Canonical Tags for Legacy Duplicate Content

[AmberHanson]

I've got a lot of duplicate pages, especially products, and some are new but most have been like this for a long time; up to several years. Does it makes sense to use a canonical tag pointing to one master page for each product. Each page is slightly different with a different feature and includes maybe a sentence or two that is unique but everything else is the same.

[AaronRainsSEO]

If you add the rel-tag to the master page then no. But, if you want them to rank for color and size and have a unique section of content let them stand along.

If you are not seeing major declines in traffic and you say they are indexed. I would keep it as it. You don't get hit for duplicate products but you will if the pages are gateway Keyword pages.

[AmberHanson]

Thanks for the response! I checked and they are indexed. For a group of duplicate pages that have a rel canonical tag pointing to a master page, will those duplicate pages still rank if one searches the one thing that makes them unique? Such as a color, or certain product feature? I'm thinking that it makes sense to use the canonical tag but I would like those pages to continue to rank if someone searches for a particular product feature.

[AaronRainsSEO]

If you are not seeing a loss of traffic I would not bother. Check-in search console and see if the pages that are duplicate are indexed. Google might be already rel canonicalize them on their own. If that is the case the pages would not be indexed and in that case, I would add the rel tag to help Google better understand the flow of your website.