Duplicate Content For Product Alternative listing

[RSedrati]

Hi

I have a tricky one here. cloudswave is a directory of products and we are launching new pages  called Alternatives to Product X

This page displays 10 products that are an alternative to product X (Page A)

Lets say now you want to have the alternatives to a similar product within the same industry, product Y (Page B), you will have 10 product alternatives, but this page will be almost identical to Page A as the products are in similar and in the same industry. Maybe one to two products will differ in the 2 listings.

Now even SEO tags are different, aren't those two pages considered duplicate  content? What are your suggestions to avoid this problem?

thank you guys

[RSedrati]

Thank you Andy

Had the same conclusion actually, was hoping their could be a magical trick

Thanks anyways for your feedback

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I see - and you are absolutely correct that a canonical here wouldn't be advisable.

The two pages are very similar with just the one product being changed, so I would try to add additional content in there or re-write other aspects so that this doesn't become an issue.

There isn't a 'trick' to get around what you are trying to do here. Two different products and two sets of page titles targeting different keywords. Keep each page as unique and content-rich as possible,

-Andy

[RSedrati]

And yes pages are built automatically, and there are so many pages that it would be very difficult to create unique content for each one of them.

[T0BY]

Hello!  Are the pages being built manually or automatically?  How many pages are you talking about? If they are being made manually and there are not too many you can include unique text about the products and the choices.  The way I would do it would be to minimise the duplication of text and instead try to list the products using images with minimal text to reduce the duplication issue.  It clearly isn't going to be in the interest of the user to have multiple pages which which consist predominantly of very similar lists and little else.  Each list and page needs to be significantly different in order to offer value to the user and so as not to be hit for duplicate content.  Good luck!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I think I know what you are saying, and by the sounds of it, if you rel=canonical page 2 to page 1, this should circumvent any duplication issues.

If I have understood

-Andy