Dealing with close content - duplicate issue for closed products

[AymanH]

Hello

I'm dealing with some issues. Moz analyses is telling me that I have duplicate on some of my products pages.

My issue is that:

• Concern very similar products
• IT products are from the same range
• Just the name and pdf are different

Do you think I should use canonical url ? Or it will be better to rewrite about 80 descriptions (but description will be almost the same) ?

Best regards.

[AymanH]

Hello

Actually we though about it when we released the website. The current heading, Title and PDF files are driving some traffic.

As we have thousands of references it's not so easy to get different, and quality content.

I think for now how gonna manually change the 80 duplicate content. But you're definitely right it would be better to get some more options as feedback and reviews.

I gonna think about a way to do this.

Tks a lot !

[CleverPhD]

Thanks for the example.  It seems that for a server there would be more information about it that that paragraph.  Processor information, RAM, disk space, ports etc.    I just did a search and found this info

https://www.avantidataproducts.com/product/ibm/7379c2u

I think the bigger problem is not differentiating these pages from each other on your own site, but differentiating from other sites.

This is just good old content development.  You need to see if there is a way to tap into people rating and leaving comments.  Do you have any case studies on this product etc.  Can you find any other media on it, can you create it.  Go to Zappos.com they produce a ton of videos that just describe a pair of shoes.  Do you have someone who could be your video representative and you shoot a bunch of videos on your top products and embed them.

I think otherwise, you are just going to be similar to everyone else with the same product.

[AymanH]

Hello !

In this case it would be

• http://www.ibremarketing.com/item/ibm-7379c2u-x3400-m3.html
• http://www.ibremarketing.com/item/ibm-7379f2u-x3400-m3.html

I do not like the canonical neither are people are finding those references on Google.

As it's a catalog managed in bulk important with many references it's hard to create 1 page as I need also to get the reference on the title ...

So except rewriting the content, do you think there is another option ?

Tks anyway for such a quick answer

[CleverPhD]

Hard to say without seeing the products and so you may not get much response here more than "it depends".   Sit down and be creative, you may be able see if the differences can be highlighted enough that they are different from the others and so you can use them.

Here is what I would do.  If you have 4 versions of a widget, create 1 page with information on all four of them.  Then you can talk about all of them at once and optimize around the 4 versions.  Lets say you have a red, blue and green widget - those are the only differences and everything else is the same.  The page should talk about how great the widget is, talk about the 4 colors, have pictures of the widget in all 4 colors, let people vote on what color they like the best, have links to PDFs on each of the 4 widgets etc.  This may be the better approach.

I am just not sure about using of the canonical as people probably need to be able to find the different versions of the widget and so you need to make sure that the information is out there.  If you setup a page for the 4 versions and then canonical 3 of the versions to the 1, you are still "de-emphasizing" the other 3 versions that people may be searching for.

I really try to only use canonicals if there is an exact duplicate (say a printer friendly version of the original) or I use it for business purpose.  Example: I have one site that has city and zip search options for locations - I canonical all my zip result pages to the parent city page - I do this as I know 1) for this area people do not search in the SERPs by zip code so no use optimizing around zips, and 2) the zip pages are pretty much dups of the city page anyway.  I only leave the zip pages on my site as an option from a usability for people once they hit my site if they want to search that way.

Good luck!