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.
Products with discrete URLs for each color
-
here is the issue. i have an ecommerce site that on a category page, shows each individual color for each product sold. and there is a distinct URL for each color. each product page shares the same content, with the only potentially differentiating factor being customer reviews (not nearly enough of these to differentiate anything).
so we have URLs like:
and so on.
i am looking for a way to consolidate these URL while still showing all colors on the category page. the first solution i am considering is using the hash tag. so we would create www.domain.com/product#green, www.domain.com/product#yellow, www.domain.com/product#red. if possible, i would set the canonical tag as www.domain.com/product.
the second solution would be to use the canonical tag and keep the URLs as is. the issue i see here is that we would need to create www.domain.com/product and show that page somewhere. www.domain.com/product would the URL that the above color URLs would canonicalize to.
what would be the preferred solution? or is there something else?
-
agreed, that would make the issue a lot easier. the problem is that the page above the product page needs to show all colors. i don't think swatches are an option.
-
If it was me and the site structure allowed it, I would create a single page per product and then use a drop down or similar to dynamically change the colour/style of the product using java within the same page.
Therefore removing the need for separate pages or tags.
-
i see mostly one color ranking, with others hidden behind the plus box. this option is doable and makes sense, but was hoping for a rule-based, automated fix as we have many products and colors.
-
You could just use the canonical tag to point the other colours to your most popular colour. So if product-green was the most popular the canonical tags for yellow and red would point to green.
This would effect the search engine rankings for yellow and red, so if you get traffic for these, it's probably not a good idea, but they would still be visible pages on your site.
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
-
URL structure for same product in multiple categories?
Hello everyone ! I am building an ecom store using wordpress. I have assigned multiple categories to the same product. What should be the URL structure when users are navigating with different product categories? Categories Assigned: tshirt, blue, striped
Technical SEO | | Dingos
Product Name: blue-striped-tshirt Option 01: Matching site navigation breadcrumb to product url URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt
Breadcrumb - home/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/blue/blue-striped-tshirt (canonical to 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/color/blue/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/striped/blue-striped-tshirt (canonical to 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/type/striped/blue-striped-tshirt Option 02: Same product urls and different breadcrumbs based on user site navigation URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt
Breadcrumb - home/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt (url same as 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/color/blue/blue-striped-tshirt URL - ecomstore.com/tshirt/blue-striped-tshirt (url same as 1 product page)
Breadcrumb - home/type/striped/blue-striped-tshirt I have decided to got with Option 01 so that the product in each category can be ranked according to each category keyword. Which option is the best according to your experience or is there any other best practice?0 -
Include or exclude noindex urls in sitemap?
We just added tags to our pages with thin content. Should we include or exclude those urls from our sitemap.xml file? I've read conflicting recommendations.
Technical SEO | | vcj0 -
Product Variations (rel=canonical or 301) & Duplicate Product Descriptions
Hi All, Hoping for a bit of advice here please, I’ve been tasked with building an e-commerce store and all is going well so far. We decided to use Wordpress with Woocommerce as our shop plugin. I’ve been testing the CSV import option for uploading all our products and I’m a little concerned on two fronts: - Product Variations Duplicate content within the product descriptions **Product Variations: - ** We are selling furniture that has multiple variations (see list below) and as a result it creates c.50 product variations all with their own URL’s. Facing = Left, Right Leg style = Round, Straight, Queen Ann Leg colour = Black, White, Brown, Wood Matching cushion = Yes, No So my question is should I 301 re-direct the variation URL’s to the main product URL as from a user perspective they aren't used (we don't have images for each variation that would trigger the URL change, simply drop down options for the user to select the variation options) or should I add the rel canonical tag to each variation pointing back to the main product URL. **Duplicate Content: - ** We will be selling similar products e.g. A chair which comes in different fabrics and finishes, but is basically the same product. Most, if not all of the ‘long’ product descriptions are identical with only the ‘short’ product descriptions being unique. The ‘long’ product descriptions contain all the manufacturing information, leg option/colour information, graphics, dimensions, weight etc etc. I’m concerned that by having 300+ products all with identical ‘long’ descriptions its going to be seen negatively by google and effect the sites SEO. My question is will this be viewed as duplicate content? If so, are there any best practices I should be following for handling this, other than writing completely unique descriptions for each product, which would be extremely difficult given its basically the same products re-hashed. Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | Jon-S0 -
Flat vs Hierarchical URL Structure
Hi, We are redoing our site structure and I was wondering what are the benefits of having a flat url structure. For example store.com/product instead of doing store.com/category/product. I noticed sites doing it both ways, even moz.com has both structures ex: moz.com/learn/seo and when you clck on something it brings you to moz.com/seo-expert-quiz (even though following the previous logic it should be moz.com/learn/seo/seo-expert-quiz) Please advise, Thanks!
Technical SEO | | WSteven0 -
Special characters in URL
Will registered trademark symbol within a URL be bad? I know some special characters are unsafe (#, >, etc.) but can not find anything that mentions registered trademark. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | bonnierSEO0 -
Approved Word Separators in URLs
Hi There, We are in the process of revamping our URL structure and my devs tell me they have a technical problem using a hyphen as a word separator. There's a whole lot of competing recommendations out there and at this point I'm just confused. Does anyone have any idea what character would be next-best to the hyphen for separating words in a URL? Any reason to prefer one over another? Some links I've found discussing the topic: This page says that "__Google has confirmed that the point (.), the comma (,) and the hyphen (-) are valid word separators in URL’s.": http://www.internetofficer.com/seo/google-word-separator/ This page suggests the plus (+) symbol would be best: http://labs.phurix.net/posts/word-separators-in-urls This guy says he's tested and there's a whole bunch of symbols that will work as word separators: http://www.webproguide.com/articles/Symbols-as-word-separators-a-look-inside-the-search-engine-logic/ I'm leaning towards the tilde (~) or the plus (+) sign. Usage would be like so: http://www.domain.com/shop/sterling~silver OR /shop/sterling+silver etc... Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | Richline_Digital1 -
Old URL redirect to New URL
Alright I did something dumb a year a go and I'm still paying for it. I changed my hyphenated URL to the non-hyphenated version when I redesigned my website. I say it was dumb because I lost most of my link juice even though I did 301 redirects (via the htaccess file) for almost all of the pages I could find in Google's index. Here's my problem. My new site took a huge hit in traffic (down 60%) when I made the change and even though I've done thousands of redirects my old site is still showing up in the SERPS and send much if not most of my traffic. I don't want to take the old site down in fear it will kill all of my traffic. What should I do? Is there a better method I should explore then 301 redirects? Could the other site be affecting my current rank since it's still there? (FYI...both sites are built on the WP platform). Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank you! Joe
Technical SEO | | kaje0 -
Someone is redirecting their url to mine
Hello, I have just discovered that a company in Poland www.realpilot.pl is directing their domain to ours www.transair.co.uk. We have not authorised this, neither do we want this. I have contacted the company and the webmaster to get it removed. If you search for the domain name www.realpilot.pl we (www.transair.co.uk) come up top. My biggest worry is that we will get penalised by Google for this re-direct as it appears to be done using some kind of frame. Does anyone know anything about this kind of thing? Many Thanks Rob Martin
Technical SEO | | brightonseorob0