Shopify Product Variants vs Separate Product Pages
-
Let's say I have 10 different models of hats, and each hat has 5 colors.
I have two routes I could take:
a) Make 50 separate product pages
Pros:
-Better usability for customer because they can shop for just masks of a specific color. We can sort our collections to only show our red hats.
-Help SEO with specific kw title pages (red boston bruins hat vs boston bruins hat).
Cons:
-Duplicate Content: Hat model in one color will have almost identical description as the same hat in a different color (from a usability and consistency standpoint, we'd want to leave descriptions the same for identical products, switching out only the color)
b) Have 10 products listed, each with 5 color variants
Pros:
-More elegant and organized
-NO duplicate Content
Cons:
-Losing out on color specific search terms
-Customer might look at our 'red hats' collection, but shopify will only show the 'default' image of the hat, which could be another color. That's not ideal for usability/conversions.
Not sure which route to take. I'm sure other vendors must have faced this issue before. What are your thoughts?
-
Do people really search for red Boston Bruins hats? Or do they search for Boston Bruins hats? Frankly, as a consumer, I'd find it annoying to have to sort through that many more pages if you implemented A. But since color may be important, I'd make it a filter as AWC suggests. I'm not familiar with Shopify, so don't know if it's built in. If not, I'd build it. I'd address your last usability concern the same way - i.e., customize your software.
-
Plan B with a left nav color filter if you have it or are capable of implementing it.
-
I would go definitely with B
**BUT **If you would like to go with A because based on your data (site search and other inteligence tools and business goals )
I would create 50 urls and use the rel canonical for the ranking candidate for each product.
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
-
301 Redirect to Home Page or Sub-Page?
What do you think about 301 redirect of good expired domain to a sub-page instead of the home page? I'm doing this so I don't hurt my brand name. Let me know your thoughts please. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JuanWork0 -
Landing Page Drop Out
Hi, If a product page drops out of organic ranking, but you've made no changes is there a good place to start in order to find out why? I feel like it's almost impossible? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Url structure on product pages - Should we apply canonicalized links in breadcrumbs or entry folders
We have products in the that go into mulitiple categories on our e-commerce site. But of course, each product is only canonicalized to one category. My question is: what should the breadcrumbs look like when users access a product from a non-canonicalized/primary category ?Should we apply canonicalized links in breadcrumbs or entry folders? For example: Let´s say we have product called "glacier hiking in the alps". It is in two categories; 1) glacier hiking 2) mountain tours. And is canonicalized to the glacier hiking category. If a user accesses it from the mountain tours category, should the url/breadcrumbs look like this: www.example.com/glacier-hiking/glacier-hiking-in-the-alps (because that is the canonicalized version) Or should it look like like this: www.example.com/mountain-tours/glacier-hiking-in-the-alps (because that is where the user came from) Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidetoiceland0 -
Google is indexing wrong page for search terms not on that page
I’m having a problem … the wrong page is indexing with Google, for search phrases “not on that page”. Explained … On a website I developed, I have four products. For example sake, we’ll say these four products are: Sneakers (search phrase: sneakers) Boots (search phrase: boots) Sandals (search phrase: sandals) High heels (search phrase: high heels) Error: What is going “wrong” is … When the search phrase “high heels” is indexed by Google, my “Sneakers” page is being indexed instead (and ranking very well, like #2). The page that SHOULD be indexing, is the “High heels” page (not the sneakers page – this is the wrong search phrase, and it’s not even on that product page – not in URL, not in H1 tags, not in title, not in page text – nowhere, except for in the top navigation link). Clue #1 … this same error is ALSO happening for my other search phrases, in exactly the same manner. i.e. … the search phrase “sandals” is ALSO resulting in my “Sneakers” page being indexed, by Google. Clue #2 … this error is NOT happening with Bing (the proper pages are correctly indexing with the proper search phrases, in Bing). Note 1: MOZ has given all my product pages an “A” ranking, for optimization. Note 2: This is a WordPress website. Note 3: I had recently migrated (3 months ago) most of this new website’s page content (but not the “Sneakers” page – this page is new) from an old, existing website (not mine), which had been indexing OK for these search phrases. Note 4: 301 redirects were used, for all of the OLD website pages, to the new website. I have tried everything I can think of to fix this, over a period of more than 30 days. Nothing has worked. I think the “clues” (it indexes properly in Bing) are useful, but I need help. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MG_Lomb_SEO0 -
Duplicate Pages #!
