Help with E-Commerce Product Pages

[YNWA]

Hi,

I need to find the best way to put my products on our e-commerce website. I have researched and researched but I thought I'd gather a range of ideas in here.

Basically I have the following fields:

Product Title
Product Description
Product Short Description

SEO Title
Focus Keyword(s) (this is a feature of our CMS)
Meta Description

The problem we have is we have a lot of duplicate content eg. 10 Armani Polos but then each one will be a different colour (but the model number is the same). I don't want to miss out on rankings because of this.

What would you say is the best way to do this?

My idea is this:

Product Title: Armani Jeans Polo Shirt Blue
Product Description:

• Armani Jeans Polo Shirt in Blue
• Made from 100% cotton
• Armani Jeans Polo with Short Sleeves, Pique Collar and Button Up Collar.
• Designer Boutique Menswear are official stockists of Armani Jeans Polos.
  Short Description: Blue Armani Jeans Polo

SEO Title: Armani Jeans Polo Shirt Blue MA001 | Designer Boutique Menswear
Focus Keywords: Armani Jeans Polo Shirt
Meta Description: Blue Armani Jeans Polo Shirt. Made from 100% cotton. Designer Boutique Menswear are official stockists of Armani Polos.

What are peoples thoughts on this? I would then run the same format across each of the different colours.

Another question is on the product title and seo title, should these be exactly the same? And does it matter if I put the colour at the beginning or end of the title?

Any help would be great.

[YNWA]

Anyone else got anything to add to this?

Thanks

[GregB123]

I have two e-commerce stores (one using Yahoo Merchant Solutions and one using UltraCart) but neither of them are set up in the generic Categories/SubCategories/ItemPages format. So take what I say just as different opinion...

First the techy answer: What I have read is that it would be good practice to either:

1. pick your best selling "Armani Jeans Polo Shirt" color and set the rel=canonical tag on all the other color pages to point that one best selling color

or

2. use the  "Armani Jeans Polo Shirt" subcategory page (the one all the colors variations are linked from) and set the rel=canonical tag on all the other color pages to point that starting subcategory page

Now the different opinion:

You wrote "We do not do it with colours (the dropdown) because the cateloge of clothing can become quite thin when viewing. That and becuase the majority if not all major retailers do not do it this way."

I think the reverse is true... Having separate pages for each color dilutes your SEO effort by making most of your pages "thin" with no really unique content. Your blue page will not be any different from your green page (except for different pictures and the words blue and green interchanged). Also if you are a newcomer to selling these clothing items, perhaps you should do it differently than "all major retailers do"? You can't really compete with them on their own terms - they are too big and too well established. So perhaps using a different store format will help, and putting all the color and size options on a single strong unique page may be the way to do that. It may open some unique marketing or presentation possibilities.

Good luck!

[YNWA]

Thanks. It is a WooCommerce solution so they have a forum yes.

We do not do it with colours (the dropdown) because the cateloge of clothing can become quite thin when viewing. That and becuase the majority if not all major retailers do not do it this way.

If we have a developer doing the design, how would I go about doing the rel=canonical tags myself to save paying them to do it everytime we have new products?

Our new site is not live yet so just want to be up to speed for when it does go live.

[GregB123]

I believe that your choices will be restricted by the CMS that your particular e-commerce system uses. Does your e-commerce system provider have a user's forum where you can ask long-time users for recommendations?

I see you are not doing separate pages for sizes. I assume that you are handling that with a drop-down selector or something similar. How about doing that for the colors as well?

Otherwise make good use of the rel=canonical tag to avoid having lots of essentially duplicate content...