SEO Elements for Canonicalized URLs?

[AJTSEO]

I am helping a client with SEO for their ecommerce store. They have around 65 products, but close to 500 URLs all for those same products. Basically they have a bit of an index bloat problem but long story short restructuring was too much of a lift for them, so I got them set up with a canonical URL strategy to ensure all duplicate pages point to one "main" product page.

Getting to the point:

They also need an on-page overhaul. I've created keyword optimized titles, metas, H1s, etc. for each product. Do these elements need to be added to every single one of the 450+ product pages OR do I only need to add them to the 65 "main" product pages that everything else is pointing to, since that will ultimately be the page that gets crawled?

[R0bin_L0rd]

Happy to help

[AJTSEO]

Thanks for your response! This is how I was leaning as well, but the client is doing the implementation and asked if they needed to update all their URLs, so I wanted to get a second opinion. Maybe this implementation will push them to consolidate

Thanks again!

[R0bin_L0rd]

Hiya, my instinct here would be to update both if possible - canonicals are a hint rather than a command, Google will still crawl canonicalised pages and could decide to ignore the canonical if it doesn't think the pages are closely related enough.

Updating the titles etc. on the canonicalised pages can help confirm that they _are _the same content as the pages you're canonicalising them _to. _Plus, worst case, if Google decides to ignore the canonical, the page is at least optimised until you can take stronger action.

If those additional pages really don't have any additional value for visitors I would keep pushing the client to consolidate if you can. Even if they can't do it now, they could be thanking you in a year.

Good luck!