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.
Reviews on Product Page or Separated
-
Good Afternoon
We currently have our individual product information pages set-up with a link through to a separate review page optimised for the term "Product A Reviews"
I was reading about structured data and if I read correctly, the reviews should sit with the marked up product data so I was wondering whether to merge them back into one page.
We have many reviews so the review pages are paginated in blocks of 25
My options are:
- Leave as it is, product info page and separate review page
- Merge the review content back in to the main page and have the pagination work on that page
- Include the first 25 reviews on the product info page then when user clicks through to page 2, 3 etc they're taken to the separated review page. In that way the product page would regularly get new content and we can still have a page specifically targeted for reviews.
From the users point of view, they probably aren't even aware they're being taken to a separate reviews page so with that in mind as I'm typing this maybe they should be one page again
-
I like Logan's answer.
You may, however, consider allowing a single "endlessly scrolling" Reviews page for each product, which:
1. Would NOT have the first X reviews shown on the Product page (sorted in whatever way works best for you).
2. Would perform the role of Review Pagination, though without taking anyone off the product page unless they REALLY wanted to see more reviews by clicking the (see all reviews) link. I think this is pretty similar to how Amazon does it, and they know what they're doing when it comes to maximizing conversions.
3. Would be indexable and optimized for "Product Name Reviews".
4. Would never be "built" unless there are at least X-reviews for the product, necessitating pagination.
-
Hi,
I'd definitely recommend keeping users on the product detail page to read reviews, for both structured data and UX reasons.
You need to have reviews on the page if you want the rating to show up in search results, there might be a way around this but I wouldn't trust it in the long-term.
From a UX perspective, if people can easily read the reviews on the same page, they'll have a lot less reason to do a search for "Product A reviews" and you're not distracting them by sending them to a different page. People have very short attention spans, so keep them on the product detail page, they shouldn't have to navigate back to the product in order to complete a purchase.
Having reviews built into the page also helps different your pages from each other (in the event you have two very similar products) as well as the competition.
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 Product pages are throwing Missing field "image" and Missing field "price" in Wordpress Woocommerce
I have a wordpress wocommerce website where I have uploaded 100s of products but it's giving me error in GSC under merchant listing tab. When I tested it show missing field image and missing field price. I have done everything according to https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/product#merchant-listing-experiences and applied fixed i.e. images are 800x800 and price range is also there. What else can be done here?!merchant listing.jpg
Technical SEO | | Ravi_Rana0 -
When should a variant be a variant and when should it be a separate product from an SEO POV?
Hi all, We are looking at changing our current e-commerce store to a new platform and in doing so thinking of making some changes to how we list products in sub-categories. We have seen related questions asking about splitting a single product into multiple products to rank for different terms, but we are wondering about combining multiple products into a single product page? The examples we have seen have been about fashion items with variants of colour and size. However, the products we sell have variances that change the appearance, dimensions and technical specification, so we would like to ask the MOZ community if combining products with these variances would still be deemed good practice? We sell wood burning stoves and a good example of a product that we are considering combining is the Scan 85 stove, which is available in eight different configurations: 85-1, 85-2, 85-3 etc. Scan themselves refer to each version as a separate product and they are bought, stocked and sold as separate products. Wood burning stoves like this typically have a firebox in the centre and then design options that can change the top, side, base, door, colour and fuel. In this example, the firebox is the Scan 85 and the variation is the last number, each of which corresponds to a different design option changing both the appearance and dimensions (see attached image). We have them listed as eight different products on our current site, one for each version. Primarily because each option has its own name (albeit 1-digit difference) which when we created the pages we thought that more pages would present us with more ranking opportunity. However, we have since learnt that because these eight pages are all so similar and it is difficult to write unique content about each product (with the 85-1 and 85-2 the only difference between the models are the black trim on the 85-1 and the silver trim on 85-2). Especially as when talking about the firebox itself, how well the fire burns, how controllable it is etc, will be the same for all versions. Likewise, earning backlinks to eight separate pages is also very difficult. Exploring this lead, us to the question, when is a variant a variant and when is it a separate product? Are there hard and fast rules for what defines variants and products? Or does it simply vary from industry to industry product to product, and if so should we be looking at it from a UX or SEO POV, when making that decision? Our hope is that if we combine these eight products into a single high-quality page, it will present us with a greater ranking opportunity for that one page over eight individual pages. We also hope that in doing so will allow us to create a more intuitive UX on a single page with a unique description, more reviews focused on one page and an explanation of the options available, all of which should lead to more conversions. Finally, by creating a better UX and unique detailed description we hope that there is a higher chance of us earning product level backlinks then we do with eight lower quality pages. One of the issues in creating a single product page