Hi guys, Currently have duplicate pages accross a website e.g. https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart**#!** https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart The only difference is the URL 1 has a hashtag and exclamation tag. Everything else is the same. We were thinking of adding rel canonical tags on the #! versions of the page to the correct URLs. But Google doens't seem to be indexing the #! versions anyway. Does anyone know why this is the case? If Google is not indexing them, is there any point adding rel canonical tags? Cheers, Chris https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart#!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Sort term product pages and fast indexing - XML sitemaps be updated daily, weekly, etc?
Hi everyone, I am currently working on a website that the XML sitemap is set to update weekly. Our client has requested that this be changed to daily. The real issue is that the website creates short term product pages (10-20 days) and then the product page URL's go 404. So the real problem is quick indexing not daily vs weekly sitemap. I suspect that daily vs weekly sitemaps may help solve the indexing time but does not completely solve the problem. So my question for you is how can I improve indexing time on this project? The real problem is how to get the product pages indexed and ranking before the 404 page shows u?. . Here are some of my initial thoughts and background on the project. Product pages are only available for 10 to 20 days (Auction site).Once the auction on the product ends the URL goes 404. If the pages only exist for 10 to 20 days (404 shows up when the auction is over), this sucks for SEO for several reasons (BTW I was called onto the project as the SEO specialist after the project and site were completed). Reason 1 - It is highly unlikely that the product pages will rank (positions 1 -5) since the site has a very low Domain Authority) and by the time Google indexes the link the auction is over therefore the user sees a 404. Possible solution 1 - all products have authorship from a "trustworthy" author therefore the indexing time improves. Possible solution 2 - Incorporate G+ posts for each product to improve indexing time. There is still a ranking issue here since the site has a low DA. The product might appear but at the bottom of page 2 or 1..etc. Any other ideas? From what I understand, even though sitemaps are fed to Google on a weekly or daily basis this does not mean that Google indexes them right away (please confirm). Best case scenario - Google indexes the links every day (totally unrealistic in my opinion), URL shows up on page 1 or 2 of Google and slowly start to move up. By the time the product ranks in the first 5 positions the auction is over and therefore the user sees a 404. I do think that a sitemap updated daily is better for this project than weekly but I would like to hear the communities opinion. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Best practice for retiring old product pages
We’re a software company. Would someone be able to help me with a basic process for retiring old product pages and re-directing the SEO value to new pages. We are retiring some old products to focus on new products. The new software has much similar functionality to the old software, but has more features. How can we ensure that the new pages get the best start in life? Also, what is the best way of doing this for users? Our plan currently is to: Leave the old pages up initially with a message to the user that the old software has been retired. There will also be a message explaining that the user might be interested in one of our new products and a link to the new pages. When traffic to these pages reduces, then we will delete these pages and re-direct them to the homepage. Has anyone got any recommendations for how we could approach this differently? One idea that I’m considering is to immediately re-direct the old product pages to the new pages. I was wondering if we could then provide a message to the user explaining that the old product has been retired but that the new improved product is available. I’d also be interested in pointing the re-directs to the new product pages that are most relevant rather than the homepage, so that they get the value of the old links. I’ve found in the past that old retirement pages for products can outrank the new pages as until you 301 them then all the links and authority flow to these pages. Any help would be very much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
"No index" page still shows in search results and paginated pages shows page 2 in results
I have "no index, follow" on some pages, which I set 2 weeks ago. Today I see one of these pages showing in Google Search Results. I am using rel=next prev on pages, yet Page 2 of a string of pages showed up in results before Page 1. What could be the issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50