Canonicalization Issue | E-commerce
-
Hey everyone! How are you doing?
I spent this week trying to solve some technical issues on my website. However i am having trouble with Duplicate Content. I came to the conclusion that canonicalization is a great solution to this problem, however, i am having trouble implementing it.
The duplicate problem arises from the fact that for each product i have several colors or different attributes.
For example. I have the category "Construction Clips" and then links to "Color" in which the user can choose White or Sandstone. The content is almost identical for both of them, the only thing that changes is the color. This scenarios repeats many times throughout my webcommerce site. And is throwing me off many Duplicate Content errors.
I cannot use the canonicalization in the White or Sandstone page, because is a product page, it doesnt let me add or change anything on the header. http://aceromart.com/Clip-Glamet-Blanco.aspx
I dont intend to rank well on most product pages, my priority is that i dont want duplicate errors on my website. What is the best solution for this conundrum?
Regards!!!
In advance, i thank you for your opinions!
-
I am analyzing of noindexing them because they are webpages that only show the price of that particular combination of products.
I cannot change the platform for ecommerce because it would require a heavy investment both in time and capital.
I will try to write some content in order to differentiate them enough. Although i dont exactly know how much of a content is considered a duplicate.
Do you know a guideline for this topic?
Regards,
Thanks!
-
Also, should you do option #2 and your content system appends the URL with the "variant" (ex. ?product.php&whitestone), make sure the system is updated to post a concantation URL in the header.
-
Strange that you can't update the header to add canonicals. Personally I'd say you should then add some written content about the products to differentiate them. Otherwise that's a pretty bare looking page to me except for all the links. Or, if you don't care about them ranking & don't want to invest in copy, NoIndex them and just let people find them through site navigation instead of search. But i'd go with the expanded copy.
-
One way to handle this is to change the content between the pages (the descriptions, titles, etc.) enough that you are no longer seeing the duplicate content problem.
Another option would be to pull the products (white, sandstone) into ONE product page that has a dropdown or menu selector to choose color. This would probably be less work than changing tons of descriptions, but it also may depend on your ecommerce platform. most platforms have a "variant" selector on product pages as this is a common problem (think: tshirts, clothing, shoe sizes, etc.).
Hope that's of some help!
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
-
cross canonicalization with redirect
I'm working with a website that has turned one of its pages into its own website within the main website - mostly for the ease of customers, making it simpler to access that page using www.page.com rather than www.mainsite.com/about/page.
Technical SEO | | Shrine.SEO.Gal
As a result, there are two urls for that page (the ones just mentioned), both pointing to the exact same page, but with different urls. Now, they have made it so www.mainsite.com/about/page permanently redirects to www.page.com. which I thought was a good call. However, what do I do about canonicalization? Is it good to point the canonicalization of www.page.com to www.mainsite.com/about/page so that the rankings and link equity are maintained in the main website? Or would the fact that the www.mainsite.com/about/page redirects to www.page.com mess that up? I hope this makes sense!0 -
Canonical issues using Screaming Frog and other tools?
In the Directives tab within Screaming Frog, can anyone tell me what the difference between "canonicalised", "canonical", and "no canonical" means? They're found in the filter box. I see the data but am not sure how to interpret them. Which one of these would I check to find canonical issues within a website? Are there any other easy ways to identify canonical issues?
Technical SEO | | Flock.Media0 -
Change E-commerce Plataform... redirect urls... and images?
we are changing the e-commerce store and usually we do the redirection of all pages URLs... We usually don´t redirect css, js and images files .... Shouldn´t we redirect images as well?
Technical SEO | | SeoMartin10 -
Mobile and hidden content - Any issue for SEO?
In reference to mobile - am I walking a fine SEO line when it comes to hidden content on mobile? On the responsive variations of sites we are working on some content is hidden (that displays on the desktop version of the site) so that pages on mobile can display correctly. Is this negative for SEO? Appreciate any feedback Cheers.
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Standard Responses Causing Duplication Issues
Hi Guys We have a Q&A section on our site which we reply to customers using standard responses which have already been approved. This is causing a lot of duplication errors, however due to the nature of our business we need to use these responses. Is there anything that we can do to stop this? Matthew
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
E-commerce solution and subdomain issues
Hello All,
Technical SEO | | CherieP
In light of Wil Reynold's closing keynote at Portland's Searchfest, I thought I might try posting here to get some advice. We run a family business on the side and we're looking at starting to use volusion.com for our e-commerce solution. The catch is we currently have a wordpress site summitmining.com running on thesis with great SEO. Ranking #1 & #2 for our highest trafficked terms. Ideally, I'd like Summitmining.com to direct to the Volusion store and then summitmining.com/blog to go to our wordpress installation BUT since the volusion site will be hosted with the company and they will not host our wordpress installation we'd have to use a subdomain instead of a subdirectory which I understand will be bad for SEO. Does anyone have any recommendation on how to set this up without totally screwing up our ranking OR any recommendations of an easy to use shopping cart (I've worked on a magento site before and it's too complex for us) that wouldn't require a separate or subdomain? Thank you so much!
-Cherie Prochaska
503-816-3557
cherie@c-squaredassociates.com
@cherieprochaska0 -
Aspx filters causing duplicate content issues
A client has a url which is duplicated by filters on the page, for example: - http://www.example.co.uk/Home/example.aspx is duplicated by http://www.example.co.uk/Home/example.aspx?filter=3 The client is moving to a new website later this year and is using an out-of-date Kentico CMS which would need some development doing to it in order to enable implementation of rel canonical tags in the header, I don't have access to the server and they have to pay through the nose everytime they want the slightest thing altering. I am trying to resolve this duplicate content issue though and am wondering what is the best way to resolve it in the short term. The client is happy to remove the filter links from the page but that still leaves the filter urls in Google. I am concerned that a 301 redirect will cause a loop and don't understand the behaviour of this type of code enough. I hope this makes sense, any advice appreciated.
Technical SEO | | travelinnovations0 -
"Too Many On-Page Links" Issue
I'm being docked for too many on page links on every page on the site, and I believe it is because the drop down nav has about 130 links in it. It's because we have a few levels of dropdowns, so you can get to any page from the main page. The site is here - http://www.ibethel.org/ Is what I'm doing just a bad practice and the dropdowns shouldn't give as much information? Or is there something different I should do with the links? Maybe a no-follow on the last tier of dropdown?
Technical SEO | | BethelMedia0