Duplicate content for swatches
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My site is showing a lot of duplicate content on SEOmoz. I have discovered it is because the site has a lot of swatches (colors for laminate) within iframes. Those iframes have all the same content except for the actual swatch image and the title of the swatch.
For example, these are two of the links that are showing up with duplicate content:
http://www.formica.com/en/home/dna.aspx?color=3691&std=1&prl=PRL_LAMINATE&mc=0&sp=0&ots=&fns=&grs=
http://www.formica.com/en/home/dna.aspx?color=204&std=1&prl=PRL_LAMINATE&mc=0&sp=0&ots=&fns=&grs=
I do want each individual swatch to show up in search results and they currently are if you search for the exact swatch name. Is the fact that they all have duplicate content affecting my individual rankings and my domain authority? What can I do about it? I can't really afford to put unique content on each swatch page so is there another way to get around it?
Thanks!
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I recognize you're trying to be helpful, but I have to warn that, in this particular case, I think that's a bad idea. It would basically collapse all the products down into one page. This isn't a situation where the colors are variants of the same product (like 3 colors of the same t-shirt). The swatches ARE the product, in a sense.
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They're not really true duplicates - we're probably detecting them as duplicates because there's so little on-page content. Ideally, you would get some kind of description in place, even if you just write them a few at a time over weeks or months. On the bright side, you do have unique titles. I'd at least populate the ALT text of the images, even if you do it from the data (with the name of the swatch). Anything unique content you can add will help.
Given the scope and that's important that these show up as individual products, you can't really canonicalize them without losing their ability to rank. It's always a trade-off, but I think it's best to let them rank and try to add some unique content and tags over time.
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You will need to use the rel=cannonical meta tag in your dna.aspx file. Did you tried?
In the section of your dna.aspx file include the follow:
It will solve your problem. Good luck!
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