Product Colour Variation and Canonicals
-
Hi there,
We are currently doing an SEO audit of an ecommerce website and we ar eunsure on the best practice in terms of using canonical link tag for some product variations.
An example is that the company has a product with two colour variations: Black and Tan. These are for the same product and have 99% the same content. Within the content of the page the colour is the only thing that changes (along with the meta information and imagery of course).
My question is should we choose one product and canonically link back to that one i.e. Black is the main product and we link Tan back to this via a canonical link?
Many thanks in advance.
-
Hi,
Yes, it will be a pain for your writers, but that's what they're paid for. For example, if you had four t-shirts, all different colours, it wouldn't be too difficult to write unique content for each. I wouldn't use the same content and just change the colour, this may cause you problems.
-
Thanks Lewis.
Yes that is what I thought. We don't manage their website in terms of development so this may be out of the question. I will check if the colours are conflicting in any way first. If this fails I think you are correct in that they will need to make the content more unique.
Tricky one isn't it as it is JUST the colour that changes, the products are exactly the same.
Many thanks
-
Hi there,
You need to figure out if colour variations are competing with each other in the SERPs. If not, the best option would be to allow customers to choose a colour via a hover-over or drop-down menu that's built into the page's interface. If you choose this method, the URL will not change and there's no need to canonicalise or worry about duplicate content.
If, however, potential customers are searching for a specific colour of the product via Google, you may want to create separate pages for all variations and write unique content for each. It can be a pain for your writers, but needs must!
I hope this helps.
Lewis
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
-
Should a website have the same standard headings for product pages? And how does that affect SEO?
Hello! I hope my question is self-explanatory but let me give you an example. Suppose I have website X selling A, B and C and I have a dedicated page for each of those products. For SEO practises, Is it better to have the same webpage structure for all product pages (i.e. the same headings and sections) or is it better to vary the structure of the page? Or is it really not important? Again going back to the example, is it better for product page A, B and C to have the same sections in the same order (i.e. Pricing, Product Details, Product Reviews) or is it better to keep it as a flowing content page (product page A has same information in B and C but all those pages are different with different headings and questions asked depending on the product)? Many thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | MarketingDude0 -
Rel="canonical" link should they be to or from an "SEO friendly" url
Thanks for taking the time to review this. So for our example, lets use the following SEO friendly link: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/pacific-christian-college-of-ministry-and-biblical-studies/BA-biblical-studies We'll call this link the SEO VERSION The title of the college is" Pacific Christian College of Minstry and Biblical Studies" The title of the program is "BA Biblical Studies" The QUERY version of the link to this page would be something like: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/index.php?collegeid=22&programid=34 Keep in mind that the meta title, description, and keyword tags for the page are all administerable The SEO VERSION is automatically created from the title of the college, and the title of the program. Each one of these titles can be overidden with a URL slug individually. For instance, the admin could make the link: http://hiu.calibermediagroup.com/undergraduate-on-campus/academics/colleges/pacific-christian-college-of-ministry/biblical-studies by changing the slug for the college to "pacific-christian-college-of-ministry" and the slug for the program to "biblical-studies". Let's call this version the SLUG VERSION So now we have multiple ways to get to the same content. The question on the table is what is best practice for the rel="canonical" link to keep from getting dinged for duplicate content. Let's say that our SEO VERSION is the canonical link for 1 year. Then the choice was made to optimize the links thru the slugs creating the SLUG VERSION. My assumption is that we would keep the SEO VERSION as the canonical link. But then let's say 6 months later that the title of the program is changed in the admin. Now the SEO VERSION has changed and so has the canonical link. Do we lose the link juice garnered over the last 18 months? It would seem to me, that if we use the QUERY version as the canonical link, then any optimizations or changes affect everything except the canonical link, thus keeping the previous link juice earned. But is having an ugly URL as the canonical link detrimental to SEO? Please advise.
On-Page Optimization | | robertdonnell0 -
Can you canonical from one domain page to a different domain page
We are a boating site and have our main site with all it's products. We have an engine section within our main site. But we also have an outside domain, specific to a certain manufacturer of engines. So we want our customers to still find the engine information for this manufacturer within our main site, as well as find the manufacturer targeted engine site in the SERPS. My question is this: Can I canonical those pages within our main site to pages on the outside domain? Or does are canonicals to be used only within the same domain? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | tdawson090 -
301, Canonical, and Page Authority
I have been trying to find an answer to this question for awhile now but I am having trouble. I have a clients site that I need to redirect and Canonical the pages to correct duplicate content issues and title tags however, the issue with this client is that some of the www. pages have a higher PA than non-www and the reverse is true. I am wondering if there is an issue with chasing the PA to get the highest PA per page (even if this means the site is going to be a mix of www. and non-www. pages)? I am extremely new to SEO so I apologize ahead of time if I missed this in the forum.
On-Page Optimization | | Highline_Ideas0 -
Can Sitemap Be Used to Manage Canonical URLs?
We have a duplicate content challenge that likely has contributed to us loosing SERPs especially for generic keywords such as "audiobook," "audiobooks," "audio book," and "audio books." Our duplicate content is on two levels. 1. The first level is at our web store, www.audiobooksonline.com. Audiobooks are sometimes published in abridged, unabridged, on compact discs, on MP3 CD by the same publisher. In this case we use the publisher description of the story for each "flavor" = duplicate content. Can we use our sitemap to identify only one "flavor" so that a spider doesn't index the others? 2. The second level is that most online merchants of the same publisher's audio book use the same description of the story = lots of duplicate content on the Web. In that we have 11,000+ audio book titles offered at our Web store, I expect Google sees us as having lots of duplicated (on the Web) content and devalues our site. Some of our competitors who rank very high for our generic keywords use the same publisher's description. Any suggestions on how we could make our individual audio book title pages unique will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen0 -
Canonical Help?
This canonical thing is brand new to me and I'm trying to wrap my mind around it. Here is my situation: I use Wordpress. I am showing duplicate content with the following url's http://crosstrainingandfitness.com/online-workout-blog/ http://crosstrainingandfitness.com/online-workout-blog/page/2/ Would setting a canonical link solve this? If so, what do I put in the Canonical box for this category (online workout blog). I use Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin. Any help is greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | carbbon0 -
Are blank Product Review pages bad for SEO?
Hi there, I'm running a new e-commerce site (BoatOutfitters.com) and have a question about our product review pages. On our current campaign, we have a lot of duplicate page content errors. When we export the data, it's almost all blank product review pages (since we are new, we don't have that many product reviews yet). Our product reviews aren't run through javascript, so we originally did not add them to a robots.txt file - however, I'm now wondering if it's worse to have all of these duplicate blank pages, or is it not affecting our SEO at all? Should we just wait until these products have reviews which will benefit our SEO and then they won't be considered "duplicate pages" - right? Sorry if this has been answered before - new here at SEO Moz and just looking for some help. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BoatOutfitters0 -
Product Page Optimization
I work for an ecommerce site and we are currently in the process of redesigning our product page. Any useful, must-do tips for this? If it helps, our site has both hard goods and apparel that can be imprinted and customized to the buyers liking. Thanks for any help!
On-Page Optimization | | ClaytonKendall1