 4-5 very similar products on three separate sites. We've worked very hard to create unique content deep through the site on all categories, subcategories and tag combinations and along with the other SEO work we've done over the last couple of years is producing great results. My question is now far do we have to go? I'm busy writing some product descriptions for a 3rd party site for some of our products, the easy thing to do is just copy and paste but I want Google to see the descriptions as unique. Whilst all SEO advice will say 'write unique descriptions' from a practical point of view this isn't especially useful as there doesn't really seem to be much guidance on how different they need to be. I gather we can't just move around the paragraphs or jumble up sentences a bit but it is easier to work from a description and change it than it is to start from a blank slate (our products range form being very interesting and unique, to quite everyday so sometimes tough to create varied unique content for). Does anyone know of any guidance or evidence of just how clever the Google algorithm is and how close content has to be before it becomes classed as the same or similar? Thanks Pete
Content Development | | PeterLeatherland0 -
Wordpress Blog Pages, Duplicate Title Tag
Anyone have any experience in fixing the duplicate Title tag on a Wordpress blog multiple pages Basically the title tag remains the same on the pages /Blog/ /Blog/Page/2/ /Blog/Page/3/ My good friend Yoast Plugin doesn't seem to of resolved this (Unless i have missed something?) I don't really see this to be effecting anything and wouldn't of through it would either, but it would be nice to not see the notification within Moz site crawls and campaigns etc, its more of a cosmetic problem Any solutions ? Thanks James
Content Development | | Antony_Towle0 -
Should i 301 redirect my blog to the respective site or just 404 all the blog pages?
Hi guys, We plan to close down our blog, which is a subdomain to our anchor site. I need advice on how to keep the link juice and its SEO value. Is it better to 301 redirect the blog to the homepage of our site, or just 404 all the pages of the blog? Thanks
Content Development | | dimicos0 -
Is the Page Authority/Rank of my corporate site affected by my blog's PA/PR and vice versa?
If I host my blog on my corporate site (it is a wordpress blog) will the page authority and page rank of my site translate to the blog? And does this also go the other way around? My gut says this would make sense, and I think I have seen it in action with other corporate sites that host their wordpress blogs, but I want to be completely sure. Even better, if someone can explain to me how this works, that would be super helpful!
Content Development | | Kendi0 -
Is it advisable to have unique pages for different cities/states though there wouldnt be any actual differentiation in the actual content.
Is it advisable to have unique pages for different cities/states though there wouldnt be any actual differentiation in the content. For example should we have separate pages for "hammers in california" & "hammers in new york". The product is same and content more or less the same. The search volume for individual queries is low but collectively makes a large number. The unique title tag automatically will generate traffic. So does it make sense to make 50 such pages. Else is there any way to uniquely target 50 such queries/month/city
Content Development | | DYo0