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.
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
-
Ecommerce product page duplicate content
Hi, I know this topic has been covered in the past but I haven't been able to find the answers to this specific thing. So let's say on a website, all the product pages contain partial duplicate content - i.e. this could be delivery options or returning policy etc. Would this be classed as duplicate content? Or is this something that you would not get concerned about if it's let's say 5-10% of the content on the page? Or if you think this is something you'd take into consideration, how would you fix it? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | MH-UK0 -
Duplicated content by the product pages
Hi,Do you thing those pages have duplicate content:https://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-phone-cards/from-Romania-235-2.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-phone-cards-2.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-Cell-phone-cards-401.htmlhttps://www.nobelcom.com/Afghanistan-Cell-phone-cards/from-Romania-235-401.html.And also how much impact will it have on a panda update?I'm trying to figure out if all the product pages, (that are in the same way as the ones above) are the reson for a Panda Penalty
On-Page Optimization | | Silviu0 -
Why is my contact us page ranking higher than my home page?
Hello, It doesn't matter what keyword I put into Google (when I'm not signed in and have cleaned down my browsing history) the contact us page ranks higher than the home page. I'm not sure why this is, the home page has a higher page authority, more links and more social media shares, the website is an established one. When I have checked Google Analytics my home page gets more people landing on it than the contact us page. It looks like people are ignoring the contact us page and scrolling down until they find the home page. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions2 -
Too many links on product pages
Hello, What do you do if there are too many links on product pages? With 18 products per page, there's 2 links per product for 120 links on many pages. There's 50 products in many categories, categories are at most 1 click from the home page. Should we use pagination or not? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Opinions please on Duplicate page titles & too many on-page links warnings.-
Hello folks, I'm a total SEO newbe but totally enjoying
On-Page Optimization | | CSC
using SEOmoz to learn more. We have ecommerce sites and the 1st crawl flags – as appears typical too many on-page links. We display up to 20 products (each with three links!)
and I’m trying to push to have fewer but meeting resistance from colleagues.
We have links duplicated all over the site believing it eases navigation. My question is just how critical is the number of products displayed
and the resulting volume of links to SEO results? Also we currently have collections of products displayed
across several pages which of course have the same page title and this is flagged
as a duplication error. I wonder if product auto-scrolling help as this means only a certain number of products are displayed at one time on one page thus reducing links and the need for duplicate page titles? My superiors are resisting change (perhaps nervous of spoiling
what already works) and I need to know where to direct my persuasive powers! Many thanks in anticipation, Spence0 -
DUPLICATE PAGE VIA ONPAGE SEARCH
Hi, we have a fashion shop and we try to keep the page title as unique as possible. However google also indexes the search so the say search for brand gucci - type - dress - size 8 - then it indexes it with the homepage title rather then what the searched for. Should I block google from indexing search variation (because there could be thousand of variations) or is there a module that would use the search as a page title so gucci dress 8 for example. Many thanks for your time.
On-Page Optimization | | reallyitsme0 -
Duplicate Page Title Elements
Hello Mozzers. My questions is below and I would like to thank everyone in advance for any feedback 😉 I own a dog supplies site (www.k9electronics.com). When I launched the site several years back I hired a guy for SEO and he optimized my home page for specific categories search terms such as "dog training collars", "dog shock collars:, ect instead of general search terms such as "dog supplies", "dog accessories", ect. I would like to start moving these home page title element terms (starting with "dog shock collars") over to the dog training collars category but have high rankings for this term on the home page. Current Home Page Title Element:
On-Page Optimization | | k9byron
dog training collars, dog shock collars, electric dog collar, dog supplies (recently added) Current Dog Training Collars Category Title Element:
dog training collars I was hoping to add "dog shock collars" to the dog training collars category page until I achieved higher ranking then delete if from the home page. ..or swap it out with "dog accessories". I am currently ranked #5 in Google for "dog shock collars" on the home page & dog training collars category page ...and I am a little concerned about changing these title elements. My question is; If I add 'dog shock collars" to the dog training collars category page title as well, how will it effect my ranking on both pages having this duplicate term in both page titles? Thank You,
Byron-0 -
Should I use a Page Name variable after the ? for a dynamic web page
I'm converting for static to dynamic web pages. It appears that the page name is used for page ranking in the search engines. Will adding a Page Name variable help to increase our SEO. For example aspecialgift.com/subcat.php?PageName=GiftPage&ProductID=ABCDE. Does the page name variable make a difference?
On-Page Optimization | | NCBob0