Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Product Colour Variation and Canonicals
-
Hi there,
We are currently doing an SEO audit of an ecommerce website and we ar eunsure on the best practice in terms of using canonical link tag for some product variations.
An example is that the company has a product with two colour variations: Black and Tan. These are for the same product and have 99% the same content. Within the content of the page the colour is the only thing that changes (along with the meta information and imagery of course).
My question is should we choose one product and canonically link back to that one i.e. Black is the main product and we link Tan back to this via a canonical link?
Many thanks in advance.
-
Hi,
Yes, it will be a pain for your writers, but that's what they're paid for. For example, if you had four t-shirts, all different colours, it wouldn't be too difficult to write unique content for each. I wouldn't use the same content and just change the colour, this may cause you problems.
-
Thanks Lewis.
Yes that is what I thought. We don't manage their website in terms of development so this may be out of the question. I will check if the colours are conflicting in any way first. If this fails I think you are correct in that they will need to make the content more unique.
Tricky one isn't it as it is JUST the colour that changes, the products are exactly the same.
Many thanks
-
Hi there,
You need to figure out if colour variations are competing with each other in the SERPs. If not, the best option would be to allow customers to choose a colour via a hover-over or drop-down menu that's built into the page's interface. If you choose this method, the URL will not change and there's no need to canonicalise or worry about duplicate content.
If, however, potential customers are searching for a specific colour of the product via Google, you may want to create separate pages for all variations and write unique content for each. It can be a pain for your writers, but needs must!
I hope this helps.
Lewis
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
-
Landing page separate from product page
Hello there, I have a wordpress website with a woocommerce plugin. I have 4 landing pages that describe my products and at the end of the pages, I have a CTA to my product page. is it bad for SEO? my website: https://relationadviser.ir
On-Page Optimization | | Aaron.be1 -
Canonicalising a product with multiple variants
I am working with an ecommerce site and have encountered an issue I haven't come across before and would appreciate some advice on how to proceed. There are multiple variation products with one master product and then up to 20 or 30 variant products, the variation could be colour, size or both. The site has been set up to canonicalise all the variations to the master variant product, which I understand to be best practice. But, this is where the issue occurs, the master variant product URL 302 redirects to one of the variant product URLs. Example below. My question is, is this harmful to our SEO efforts? Would be be best to canonicalise to a preferred colour or size variation? EXAMPLE: Master variant product: www.example.co.uk/primary-category/product-123 Seeing this product on the page and clicking will 302 redirect to www.example/co.uk/primiary-category/product-123/colour-456 On page www.example/co.uk/primiary-category/product-123/colour-456 the canonical tag is www.example.co.uk/primary-category/product-123 Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | SimonKenworthy0 -
NoIndex or Rel=Canonical Pagination
Hello, I had a question about noindex and Rel=Canonical on category page pagination. On my site, the category page the meta="robots" has "Index,Follow" tags and the rel="canonical" is the main category page, but when a user sorts the page the meta="robots" changes to "NoIndex, Follow." My question is should the sorted page be name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" /> since the rel="canonical" is pointing to the main page?? Or does it matter that it is NoIndex?? Any thoughts on this topic would be awesome. Thanks. Main Category Page
On-Page Optimization | | chuck-layton
https://www.site.com/category/
name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />
rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/"/> Name Sorted Page
https://www.site.com/category/?dir=asc&order=name
name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" />
rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/">0 -
Should I watermark my product images
I am in the process of creating new images for my products to use on my website. Are there any advantages or disadvantages of watermarking each image? Is there an SEO impact good or bad? I am aware that filename and Alt tags are important, but am unsure if google dislikes watermarked images.
On-Page Optimization | | BipSum1 -
How often should I update category and product content to keep it fresh?
I want to keep our site up to date and fresh with content. How often should I update categories and products pages with content? What angel should I take with categories (new products/services etc.) Thanks Craig
On-Page Optimization | | Towelsrus0 -
Selling Products with a similar meta description
Wondering if anyone can help when selling similar products with very similar meta description and product descriptions in general. Have around 500 products - a lot of products have around 10-20 products which are very similar only different is sizes and a maybe a few lines of text if that. Is this a problem in search engines? How does other ecommerce stores selling similar products solve this problem...
On-Page Optimization | | royRR0 -
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Very simple, Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on? Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original. Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
Rel="canonical" on home page?
I'm using wordpress and the all in one seo pack with the canonical option checked. As I understand it the rel="canonical" tag should be added to pages that are duplicate or similar to tell google that another page (one without the rel="canonical" tag) is the correct one as the url in the tag is pointing google towards it. Why then does the all in one seo pack add rel="canonical" to every page on my site including the home page? Isn't that confusing for google?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0