Duplicate content for product pages
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Say you have two separate pages, each featuring a different product. They have so many common features, that their content is virtually duplicated when you get to the bullets to break it all down. To avoid a penalty, is it advised to paraphrase? It seems to me it would benefit the user to see it all laid out the same, apples to apples. Thanks.
I've considered combining the products on one page, but will be examining the data to see if there's a lost benefit to not having separate pages. Ditto for just not indexing the one that I suspect may not have much traction (requesting data to see).
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How similar/different are these products? Are they marketed to slightly different audiences? Do they have slightly different uses? Or are the essentially the same product but one is blue and the other is black? If they can be marketed to different groups or have a big enough difference that they should be separate pages then I'd consider doing some research and copywriting to add unique, relevant content to each to set them apart. If they're really too similar then determine whether they definitely need to be on separate pages still or if the could be merged. If they can be merged, choose which on stays live, update the page as needed and 301 the old page to the one still live. If they definitely need to stay on separate pages still despite being so similar, consider canonicalizing one to the other.
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