Canonical tag: how to deal with product variations in the music industry?
-
Hello here.
I own a music publishing company:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/
And we have several similar items which only difference is the instrument they have been written for.
For example, look at the two item pages below:
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/Canon2Vl.html
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/Canon2Vla.html
They are the exact same piece of music, but written in a different way to target 2 different instrumental combinations. If it wasn't for the user reviews that can make those two similar pages different, Google could see that as duplicate content. Am I correct? And if so, how do you suggest to tackle such a possible problem? Via canonical tags? How?
To have a better idea of the magnitude of the problem, have a look at these search results on our site which give you product variations of basically the same piece of music, the only difference is in the targeted instruments:
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Canon+in+D
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Meditation
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Flight
And, similarly, we have collections of pieces targeting different instruments:
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Wedding+Collection
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Christmas+Collection
www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Halloween+Collection
Any thoughts and suggestions to tackle this potential page duplication issue are very welcome!
Thank you to anyone in advance.
-
Thank you, I think you clarified the problem very well.
Appreciated your help!
-
If you combine these topics you will have a loss of relevance for each of them individually..
The only way to avoid the loss is to write substantive and unique content for each keyword variant.
There is no way to get out of this work unless you give up and allow your site to suffer from the thin content and duplicate content.
-
Any ideas about what I just asked?
Thanks.
-
Well, what I am trying to understand is if consolidating 2 or more pages into a "main" page via canonical (in my case would be possibly 2 to hundreds of similar pages sharing the same piece of music for different instruments) will keep the same potential as having single indexed pages from a user search stand point.
I hope my question/concern makes sense... thanks!
-
This is not a simple question.
Keyword research, knowledge of how YOUR visitors search, and information about the content potential of your site should all be considered to arrive at an optimal decision.
Since I don't know much about your website, traffic, visitors and keywords I should not give poorly-considered advice.
-
Good point Danrawk, I am currently in a "thin content and duplicate content cleaning-up" phase of my website due to Panda issues, and I am getting rid (via noindex meta-tag) of thousands of very similar and thin content pages that may have hurt me (gradually, Google takes time to noindex pages), and I plan to keep just the best products and special items inside the index, but even by doing so I will end up having still similar pages due to the above "variations" issue, which in the long run could still give me trouble.
-
Yes, I think the best way to move for me, in the long term, will be to add unique contents to each page, but in the short term the Canonical tag could help to consolidate similar page.
I have an additional question though about using canonicals for this kind of music pieces:
If I have 3 versions of a piece named "Wedding Collection" like this:
1. Wedding Collection for violin and piano
2. Wedding Collection for cello and piano
3. Wedding Collection for guitar
And I consolidate all three pages with a canonical pointing to a main "Wedding Collection" page that lists those 3 different versions, what happens if someone search for "wedding collection for violin and piano"? Will I be able to rank for those specific keywords? And if so, what page will show-up in the index? Here is how the use of the canonical can become confusing to me... thanks for any further help!
-
Only thing i would be to add is to review your google webmaster account and seomoz spidering results to see if any of this is already showing up as duplicate. that way, you know for sure that you have a problem "right now". You're ahead of the game though in recognizing that the thin-ness of your product pages will cause an issue.
-
There are a few ways to solve this problem when you are offering very similar products.
-
Spend what it takes to write unique and substantive content for each product variant. I use this for my most important products, often writing over 1000 words and adding several photos and sometimes a video.
-
Combine similar products and offer them all on the same page. I do a lot of this with color, size, material variations.
-
Publish pages similar to what you currently have and risk a duplicate content problem. (this is called "take your chances with Panda)
-
Noindex similar pages or use rel=canonical to assign the duplicates to a single URL. I have a site with lots of pdf documents. All similar documents are offered via an image and a download button on the same page. The pdf documents are blocked from indexing and assigned to a single .html page using rel=canonical via htaccess. (I had a Panda problem on this site because of the many pdfs and their host pages. Rankings went down across the domain. After I noindexed pdfs and assigned each pdf to an html page with rel=canonical via htaccess my rankings came back in a few weeks)
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I currently have a canonical tag pointing to a different url for single page categories on eCommerce site. Is this wrong ?
