Should I use canonical?

[benyamin]

I'm working on a site that sells audio tracks, the site is a Wordpress build. I've got Yoast and XML Sitemaps running for SEO.

The site has been developed (not by myself) to use a flash based audio player. Now this player offers the ability to share, sell products etc... The player has been placed on the homepage and the main music catalog page.

The main catalog page has had a custom page type created for itself. This page has been created in such a way that if you visit the actual page from dashboard > Pages and add content then no content will appear on the page. Even the page header

is pulled from the PHP.

So really as far as I am aware no real content is being seen on the page by a search engine. Except the content on the side bars (it has 2 sidebars on either side of the page.)

The homepage has an introductory paragraph and header which are editable via the normal method in Wordpress.

A custom post type has been created specifically for music items. When a music item is uploaded it is added to the music item feed on the homepage and music catalog pages. It also creates a separate post for the item itself. These items at the moment also have 'no content' as they are only sidebars with a flash music player. I've started to add short paragraphs and headers to them so there is content on the music item posts. I cannot however, in the time frame/budget start entering deeply descriptive content about each item. (I considered adding the intro paragraph from the homepage and using a canonical tag to the homepage on every music item).

So here is my question. What do I do with these music items? Do I use canonical and point them toward the music catalog or the homepage? If so which one? I want the homepage or music catalog page to rank well and I am concerned that search engines aren't going to see these most vital parts of the site. I don't think individual items ranking is helpful, so what do i do?!?! The home and catalog pages are the two main pages of the site. I am going to advise a new player, page type etc... be utilised but at the moment I need a solution quickly.

Any help will be much appreciated.

[MikeRoberts]

The music item pages that are creating the mostly empty pages with sidebars are the ones that sound like they should be NoIndexed. Since they're essentially empty pages they would be duplicates of each other, thin content, and a canonical would be ignored because they aren't technically a duplicate of the homepage or a subset of the homepage's superset.

[benyamin]

Thanks Mike, I appreciate the reply. Just to clarify, do you recommend we NoIndex the music item posts or the music catalog page?

I should have been clearer really, my idea was to add the canonical tag to the music items with the homepage as the link and use the homepages text content which is descriptive of the site overall, on each music item page along with a unique header and description. It still might not be beneficial, I just want to clear any duplicate content issues and help boost the two main pages of the site.

I'm also getting concerned that boosting the music catalog page is going to be difficult given that it's currently being eaten up by a flash based music player.

I assume that currently the only duplicate content the music items share with the homepage and music catalog page beside the sidebars will be whatever it strips off the music player (although the player itself is flash, it has elements that are not flash based).

So my new idea is to utilise the Schema Creator plugin on each item. They have a review system on the site and prices so it may make the individual music items stand out in search engines.

I will still need to add content on each item though. Now, I have no problem adding the content, but realistically there is only so much content you can write about each piece of music. I don't think this content will be sufficient without a sort of default paragraph for every post that is added on to its unique content. Hence why I thought of the homepage paragraph.

Again, any help will be much appreciated.

[MikeRoberts]

This sounds to me more like a NoIndex situation. Really you should be adding content to them but I can understand if its a lot of work and very tedious. A canonical wouldn't really make sense here... its thin content and the canonical would likely be ignored by Google. So instead I'd say NoIndex the pages for now.