for all the variants is the sub-category/results pages, as we would be removing eight simple products and replacing them with one complex product. We have questions over how this would work from a filter/facet level whereby when you apply a filter there is an expectation that the image shown will match the criteria, so if we filter for stoves with a silver trim for example, there is an expectation to only see stoves that have a silver trim in the results. When you have separate product pages you have separate listings which makes this easier to only bring back the models matching the criteria. However, when you have a single page this is more complex as you will need a default image for non-filtered results and then the ability to assign an image to lots of different attributes so that the correct image is always shown that matches the criteria selected. All of which we have been assured is do-able but adds an extra level of complexity to the process from an admin side. The alternative to doing this would be to create eight simple/child products and link them to one configurable/parent product. We could them list the simple products into the results pages and have them all linking back to the main configurable product which could load with the options of the simple product that was selected. From an SEO POV this brings in some more work, redirecting each page to the parent, but ultimately this could provide a better UX and might be the better solution. Has anyone got any experience in doing either of these options before? Both options above with affect the number of products we have available, so does the number of products in a sub-category effect the ability for that category page to rank? We currently have around 500 products in our wood burning stoves category, with perhaps an additional 300 to add. If we go down the combining into a single product page route this will reduce the number of products by around a third. If we keep all the simple/child products, then this will stay around the same. So, have we missed something obvious? Is there a glaring issue that we have overlooked from an SEO point of view as well as from the customer experience? We would appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks, Reece scan85-1.jpg
Technical SEO | | fireproductsuk0 -
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.
Technical SEO | | Jon-S0 -
Unique page for each product variant? (Not eCommerce)
Hi Mozzers, Just looking for a little advice before I launch into a huge workload. We have landing pages for vehicle manufacturers. We then have anchor links in that page for each vehicle model that manufacturer has, with further info on the model further down the page. So we're toying with the idea of launching a unique page for each of the models rather than having them all on the same landing page. This will take an age and a minute but if it is worth it, we want to do it. Do you guys see a benefit to having unique pages for each model? Do you think it would attract more natural links? Would this help or hinder the manufacturer landing page in general? Should the manufacturer landing page be noindex so as to avoid duplicate content issues? I can see a lot of work and risk, just looking for a few opinions. PM for more info. Thanks a lot people, Jamie
Technical SEO | | SanjidaKazi0 -
When creating parent and child pages should key words be repeated in url and page title?
We are in the direct mail advertising business: PrintLabelAndMail.com Example: Parent:
Technical SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach
Postcard Direct Mail Children:
Postcard Mailings
Postcard Design
Postcard Samples
Postcard Pricing
Postcard Advantages should "postcard" be repeated in the URL and Page Title? and in this example should each of the 5 children link back directly to the parent or would it be better to "daisy chain" them using each as parent for the next?0 -
How to determine which pages are not indexed
Is there a way to determine which pages of a website are not being indexed by the search engines? I know Google Webmasters has a sitemap area where it tells you how many urls have been submitted and how many are indexed out of those submitted. However, it doesn't necessarily show which urls aren't being indexed.
Technical SEO | | priceseo1 -
Is it worth setting up 301 redirects from old products to new products?
This year we are using a new supplier and they have provided us a product database of approx. 5k products. About 80% of these products were in our existing database but once we have installed the new database all the URLs will have changed. There is no quick way to match the old products with the new products so we would have to manually match all 5k products if we were were to setup 301 rules for the old products pointing to the new products. Of course this would take a lot of time. So the options are: 1. Is it worth putting in this effort to make the 301 rules? 2. Or are we okay just to delete the old product pages, let the SE see the 404 and just wait for it to index the new pages? 3. Or, as a compromise, should we 301 the old product page to the new category page as this is a lot quicker for us do do than redirecting to the new product page?
Technical SEO | | indigoclothing0 -
Google counting numbers of products on category pages - what about pagination ?
Hi there, Whilst checking out the SERPS, as you do, I noticed that where our category page appears, google now seems to be counting the number of products (what it calls items) on the product page and displaying this in the 1st part of the description (see image attached). My problem is we employ pagination, so that our category page will have 15 items on it, then there are paginated results for the rest, with either ?page=2 or page-2/ etc. appended to the URL. Although this is only a minor issue, I was just wondering if there was a way to change the number of products displayed on that page to be the entire number of products in that category, is there a microformat markup or something that can over-ride what google has detected ? Furthermore is this system of pagination effective ? I have considered using javascript pagination, such that all products would be loaded on to the one page but hidden until 'paginated', but I was worried about having hidden elements on the page, and also the impact of load times. Although I think this may solve the problem and display the true number of products in a section! Any help much appreciated, Stuart b4urme.jpg
Technical SEO | | stukerr0