Online Store With 4 Products Available in 50 Sizes, Need Tips Categories/Products

[BigBlaze205]

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

[BigBlaze205]

Hi Dana,

Thank you for your tips. About the Hub Page, I don't get it, do you have any example I can see?

If you lookt at the page source on a couple of product on http://furnacefilter.corecommerce.com

you will see, I have created a URL with the filter size, page title and meta description with filter size.

Thank you,

BigBlaze

[danatanseo]

I understand your position very well because I work in e-commerce too, and many times, the only difference from one product to the next is dimensions. I work with audio visual equipment and this is often the scenario for things like power cords, cables, microphone cables, audio snakes, etc.

If all of your product descriptions are the same, then yes, it's duplicate content. If you are super-concerned about that, then that makes the case for creating hub pages with options that allow people to select the size of the furnace filter they want.

Personally, on large e-commerce sites, I'm not sure that spending tons of time writing elegant, unique descriptions for products that are obviously the same is worth your time. Google understands the difference between a site that is e-commerce based and a site that is content based (like a blog).

I would say, set it up both ways and have some users test it. Which way makes it easier and faster for them to find exactly what they want? Choose that one. I think if you choose the one that is better for usability, the SEO will follow.

Personally, I like hub pages. You know, you could do both. Most E-commerce platforms allow you to build a hub page, and then also have individual product pages that just aren't part of the navigation structure. I have used both Volusion and 3DCart to accomplish this. It just means building all the product pages, creating a "parent" page for your hub page, associating the products with the parent and then just not placing those individual products in any categories. That way, they still get indexed and if someone does search by dimension, it's possible the product page matching their search will be the one they see in the SERPs. That's hard to predict of course, but it would at least make that a possibility.

Also, last thought, if you do a good job of featuring the dimension in your page title and meta description, and also on the page, then I really don't think the duplicate content issue will be a problem.