Duplicate pages and slight product variations
-
Hi, I'm new here, first post...
I've started working on an existing Magento website which is selling furniture. There are products such as leather dining chairs which have very detailed product descriptions. The problem is that there is separate a page for every colour the chair comes in (with exactly the same on-page text), so the page is effectively duplicated 5 times, one for red, one for blue etc... This is made even worse by the fact that the website builder has listed the products in multiple different categories. This means that the same basic product description is in use on maybe 20 or so pages.
How would you guys deal with product descriptions for multiple, very similar products where only the colour is different? There's also the problem of very similar title tags etc...
Thanks for any help. Very much appreciated.
J. -
It would help, but step back and ask yourself if writing a whole new description for a "red" widget is worth it? If color makes a big difference, then by all means go for it. Most cases, you're better with just a single page to list all your options. This page on Amazon demonstrates nicely
Unfortunately, I'm not an authority on Magento, but there may be some SEO plugins you could benefit from that might add canonical tags to those product pages.
At a minimum, I'd read Yoast's guide on Magento SEO:
http://yoast.com/articles/magento-seo/
And you might want to check out this canonical plugin for Magento:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/Yoast/extension/906/canonical-url-s-for-magento
Hope this helps!
-
Thanks. I didn't think it would work...
The question is I suppose, how do you folks make five versions of the same product description totally unique when the only thing that differentiates them is the colour or the finish and every other specification is exactly the same?
Do you just accept the duplication penalty?
-
Doubt it'll work, but if it does, it won't in the not-so-distant future.
Page should be totally unique and those types of tactics were caught after article spinning.
-
Thanks for the responses.
This might sound silly but say I have a separate page for the red and blue items. The only difference is the colour of the fabric so the majority of the 300 words on the page will be exactly the same. How much content would I need to change for search engines not to consider the pages to be duplicates? Would changing the order of the specification bullet points help for example? Would slightly changing the words while keeping the meanings the same help (comes with 2 cushions vs comes with two cushions for example).
Thanks again.
J. -
We have a similar situation with one of our sites. Almost all our products come in multiple colors when we recently redesigned/relaunched on Magento, we did a canonical on all variations to a main parent SKU (generally the black version since it's almost never out of stock).
But we ran into the problem of Google only indexing the parent version and none of the rest, so we weren't coming up on any long tail searches. We've since changed the caonicals so every product points to itself and are hoping to get more indexed, plus we're considering ways to add more unique content to each color variation of a product.
-
Combine all the products into one product and make color a variety/option they can choose on the page.
If this is not possible, I would canonical all the products to one of the product pages.
Having the same product in several categories isn't that bad. As long as that isn't the case with the majority of products so each category is effectively the same products.
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 content length & links within product description
Hello, I have questions regarding content length and links within descriptions. With our ecommerce site, we have thousands of products, each with a unique description. In the product description, I have links to the parent category and grandparent category (if it has one) in the main product text which is generally about 175 words. Then I have a last paragraph that's about 75 words that includes links to our main homepage and our main product catalogue page. Is the content length long enough? I used to use text that was 500 words, and shortening it I still rank when launching new products, so I don't think an increase in text length will have any additional benefit. I do see conflicting information when I do searches, with some people recommending a minimum of 300 words and some saying to try and go a 1000 for category pages. In regards to the links, I noticed a competitor has stopped following this format, so I'm unsure if I should keep going too. Is it too many links to have each of the products link back to the main catalogue and homepage? Is it good to have links with anchor text to the categories a product is in? There are breadcrumbs on the page with these links already. There are already have heaps of links on our pages (footer, and a right sidebar with image links to relevant categories), so my pages do get flagged for too many links. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JustinBSLW0 -
Duplicate products - is this fix acceptable?
Hey Mozzers, Questions around this have been asked time and time again. But i have a specific example I would like some advice on. I have 2 products, Product 1: https://goo.gl/Gzo1WC
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
Product 2: https://goo.gl/VbrHQJ As you can see, the products are almost identical bar some technical specifications. The owner of the business wants them listing as 2 products, combining them into a single listing with configurable options is not an option. As such I have simply made one a canonical of the other. Whilst not ideal this seems to be the best "SEO" fix. Option 2: My second option is to rewrite the descriptions to they are different - not too hard on this product and a future options when i have more time, however.... I am presented with a similar problem for another product where there are 23 versions of the same product, i cannot rewrite the same info this many times. They are different sizes, ranges, capacities, resolutions and accuracies and must be listed separately but contain all the same features and basic product information. The basic info is too important not to talk about, and talking about all the technical specs would be too much and teaching the customers likely to buy them to suck eggs. As such I have taken the 23 products and broken them down into 5 similar groups of 2 to 6 products. I have then picked 1 product from each group and written a unique description and changed all similar products in its group to match choosing 1product in each group as the canonical for all the others. So 23 same products become 5 unique products with 18 duplicated products pointing to them as canonicals. Any product pointing to another only differs in technical info, 95% of the page is the same. Whilst obviously not ideal, Is this an acceptable use of canonicals?0 -
What to do about pages I have deleted?
I have been working through the dead links on my page and recreating the page with new content for those pages that it still makes sense to have on the site. But I have a few that were just changes of the title, spelling mistakes or other ways of saying the same thing In other words I created a page called "areas of the UK we cover" but decided to change it to "areas covered" However, I must have created links to this page and now it is a dead link with a page authority of 19 I think it would be spammy to have two pages, one called "areas covered" and the other called "areas of the UK we cover. It's not a disallow in Robots.txt because the page does not exist Please note I do not have access to the header to add code for a 301 redirect. I'm still using webs.com but not for new sites. I also have a page called singing telegrams london, that I changed from singagrams london. These are two words for the same thing but they are two very different keywords would it be ok to recreate this page and create content for singagrams london. Help is much appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | singingtelegramsuk0 -
How do I fix duplicate page issue on Shopify with duplicate products because of collections.
I'm working with a new client with a site built on Shopify. Most of their products appear in four collections. This is creating a duplicate content challenge for us. Can anyone suggest specific code to add to resolve this problem. I'm also interested in other ideas solutions, such as "don't use collections" if that's the best approach. I appreciate your insights. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | quiltedkoala0 -
How to rank well on 2 keywords - 2 separate pages or 1 combined page
Hi, I have a website about allergy. We ar developing new content, and through keyword research I have discovered that "dog allergy" and "cat allergy" are both very common searches. However, the cause, and symtoms are very alike for these 2 types of allergy so it would make sense to combine the two allergies on one page. So my question is: What do I choose to increase my chances to ranke the best I can for both "cat allergy", and "dog allergy"? Should I develop 2 separate pages for cat & dog allergy or should I do a combined page? (We would of course review the texts so no duplicate content/text would be used if we chose to have 2 pages) I would be so greatful for your advice!! Kind regards, Jeanette
On-Page Optimization | | Mylan-GDM0 -
Framed Pages and Dynamic Pages
Has anyone else had experience with different CMS's for Ecommerce . Ones that create static pages and others that dynamically create pages. What differences have you seen with rankings on google with the two. Here are two examples of sites using static framed pages and one with a system that dynamically creates pages - http://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/ - static frames and http://www.floraselect.co.uk - dynamically
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0 -
E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.
Hey Guys, With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | MikeDelaCruz770 -
On page links?
Hi all, Ive be going through the pages in my site getting rid of errors so i can the work of a clean slate and get the best for my site. However, i have a large amount of pages which is flagged up by seo moz pro tool as too many on page links. How bad is this in terms of seo rankings? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | wazza19850