I am struggling with the rel="canonical".  If each product had its own product PDF then it would be easy to use the  rel="canonical". However, some of the PDF manuals cover somewhere between 200-300 products. The only difference between some of the products is the physical size (like televisions i.e. 32" vs 37") so the same manual covers all the products within that range.  I am guessing using the same PDF manual for so many products is a duplicate content issue, but sadly they are really useful for users.  Maybe I could put all the pdfs on the product category pages. That said the MOZ tools are showing that we only have 200 duplicate pages out of 250,000, which I think is good.

I agree with Mike, a summary of the PDF, FAQs and how to guides would be an advantage. I've already started adding this information for some of the more popular products but we don't have enough people to write content for every product.  A smaller site would be a lot easier.

Anyone got any ideas?

@Dave - thanks mate

Thanks for advice. In the main, we've tried to add content from the PDF into the product pages but the PDFs are usually 150 pages long and we've got 250,000 products online.  I will try the  canonical idea and see what happens. Cheers for all the answers.

Hello.

A lot of the products I sell on my e-commerce site are very technical. I decided to add PDF data sheets, manuals etc on each of the product pages to improve the customer experience. Now I am not sure if it was the best thing to do.  I have noticed a couple of times that the PDF is out ranking the product page in the SERP.  For a few products, the PDF ranks but the product page doesn't.  Anyone got any ideas?

Should this content not be included on the individual product pages?

they are no follow links but still worth having for local seo. They are also free and take little time to setup. Why wouldn't you do it?

Hi

Just wondering what people think of using mega menus for navigation?

We have used them on our new site

http://nicontrols.com/uk/

When I run the site through the excellent SEOMoz campaign tools I see that we have too many on page links. I now believe the menu is good for customers but maybe not for link juice. Anyone got an ideas? Do I remove the mega menu or just reduce the number of links?

Many thanks

David

How did the Disque binge work out for you?

Easier and Faster , yes but more profitable, no. If people don't link to your content then your content isn't that good. People will link and share good content. Long term better content is a more profitable strategy.

I just don't understand why people want to purchase backlinks. Personally I believe time and effort should be put into making great content which people actually want to link to.

Thanks for the link Gary.

I watched the video on misspellings;

http://www.seomoz.org/dp/seomoz-pro-video-tips

I think this would be a good way to capture variants of the part number search

Easier and Faster , yes but more profitable, no. If people don't link to your content then your content isn't that good. People will link and share good content. Long term better content is a more profitable strategy.