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
-
How google bot see's two the same rel canonicals?
Hi, I have a website where all the original URL's have a rel canonical back to themselves. This is kinda like a fail safe mode. It is because if a parameter occurs, then the URL with the parameter will have a canonical back to the original URL. For example this url: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ has this canonical: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ which is the same since it's an original URL This url https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter has this canonical https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ like i said before, parameters have a rel canonical back to their original url's. SO: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter and this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ both have the same canonical which is this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ Im telling you all that because when roger bot tried to crawl my website, it gave back duplicates. This happened because it was reading the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the original url (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) and the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the url with the parameter (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter) and saw that both were point to the same canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/)... So, i would like to know if google bot treats canonicals the same way. Because if it does then im full of duplicates 😄 thanks.
Technical SEO | | dos06590 -
How to deal with canonicals on dup product pages in Magento?
What's the best way to sort canonicals on duplicate product pages generated from products being in more than one category in a Magento web store? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kerry_Jones0 -
Is using part of a meta description already on your site for another product considered duplicate?
I'm writing meta descriptions for this site, trying to keep them different, however, for two product types, I want to add the same info I added in the other likeminded product's meta descriptions. Is this ok as long as it's not the whole sentence or am I really to rewrite the same info another way, which is hard for " quick shipping available for x amount of colors ". Any Advice?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Canonical URL
Hi there Our website www.snowbusiness.com has a non www version and this one has 398 backlinks. What is the best way of transfering this link value if i establish the www. address as the canonical URL? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | SnowFX0 -
Canonicals
We have a client that has his products listed on 20+ different websites, including 4 of his own. Also, he only has 1 of everything, so once he sells it then the product is gone. To battle this duplication issue, plus having a short internet lifespan of less than 4 weeks, I was wondering if it would be a good idea to canonical the products back to the category page. Kind of like using canonical tags on your "used blue widget" and "used red widget" pages back to the "used widgets" page. Would this help with the duplicate content issues? Is this a proper use of a canonical?
Technical SEO | | WhoWuddaThunk0 -
Amazon Product Descriptions and our website's product descriptions
I am updating our product descriptions site-wide. I wanted to also update our amazon listings for those same products. Is that considered duplicate content if it would be on amazon and our site? Is there any reason why I wouldn't want to do that? Is google product ads also a problem?
Technical SEO | | EcomLkwd0 -
Canonical and 301
Hi We have recently restructured our site and 301 redirected some pages. Unfortunately the new page which we 301 to, still had the canonical tags pointing to the old pages. Would this cause google not to index the new pages....?????
Technical SEO | | jj34340 -
Rel="canonical" and rewrite
Hi, I'm going to describe a scenario on one of my sites, I was wondering if someone could tell me what is the correct use of rel="canonical" here. Suppose I have a rewrite rule that has a rule like this: RewriteRule ^Online-Games /main/index.php So, in the index file, do I set the rel="canonical" to Online-Games or /main/index.php? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | webtarget0