Product Variations in Ecommerce: Combine or Canonicalize?
-
Hello,
I have an ecommerce site that sells pond pumps. I have every pump separated because each pump has different flow rates, specs, and replacement parts. All of the content is original, and even the content on the pages are (more than) 15% different - so it isn't getting flagged by Moz as duplicate content. Essentially it is set up like this:
Acme Pond Pumps
- Acme Pond Pump 100
- Acme Pond Pump 200
- Acme Pond Pump 300
I am wondering if it is best to leave all of the products as separate pages, or if I should canonicalize them to the category page? Will each of the pages pass link juice upward anyways? The difference between the products are the specs, parts, and model number.
Thoughts?
-
Hey Samuel,
I feel like this confirms some of the thoughts that I had. The different terms are, searched, so I think it will be best to leave them as individuals.
Thanks for your contribution!
-
First, I'd say that just because Moz does not flag a page as duplicate content does not mean Google would not think it is duplicate content. As great as Moz is, even Moz cannot know for sure what Google thinks about any specific issue.
Second, I'd look at your keyword research. Are people searching only for general, category-based terms such as "Acme Pond Pumps"? If so, then you might want to no-index all the specific product pages (that may have duplicate content). But if people are searching on a detailed, specific terms such as "Acme Pond Pump 100" and "Acme Pond Pump 200," then you want all of them to be indexed individually. In the second example, I'd try to make each product page as original as possible -- which is something you seem to be doing.
I wouldn't worry about passing "link juice" upwards. As long as you have a flat hierarchy so that all of the product pages are no more than three levels/clicks away from the home page, there should be no crawling/indexation issues.
I hope that helps -- let me know in a reply if you have any other questions!
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
-
Crawling/indexing of near duplicate product pages
Hi, Hope someone can help me out here. This is the current situation: We sell stones/gravel/sand/pebbles etc. for gardens. I will take a type of pebbles and the corresponding pages/URL's to illustrate my question --> black beach pebbles. We have a 'top' product page for black beach pebbles on which you can find different types of quantities (differing from 20kg untill 1600 kg). There is not any search volume related to the different quantities The 'top' page does not link to the pages for the different quantities The content on the pages for the different quantities is not exactly the same (different price + slightly different content). But a lot of the content is the same. Current situation:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMAGARD
- Most pages for the different quantities do not have internal links (about 95%) But the sitemap does contain all of these pages. Because the sitemap contains all these URL's, google frequently crawls them (I checked the logfiles) and has indexed them. Problems: Google spends its time crawling irrelevant pages --> our entire website is not that big, so these quantity URL's kind of double the total number of URL's. Having url's in the sitemap that do not have an internal link is a problem on its own All these pages are indexed so all sorts of gravel/pebbles have near duplicates. My solution: remove these URL's from the sitemap --> that will probably stop Google from regularly crawling these pages Putting a canonical on the quantity pages pointing to the top-product page. --> that will hopefully remove the irrelevant (no search volume) near duplicates from the index My questions: To be able to see the canonical, google will need to crawl these pages. Will google still do that after removing them from the sitemap? Do you agree that these pages are near duplicates and that it is best to remove them from the index? A few of these quantity pages do have intenral links (a few procent of them) because of a sale campaign. So there will be some (not much) internal links pointing to non-canonical pages. Would that be a problem? Thanks a lot in advance for your help! Best!1 -
If my products aren't showing in rich snippets, is there still value in adding product schema?
I'm adding category pages for an online auction site and trying to determine if its worth marking up the products listed on the page. All of the individual product pages have product schema, but I have never seen them show up in rich snippets likely due to the absence of the price element and the unique nature of the items. Is there still value in adding the product schema even if the items won't show in rich snippets? Also, is it possible the product schema will help optimize for commerce related keywords such as [artist name] + for sale?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Haleyb350 -
How will canonicalizing an https page affect the SERP-ranked http version of that page?
Hey guys, Until recently, my site has been serving traffic over both http and https depending on the user request. Because I only want to serve traffic over https, I've begun redirecting http traffic to https. Reviewing my SEO performance in Moz, I see that for some search terms, an http page shows up on the SERP, and for other search terms, an https page shows. (There aren't really any duplicate pages, just the same pages being served on either http or https.) My question is about canonical tags in this context. Suppose I canonicalize the https version of a page which is already ranked on the SERP as http. Will the link juice from the SERP-ranked http version of that page immediately flow to the now-canonical https version? Will the https version of the page immediately replace the http version on the SERP, with the same ranking? Thank you for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JGRLLC0 -
Canoncial tag for Similar Product Descriptions on Woocommerce
I'm looking for advice on how to handle my product description pages for my website vinylabs.com. The website sells vinyl wrap for cars and each color of vinyl (89 variations) has it's own product page. The product descriptions will all be identical except for the color description and code. All of our competitors have an identical layout, different pages for each color, and it fits the product so I don't want to depart from featuring each color as it's own page. Here is my dilemma. I don't want to get penalized for duplicate content, however I do want individual color codes to be searchable on google. For example if you google 3M vinyl wrap M203 you'll get individual pages from the manufacturer and our competitors featuring just that color. I want our website to show up as well. I was thinking about creating a single page that has selectable colors and sizes and then using the canonical tag to point all of my individual color code pages to that single page. However won't that hurt the ability for my individual color code pages to show in search? None of my competitors are using the canonical tag to redirect to a different page. Any advice welcome! Thank you for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vinylabs1 -
Best solution for facets in ecommerce store for optimum link juice distribution?
