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.
-
Thanks Matt
-
Well, having the canonical can help you with other situations (people taking your content, you decide to do translations later, etc) so I would go with canonicals first as they're a more robust solution. Parameter solutions in SC only affect Google itself (not Bing, not any other search engine that comes along) as well. Canonicals would help all of them at once - so def the better choice if possible.
-
Thanks Matt, I really appreciate you taking the time out to reply. I will implement the canonical tag for the variation pages.
Our URL's would be parameter based so I could look at the search console solution. Quick question, if I were to de-index the variation pages would adding the canonical tag be a waste of effort/the same thing?
-
Yes, you should be implementing canonical tags back to the main product page.
Also, if your c.50 URLs are parameter based (ie. /product?color=red) than you can also deal with the indexation of those in Search Console. Google gives you the option to set the options for each parameter. (You can also deal with parameters in robots.txt but unless you have to, I would do it through Search Console instead.)
To set them, go to the Parameters page.
For more information, see Google's help page.
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
-
Canonical or hreflang?
I have four English sites for four different countries, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and I want to share some content between the sites. On the pages that share the content, which is essentially exactly the same on all 4 sites, do I use the hreflang tags like: or do I add a canonical tag to the other three pointing to the "origin", which would be the UK site? I believe it is best practice to use one or the other, but I'm not sure which make sense in this situation.
Technical SEO | | andrew-mso0 -
Selling same products under separate brands and can't consolidate sites...duplicate content issues?
I have a client selling home goods online and in-store under two different brand names in separate regions of the country. Currently, the websites are completely identical aside from branding. It is unlikely that they would have the capacity to write unique titles and page content for each website (~25,000 pages each), and the business would never consolidate the sites. Would it make sense to use canonical tags pointing to the higher-performing website on category and product pages? This way we could continue to capture branded search to the lesser brand while consolidating authority on the better performing website. What would you do?
Technical SEO | | jluke.fusion0 -
Why are my 301 redirects and duplicate pages (with canonicals) still showing up as duplicates in Webmaster Tools?
My guess is that in time Google will realize that my duplicate content is not actually duplicate content, but in the meantime I'd like to get your guys feedback. The reporting in Webmaster Tools looks something like this. Duplicates /url1.html /url2.html /url3.html /category/product/url.html /category2/product/url.html url3.html is the true canonical page in the list above._ url1.html,_ and url2.html are old URLs that 301 to url3.html. So, it seems my bases are covered there. _/category/product/url.html _and _/category2/product/url.html _ do not redirect. They are the same page as url3.html. Each of the category URLs has a canonical URL of url3.html in the header. So, it seems my bases are covered there as well. Can I expect Google to pick up on this? Why wouldn't it understand this already?
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
Duplicate Titles and Sitemap rel=alternate
Hello, Does anyone know why I still have duplicate titles after crawling with moz (also google webmasters shows the same) even after I implemented (since 1 week or 2) a new sitemap with rel=alternate attribute for languges? In fact, the duplicates should be in the titles like http://socialengagement.it/su-di-me and http://socialengagement.it/en/su-di-me. The sitemap is on socialengagement.it/sitemap.xml (please note formatting somehow does not show correctly, you should see the source code to double check if its done properly. Was made by hand by me). Thanks for help! Eugenio
Technical SEO | | socialengaged0 -
Resolving duplication
example: i have a travel guide domain which will relate to 4 other rental sites (all different domains) if I want to post an article on the main site and as well on one of the other sites, how can this be done in order to not be considered duplicate content as it is authorised buy the author to be in both sites. Original author post on main site. Thanks for the advice in advance, Steve
Technical SEO | | AkilarOffice0 -
Rel=Canonical Help
The site in question is www.example.com/example. The client has added a rel=canonical tag to this page as . In other words, instead of putting the tag on the pages that are not to be canonical and pointing them to this one, they are doing it backwards and putting the same URL as the canonical one as the page they are putting the tag on. They have done this with thousands of pages. I know this is incorrect, but my question is, until the issue is resolved, are these tags hurting them at all just being there?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
Should i use NoIndex, Follow & Rel=Canonical Tag In One Page?
I am having pagination problem with one of my clients site , So I am deciding to use noindex, follow tag for the Page 2,3,4 etc for not to have duplicated content issue, Because obviously SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostics showing me lot of duplicate page contents. And past 2 days i was in constant battle whether to use noindex, follow tag or rel=canonical tag for the Page 2,3,4 and after going through all the Q&A,None of them gives me crystal clear answer. So i thought "Why can't i use 2 of them together in one page"? Because I think (correct me if i am wrong) 1.noindex, follow is old and traditional way to battle with dup contents
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle
2.rel=canonical is new way to battle with dup contents Reason to use 2 of them together is: Bot finds to the non-canonical page first and looks at the tag nofollow,index and he knows not to index that page,meantime he finds out that canonical url is something something according to the url given in the tag,NO? Help Please???0