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.
E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.
-
Hey Guys,
With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe.
Thanks in advance!
-
this is always not the best answer. I've seen cases where the click has too many pages and it takes a long time to get to a product. A lot of the products too are similar so I combined a lot of parts together and hes getting 67% higher ctr and 3x more sales and phone calls.
-
Agreed. You now have your work cut out for you Jose.
-
If that's the case Jose, then unique content is key.
-
Thanks for your feedback guys! In reply to both of you, it is very common for a prospect to search for the size followed by the tire model IE: 275/60/15 BFGoodridge T/A. If I have unique pages per size I can optimize the page title to automatically use the size followed by tire brand followed by tire model. This way I have greater chances of the end user finding me. My other idea was to create size specific content that I can use above and below the model specific text.
-
Jose,
I'm curious to understand why you need a separate unique page for each size. Do that many people search for particular tire sizes as compared to broader tire related phrases? Personally I'd think that listing all tire sizes on a single page would be more user friendly. And it would allow for even more content on each model's page.
The other side of that reasoning is having hundreds of size specific pages that have no unique content other than the size (name for all intents and purposes) would classify those pages as thin content and less likely to have those pages rank especially given that you're unlikely to get unique quality inbound links pointing to most of those.
So my recommendation would be to focus on building up those model pages and not going with unique size pages. Or, alternately, finding ways to creatively generate a couple paragraphs of truly unique content for every size page in the system. Anything less and it's duplicate content.
-
I would suggest that for each model you create different unique content on the page (as each model should have different features and variants). Now instead of adding a new page for each size of each model, have a drop down box (on the model's page) that lets you select the size, so the user can instantly see the sizes available for the model and then you don't have to scramble to generate new content for each size (which would be difficult). This is a win-win situation for the user and for the client. Hope that helps.
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
-
Why are http and https pages showing different domain/page authorities?
My website www.aquatell.com was recently moved to the Shopify platform. We chose to use the http domain, because we didn't want to change too much, too quickly by moving to https. Only our shopping cart is using https protocol. We noticed however, that https versions of our non-cart pages were being indexed, so we created canonical tags to point the https version of a page to the http version. What's got me puzzled though, is when I use open site explorer to look at domain/page authority values, I get different scores for the http vs. https version. And the https version is always better. Example: http://www.aquatell.com DA = 21 and https://www.aquatell.com DA = 27. Can somebody please help me make sense of this? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Aquatell1 -
Product content length & links within product description
Hello, I have questions regarding content length and links within descriptions. With our ecommerce site, we have thousands of products, each with a unique description. In the product description, I have links to the parent category and grandparent category (if it has one) in the main product text which is generally about 175 words. Then I have a last paragraph that's about 75 words that includes links to our main homepage and our main product catalogue page. Is the content length long enough? I used to use text that was 500 words, and shortening it I still rank when launching new products, so I don't think an increase in text length will have any additional benefit. I do see conflicting information when I do searches, with some people recommending a minimum of 300 words and some saying to try and go a 1000 for category pages. In regards to the links, I noticed a competitor has stopped following this format, so I'm unsure if I should keep going too. Is it too many links to have each of the products link back to the main catalogue and homepage? Is it good to have links with anchor text to the categories a product is in? There are breadcrumbs on the page with these links already. There are already have heaps of links on our pages (footer, and a right sidebar with image links to relevant categories), so my pages do get flagged for too many links. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JustinBSLW0 -
Listing all services on one page vs separate pages per service
My company offers several generalized categories with more specific services underneath each category. Currently the way it's structured is if you click "Voice" you get a full description of each voice service we offer. I have a feeling this is shooting us in the foot. Would it be better to have a general overview of the services we offer on the "Voice" page that then links to the specified service? The blurb about the service on the overview page would be unique, not taken from the actual specific service's page.
On-Page Optimization | | AMATechTel0 -
H1 Tags on Volusion Product Pages
So I'm working with a client who has no heading tags on his site and I'm wondering if there is an ideal method to implementing these on the product pages specifically, as the wording I ideally want to specify is is the product title, which i can't really code with an H1. Has anyone run into this issue? If so, what was your solution? Also, how vital are these heading tags on the product pages, anyways? If the Volusion SEO expert could chime in, that would be much appreciated. Thanks everyone!
On-Page Optimization | | BrandLabs0 -
How much copy should there be on an e-commerce category page?
I'm not looking for a precise number, obviously. I'm more interested in a general range. More text means more long-tail and synonym opportunities, but of course you don't want too much copy above the fold, pushing your products down. Maybe you can get away with a short paragraph or two at the top of the page. You can always put more copy below the products, but in a recent SEOmoz e-commerce webinar, the presenter seemed to think that was silly and unnecessary. He even suggested that the algo might intentionally ignore text below products, since it's clearly not intended to be read. What do you think?
On-Page Optimization | | CMC-SD0 -
Schema: Multiple Locations on a Single Page
Can adding multiple locations on a single page be confusing to Google? Is using "LocalBusiness" with "branchof" the proper way of doing this? Does anyone know of any resources that go into this type of thing in more detail? I've read everything Google, Schema and SeoMoz seem to have on this topic. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Kwilder0 -
One site with one product or multi product website
Lets suppose that i have 10 NICHE products under me. Should i make one site for each product or one site overall. If i make 1 site for each product i get several advantages Domain name has keyword Title tags etc will be dedicated to one keyword only. Disavantage - Backlinking for each domain will become tougher. Advantage of one site onl Good management Seo / backlinks becomes easier Blogging to attract traffic becomes easier Can target a lot of keywords through business blogging Disadvantages Can become messy with unimportant keywords gaining importance. SO WHAT DO YOU THINK??? One site per product or One site for all products?
On-Page Optimization | | hith2340 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5