Eshop - Prevent Duplicate Product Titles... A Strategy

[well-its-1-louder]

Hi Mozzers !

I'm running a small online vintage bag and jewellery store (www.vintageheirloom.com). Items are unique and need to be written up individually. Whilst the details condition, age etc are unique many of the items name's aren't.

For instance, we have over a year had several bags that we've named: Vintage Celine classic box bag

Naturally Moz has pulled up these as duplicates, same product title.

I could append a unique database id number at the end of each title but it looks strange for the customer.

I could add a few details like condition, age & price e.g. Vintage Celine classic box bag - B+ 80s 90s £425 but I don't think this would be entirely unique either.

Has anyone a good strategy for creating unique product titles that looks ok and informative to the customer?

Thanks for looking.

Kevin

abut some items do have the same Does anyone have a strat

[CleverPhD]

Sounds good!  Thanks!

[well-its-1-louder]

Hi CleverPHD,

Many thanks for your considered response. I'll definitely add the unique product id at the end, it'll prevent dups as you say. Also I agree a bit more detail in the product title will help with long tail searches.

I'm working on a new site (Wordpress), and will also consider more product categories so again thanks for reminding me :-).

Hope your business is going well.

Thanks
Kevin

[CleverPhD]

I think you are on the right track.  You just need to be more descriptive in your Title tags (and meta descriptions).  If the page ranks, then a better description in the Title will help the user know what to click on and potentially can increase your CTR.  I went to your website and on the Celine Bags page http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-celine/bags you do list things on a bag like the pattern or year or color, etc.  Those are things that can help make the title tags unique, just keep on expanding on those ideas.

You may want to consider this.   As Google only shows 70 characters, setup your title tag so that it is descriptive but then just to make sure that the title is unique add something like  Item #74747 at the very end and use the item id from your system.  This can also help the user if they are emailing or calling you to have the item number and eliminate any confusion about what product they are asking about, plus it will always make the title tag unique.  Also, if it is after 70 characters, then it will (generally) not show in the SERPs.   We have used this in the same way in the meta descriptions to make them unique as well.   I help run a site with over 5,000 items that we have used this approach with much success in keeping our titles and descriptions helpful and unique!  It looks like you are doing this with the URL already so would not be a big step to put into the other slots.

Just to be clear, I would make the title tag more descriptive to help make it more unique, but then just as a fail safe add the ID number on at the end.  It seems that you do not have a huge inventory of these bags and so expanded details on the product in the title tags may be enough - you will have to experiment.

Something else to consider, but it looks like you do not have enough inventory to justify it, if you had a ton of "box bags" I would potentially set that up as a cat or subcat.  This way you have a page that will be dedicated to that KW to help with ranking.  The transitory nature of your products will make it hard to have a product page that will rank as it seems they are changing.  Just something else to consider.

Cheers!