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.
Product Colour Variation and Canonicals
-
Hi there,
We are currently doing an SEO audit of an ecommerce website and we ar eunsure on the best practice in terms of using canonical link tag for some product variations.
An example is that the company has a product with two colour variations: Black and Tan. These are for the same product and have 99% the same content. Within the content of the page the colour is the only thing that changes (along with the meta information and imagery of course).
My question is should we choose one product and canonically link back to that one i.e. Black is the main product and we link Tan back to this via a canonical link?
Many thanks in advance.
-
Hi,
Yes, it will be a pain for your writers, but that's what they're paid for. For example, if you had four t-shirts, all different colours, it wouldn't be too difficult to write unique content for each. I wouldn't use the same content and just change the colour, this may cause you problems.
-
Thanks Lewis.
Yes that is what I thought. We don't manage their website in terms of development so this may be out of the question. I will check if the colours are conflicting in any way first. If this fails I think you are correct in that they will need to make the content more unique.
Tricky one isn't it as it is JUST the colour that changes, the products are exactly the same.
Many thanks
-
Hi there,
You need to figure out if colour variations are competing with each other in the SERPs. If not, the best option would be to allow customers to choose a colour via a hover-over or drop-down menu that's built into the page's interface. If you choose this method, the URL will not change and there's no need to canonicalise or worry about duplicate content.
If, however, potential customers are searching for a specific colour of the product via Google, you may want to create separate pages for all variations and write unique content for each. It can be a pain for your writers, but needs must!
I hope this helps.
Lewis
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
-
Value of using spaces or no spaces on product category page varient keywords
Hello, all fellow Mozzers,
On-Page Optimization | | JamesDavison
I have taken over a project and this account, so can't change the username according to MOZ.🙃 We run an eCommerce website, and to me, some of the content is conflicting as some pages have more information content than what I would put in a commerce page, but this is how the boss wants it to work, personally, I would separate the content out.
The page I'm working on:
https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/tyres/205-70-14.html
and this is an example of the rest of these types of pages, I will be tackling:
https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/tyres/125-15.html I was tasked to improve SEO ranking, when using the MOZ page grader I had a score of 24 out of 27 83% SEO score and 3-page problems. 7th position in Google for the search term 205/70 R14 As it is a generic product listing page, It was pointless to add to the URL and the Internal links I can't reduce as these are links to products, so I went to reduce the
keyword stuffing and making the page content more natural, this improved the page to 25 out of 27, 87% SEO score and 2-page problems. Improvement to 3rd position in Google, but he wants to chase 1st place to be above his competitors, which is fair enough. It turns out that in the past, they have used this type of page to try and get a high ranking for several search terms, as it is a different variation on a tyre size terms are:
205/70 R14, 205/70R14, 205/70 R 14
205/70 X 14, 205/70X14, 205/70 X14
and so on for all the different ways you can search for this tyre size. He is also convinced Google will see these as different search terms, and while I agree to an extent, this causes Keyword Stuffing on the page, which in turn was harming the rankings. Each product listed on the page already has its own title 205/70 R14, 205/70 HR14 and so on, so my question is. What is the best practice for writing content on these types of pages to gain high rankings for several Keywords, and what value does writing the same keyword with spaces and no spaces have? Any help or advice is welcome, so I have a better understanding of how to approach this for this page and the rest of the site. Cheers Mal0 -
NoIndex or Rel=Canonical Pagination
Hello, I had a question about noindex and Rel=Canonical on category page pagination. On my site, the category page the meta="robots" has "Index,Follow" tags and the rel="canonical" is the main category page, but when a user sorts the page the meta="robots" changes to "NoIndex, Follow." My question is should the sorted page be name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" /> since the rel="canonical" is pointing to the main page?? Or does it matter that it is NoIndex?? Any thoughts on this topic would be awesome. Thanks. Main Category Page
On-Page Optimization | | chuck-layton
https://www.site.com/category/
name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />
rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/"/> Name Sorted Page
https://www.site.com/category/?dir=asc&order=name
name="robots" content="NOINDEX, FOLLOW" />
rel="canonical" href="https://www.site.com/category/">0 -
My target keyword is "moringa powder" but my product title is "moringa ultimate original powder". Is this a problem?
The focus keyword is "moringa powder". The product title and default H1 tag is "moringa ultimate original powder". The url also has "moringa ultimate original powder". Yoast is saying the keyword does not appear in the url or any subheadings. So should I change the product title and url to Original Ultimate moringa powder or is having them separated ok? https://greenvirginproducts.com/product/moringa/150-gram-moringa-ultimate-original-powder/ Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Jeremy-Marion0 -
Does Rel=canonical affect google shopping feed?
I have a client who gets a good portion of their sales (~40%) from Google Product Feeds, and for those they want each (Product X Quantity) to have it’s own SKU, as they often get 3 listings in a given Google shopping query, i.e. 2,4,8 units of a given product. However, we are worried about this creating duplicate content on the search side. Do you know if we could rel=canonical on the site without messing with their google shopping results? The crux of the issue is that they want the products to appear distinct for the product feed, and unified for the web so as not to dilute. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | VISISEEKINC0 -
Correct .htaccess settings for canonical url?
I want to forward all urls to http:www.mysite.com but am a little confuse because I am getting duplicate content error: Pages with Duplicate Page Content as of Jan 15http://titanappliancerepair.com/ 1 duplicatehttp://titanappliancerepair.com 1 duplicatehttp://titanappliancerepair.com/index.html 1 duplicate*****************************************************************What should I put ion htaccess file so I can forwardhttp://titanappliancerepair.com/index.htmlhttp://titanappliancerepair.comhttp://titanappliancerepair.com/to http://www.titanappliancerepair.comor what is the correct way to do it?I'm confused because when I enter http://titanappliancerepair.com/ in browser it showshttp://titanappliancerepair.com so how can it be considered duplicate content?.Can someone help?I have godaddy and they have gave me this code to put RewriteEngine on
On-Page Optimization | | webbutler13
rewritecond %{http_host} ^coolexample.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.)$ http://www.coolexample.com/$1 [r=301,nc]What is correct?0 -
301 Redirect to product page or category?
We manage an ecommerce website that sells health products. A few products have now been discontinued. I’m just wondering what would be the best practice in this case. Should we 301 redirect to a similar product or to a similar category page? ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!
On-Page Optimization | | odegi0 -
Duplicate Content for Spanish & English Product
Hi There, Our company provides training courses and I am looking to provide the Spanish version of a course that we already provide in English. As it is an e-commerce site, our landing page for the English version gives the full description of the course and all related details. Once the course is purchased, a flash based course launches within a player window and the student begins the course. For the Spanish version of the course, my target customers are English speaking supervisors purchasing the course for their Spanish speaking workers. So the landing page will still be in English (just like the English version of the course) with the same basic description, with the only content differences on that page being the inclusion of the fact that this course is in Spanish and a few details around that. The majority of the content on these two separate landing pages will be exactly the same, as the description for the overall course is the same, just that it's presented in a different language, so it needs to be 2 separate products. My fear is that Google will read this as duplicate content and I will be penalized for it. Is this a possibility or will Google know why I set it up this way and not penalize me? If that is a possibility, how should I go about doing this correctly? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | NiallTom0 -
Change in Product Name
My site - http://www.guru99.com/quick-test-professional-qtp-tutorial.html Currently caters to an automation testing product from HP called Quick Test Professional popularly know and searched as QTP Recently HP changed the product name from QTP to HP Functional Test. Considering this , what do I do with exiting QTP pages and how do I optimize the site moving ahead...
On-Page Optimization | | krishrun0