Single Product per Page and SE Spamming

[remmo]

I have my products placed one per page. However some of my products will fall into more than one part of my site.

In order to maintain the integrity of my cookie trails for the site I am duplicating the detailed product into all the relevant categories.

Now I think I've got a problem... I'll end up having a number of pages that are repeated on the site 2 or 3 times with the only difference being the URL and the cookie trail. Will this be a problem like I think it will be - I have about 200 products with about 15% of them falling into more than one category.

[Duncan Rounding]

You could change the detailed description of each duplicate to be slightly different. Change sentences around and use synonyms for each duplicate. Because you say this affects about 85% of your products you can't take a chance with duplicated content.

You could rethink the need to have duplicates with full product details because in effect you are doing just what Google is trying to stop - you really do have duplicated content pages.

[RuralWeb]

With creating junk web pages is so cheap and easy to do, Google is engaged in an arms race with search engine optimizers.

A qoute from a recent SEO article linked from the forum.

Sites which use or plan to use one page per product must now take great care not to produce pages which google may look on as duplicate content as these will be removed or given a penalty. As always you must look at the full SEO picture before taking action.

[pinbrook]

don't use duplicates!

ensure you have excellent navigation so products can be found easily, use features such as people who bought this or related products to point people towards products which could be in more than one section.

or use a dummy product with a link to the original product.

[jont]

Sites which use or plan to use one page per product must now take great care not to produce pages which google may look on as duplicate content

Indeed... there have been many many threads about 1 product per page and its benefits but this is not a panacea for jumping to the top of Google et al. As Malcolm points out it needs to be very carefully implemented and as part of an overall SEO campaign from the ground up.

[remmo]

Thanks folks,

My suspicions are confirmed. Looks like I will be changing the wording in the detailed description on my product pages slightly

[Charles Bastari]

don't use duplicates!

I'm doomed.

I list office equipment machine models by brand name. All the products for a machine model are shown with that machine model, thus multiple products per page.

I can think of one HP inkjet reorder number that's listed with forty-five different machines, thus duplicates. Many different models use the same set of products. There are hundreds of reorder numbers that are duplicated dozens of times. I have approximately 4,000 products, but over 7,500 with duplicates.

I'm beginning to think that my business and search engines don't mix.

I'm doomed.

[RuralWeb]

I'm doomed

No you are not - what you must avoid are pages with completely duplicated content. If you have a printer with a description and the ink cartridge is an addition to that page then you should be ok - if you were to copy that page and give it a slightly different title but still have the same wording then you may suffer.

As jo says if you plan your site with good navigation and section layout then duplicates can be kept to a minimum. Use duplicates to produce short descriptions and buy buttons then link through to the single product page for more information.

[Crewcut]

Please excuse my ignorance, bur some of my products are also repeated in my cataloge in various sections and subsections, This is because they appear in the paper cataloge like this, so would I also be advised to make some minor changes.

[RuralWeb]

Example please

[Crewcut]

I'm struggling at the moment but hope to go live later this week. It will be easier to ask questions about site then. Thanks

[jont]

If duplicates are mixed in with other products in the other sections you should be OK.

What Malcolm is saying is if you had one product page for a printer cartridge that is Black and then had another that was for the Cyan you could suffer if the other details remained the same ... which in essence they would save the colour and product ref. The product description text would also be very minimal for a printer cartidge ... in this case you would be better putting all 4 cartidges onto the same page.

The actual printer could go onto its own page as it will be a different product with different specs to others and with a product reference that can be used as part of the keywords EPSON XYZ3000 for example.

There are no hard and fast rules but common sense does go a long way in SEO campaigns

[wjcampbe]

An interesting article from Jill Whalen this week saying 'ranking' is dead. That to do proper SEO you should no longer concentrate - or even worry about where you rank. Recommended reading.

[RuralWeb]

Are you refering to Google page rank or placment on search results bill?

[jont]

Bill - can you post a link to the atricle please?