Products with discrete URLs for each color

[rakesh_patel]

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:

www.domain.com/product-green

www.domain.com/product-yellow

www.domain.com/product-red

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?

[rakesh_patel]

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.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

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.

[rakesh_patel]

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.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

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.