Hi Mozzers, I have a query regarding canonical tags on my eCommerce site.. Basically on my category pages whereby I have more than 1 page, I currently use next/prev rel and also have a canonical tag pointing to the View all version of that page. This is believe is correct.(see example - http://goo.gl/2gz6LV However, from looking at the view source on my other pages, I have noticed I have canonical tags on all my category pages which are only a single page and these canonicaltag are pointing to a different url. I enclose an example . Please advise Category page - http://goo.gl/Pk4zYl This is where the canonical tag points to - http://goo.gl/EwKv26 Another example Category Page - http://goo.gl/4gWTdD This is where the canonical tag for that page points to http://goo.gl/qm4HV7 Should I either make sure that categories that are only 1 page , don't have a canonical tag at all ? or do I have a canonical tag on say every page on my website for safety pointing to the main url for that page. The later, I imagine would be a belt and braces approach but I don't want to screw up anything if it's not advised? Please help/ Kind regards Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Canonical URL availability
Hi We have a website selling cellphones. They are available in different colors and with various data capacity, which slightly changes the URL. For instance: Black iphone, 16GB: www.site.com/iphone(black,16,000000000010204783).html White iphone, 16GB: www.site.com/iphone(white,16,000000000010204783).html White iphone, 24GB: www.site.com/iphone(white,24,000000000010204783).html Now, the canonical URL indicates a standard URL: But this URL is never physically available. Instead, a user gets 301 redirected to one of the above URLs. Is this a problem? Does a URL have to be "physically" available if it is indicated as canonical?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zeepartner0 -
H1 Page Title Tag Placement
I'm a little confused over the correct area to place a H1 title Tag. When I look at Wordpress templates and published Wordpress sites, it suggests placing the H1 tag within the header area. However, SEO companies and other well postioned sites place the H1 title tag at the start of the main content area. What is the correct and/or best practice for placing H1 page title tags? Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
Product Tag Pages - Shopify
My website is Sportiqe.com. We sell t-shirts and use Shopify. We're finding that Google is assigning a higher than normal (normal being "1") page authority ranking on our product tag pages (ie - Products Tagged "knicks"). Would it make sense to do 301 redirects for these product tag pages to the Product pages we want to rank for? (ie - would we do a 301 redirect for a page called "Products Tagged 'Knicks'" to our "New York Knicks Shirts" page?) OR Would it make sense to change these Product Tag Page titles to another key term to have multiple search results (assuming that ordering the products in a different way would eliminate any Duplicate Page Content issues?) For example, renaming the page title from "Products Tagged Knicks" to "TAG NAME | Sportiqe Apparel" Appreciate any insight from the Moz community, Shopify store managers and fellow t-shirt enthusiasts.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | farmiloe0 -
Canonical Tag for Pages with Less Content
I am considering using a cross-domain canonical tag for pages that are very similar but one has less content than the other. The domains are geo specific, so for example. www.page.com - with content xxx, yyy, zzz, and www.page.fr with content xxx is this a problem because while there is clearly duplicate content here the pages are not actually significantly similar since there is so much less content on one page than the other?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?
Hello here, here are my questions for you related to the canonical tag: 1. If I put online a new webpage with a canonical tag pointing to a different page, will this new page be indexed by Google and will I be able to find it in the index? 2. If instead I apply the canonical tag to a page already in the index, will this page be removed from the index? Thank you in advance for any insights! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Which index page should I canonical to?
Hello! I'm doing a routine clean up of my code and had a question about the canonical tag. On the index page, I have the following: I have never put any thought into which index path is the best to use. http://www.example.com http://www.example.com/ http://www.example.com/index.php Could someone shed some light on this for me? Does it make a difference? Thanks! Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan_Phillips1 -
Removing Canonical Links
We implemented rel=canonical as we decided to paginate our pages. We then ran some testing and on the whole pagination did not work out so we removed all on-page pagination. Now, internally when I click for example a link for Widgets I get the /widgets.php but searching through Google I get to /widgets.php?page=all . There are not redirects in place at the moment. The '?page=all' page has been rated 'A' by the SEOmoz tool under On Page Optimization reports and performs much better than the exact same page without the '?page=all' (the score dips to a 'D' grade) so need to tread carefully so we don't lose the link value. Can anyone advise us on the best way forward? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jannkuzel0