Similar product descriptions but with different urls

[knubbz]

I had this question before and was not fully satisfied with the answer..

We are selling adhesives and some of the products have the same name and description, the only thing that separates them are the width on the roll..

Are old/online setup are as following, each product has its own product page with more or less the same description. For example here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-100/ and here http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2-150/

The above product pages are for a product called Fentrim 2. its availiable in widhts from 75 to 300mm.. so, its six diffent products pages with more or less the same description. The other variations of the products besides the width. are Fentrim 20, Fentrim IS 2 and Fentrim IS 20.

So this gives us

6 x Fentrim 20 product pages with the same description, just the width that changes.

6 x Fentrim 2 product pages with the same description, just the width that changes.

6 x Fentrim IS 20 product pages with the same description, just the width that changes.

6 x Fentrim IS 2 product pages with the same description, just the width that changes.

I get that this can cause us problems in the terms of duplicate content.

The plan that we have now is to have 4 different product pages with variations instead. For each of those for product pages we have well written and unique content. And have the old ones 301 redirected to them. Like this

http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-2

http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-20

http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-IS-2

http://siga-sverige.se/siga/fentrim-IS-20

Today we gain traffic from one product page per variation and it seems that google has picked those ones out randomly, see the attached screenshot..

Will we loose rank? will this increase our position, whats your ideas?

// Jonas

PG4aAcM

[LoganRay]

To be honest, I'm not familiar enough with WooCommerce to provide any good feedback regarding those URLs.

[knubbz]

Thanks Logan for your respons! Gives me the guts to go forward with our planned change.

Our e-commerce solution is WooCommerce, and i have read somewhere that variations creates their own urls and therefore can be punished as duplicate content. Any thoughts on that?

[LoganRay]

Hi Jonas,

The plan you've laid out - to have product variants for widths - is exactly how you should be handling this situation.You're likely to see improvements from making this improvement. Since you're getting rid of some unnecessary dupes it helps your crawl efficiency and shows that you noticed the issue and handled it accordingly.

Also, be sure to update your XML sitemap and resubmit in Search Console to ensure Google notices your change ASAP.

Good luck!