Now I have facets setup with ajax and ajax just adding parameter #facet1... at end of URL and I have setup canonical so that domain.com/category/#facet1 refers to
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
domain.com/category/ Would you make the facet links no-follow or better better not to add no-follow for better link juice distribution?
Would you hide the whole facet block from google and if so how? Any thoughts?0 -
Ecommerce question - Should I use a CDN for my images. ?
Hi , We are currently in the process of re-developing out commerce website and I wondering should we use a CDN (content delivery nertwork) for our product images. My category pages are currently showing approx 21 product images per page and the page speed is okay but can be better but the page size is rather large ... anything between 600kb - 1 Meg. We do optimise the images already in photoshop. We also do things like minify etc to get the pages to load as fast as possible but I think the only thing left is using a CDN but I have heard mixed reports about using this.? We are also doing a mobile responsive version of the site to but I know that speed will be king with google and how it reflects on rankings. Whilst I can see a CDN will improve image page load speed etc, I guess there a negative SEO impact as well as images will be stored in the cloud ?.. as opposed on to on my site/database. Does anyone know how best to implement a CDN without impacting on SEO or know of any good SEO /implementation articles on this ?... Maybe do Ieave some images on my category pages so I can still do the alt image tags etc/ and have the remaining images on the CDN.? Many Thanks Sarah
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
ECommerce Products substantially similar but with important differences?
Hi eCommerce gurus, We sell a number of products, electrical in nature where the unit is from a group (sub-model is probably a good description) but each has important different physical properties. An example description is: #1 Clipsal C-Bus Wireless Plug Adapter 1 Channel Leading Edge Dimmer, 3A C-Bus Wireless Plug Adaptors allow mains GPO operated equipment to be controlled as part of a C-Bus Wireless network. The buttons on a C-Bus Wireless Plug Adaptor are able to control a load connected directly to the unit and control loads connected to other C-Bus Wireless units. Also, buttons on C-Bus Wireless Wall Switches can control a load connected to a Plug Adaptor.Each button can be programmed to function as an on/off, dimmer or scene control, as well as a number of other options. The other 2 in this group are: #2 Clipsal C-Bus Wireless Plug Adapter 1 Channel Trailing Edge Dimmer, 2A #3 Clipsal C-Bus Wireless Plug Adapter 1 Channel Relay, 10A but the item description details are really the same as #1. This trips Roger's duplicate content error and so probably Google's as well. I can consolidate into one product with 'options' but then can't list the three products discretely on Google shopping etc, and currently the 'Category' is a much wider 'Wireless Automation Products' which I don't really want to sub-categorise into 'C-Bus Wireless Plug Adapters' with three items in it making it harder for people to find. I can 'Spin' the description but this seem stupid and even more so for other items I have that have 12 different derivations of the same basic product Any Suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BM70 -
Online Store With 4 Products Available in 50 Sizes, Need Tips Categories/Products
I own and manage 2 online stores selling furnace filters. http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com and http://www.filtrationmontreal.com/ We have 4 different qualities furnace filters and each of them are avaible in almost 50 different sizes. My store is setup with almost 200 different products. ( 4 filtres X 50 sizes) None of them have variable. This was a lots of work to create 200 different products. The reason I did this is because when searching in search engine, vistors will use such keywords: 16x20x4 filter 20x25x2 furnace filter a/c filter 10x20x1 replacement filter online 20x20x1 16x25x5 filter toronto and so on... Must keywords request in search engine will included the furnace filter size. QUESTIONS: all my products descriptions are the same, the only difference is the filter size, is this Duplicate Content? will it be better to sell 4 filters with 50 variables? if my store use variable I don't see how I will rank on Google when shopper search for keyword like mention before in this post. My page name will always be the same. My description page the same and so on... Furnace Filters Canada is on BigCommerce platform and I love it. I'm in the process of moving Filtration Montreal to CoreCommerce. You can have a look at it here http://furnacefilter.corecommerce.com I'm very limited in SEO knowledge, the way I have setup http://furnacefilter.corecommerce.com I thing is the best way for SEO. What is your opinion & recommendations. Thank you for your help, BigBlaze
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2050