Ecommerce Site - Duplicate product descriptions & SKU pages

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I have a couple of questions regarding the best way to optimise SKU pages on a large ecommerce site.

At the moment we have 2 landing pages per product - one is the primary landing page with no SKU, the other includes the SKU in the URL so our sales people & customers can find it when using the search facility on the site. The SKU landing page has a canonical pointing to the primary page as they're duplicates.

Is this the best way? Or is it better to have the one page with the SKU in the URL?

Also, we have loads of products with the very similar product descriptions, I am working on trying to include a unique paragraph or few sentences on these to improve the content - how dangerous is the duplicate content within your own site?

I know its best to have totally unique content, but it won't be possible on a site with thousands of products and a small team. At the moment I am trying to prioritise the products to update.

Thank you

[BeckyKey]

Hi,

Yes we use the SKU's on the other pages too. Thanks for everyone's feedback

[BeckyKey]

Thanks, I'll set up some tests to see if this proves anything either way

Thanks

[TimHolmes]

Hmmmm, not sure they will be ranked better, especially if they already have canonical permanent pages.

Why not use the permanent URLs in the emails also. They will look neater too for the end user and SERPS as the

www.yourdomain.com/storage-boxes/niceday-economy-archive-boxes

Looks better than

www.yourdomain.com/storage-boxes/46546545021.php etc You could always try a 301 redirect for the SKU pages so they point to the nice URL pages.

[BeckyKey]

Also just to add, with regard to product pages - we link to the SKU page in email marketing & these URL's with the SKU are what users can find when searching in the onsite search facility.

As the urls with the SKU's will get more traffic & active users through other mediums, could this affect how Google rates them?

With regard to internal links we link the the permanent URL and not the SKU URL however

[TimHolmes]

These are really the only two I am aware of for actual page content over meta etc. Other Mozzers may have some additional tools they could share... Good luck

[BeckyKey]

Great thank you.

Do you know of any good internal duplicate content checkers? I am looking at copyscape or siteliner.

Thanks

[TimHolmes]

In that case, if you can I would definitely try and create some unique content for these category pages, I understand it can be difficult when talking about boxes when they all kind of do the same thing. Storage boxes, moving boxes, cardboard boxes, plastic boxes, containers.... what do they all do? they store and hold things right!.

I used to work for a large national office supplies company so know your pain, but a little extra content may help make a difference if you really need a particular category page to rank better against your competitors in what is already a very difficult and competitive area.

[BeckyKey]

Great thanks for your input.

With regard to the duplicate content, it's not so much on these pages which are canonicalised, it's more so on ranges of products under separate URLs. e.g. Storage boxes

A lot of the ranges are so similar, that the product description points are the same and I wanted to include some unique text - if it's worth doing

Thanks!

[TimHolmes]

By canonicalising the SKU page to your intended landing/product page I think you are doing the best option for your situation, that is providing the URL features the product name etc. You seem to be very clued up and by the sounds of it doing everything right, I would not think that people in general would search for a SKU so having the other page as the dominant authority page is probably best.

However, as an option rather than having two pages surely you could have just one and have the search facility on your site pull back the landing page based in the SKU as a filterable/searchable element.

That way you would not need to have multiple pages and have to create double the unique content as you would only have once page to look after.

As for the similar pages, I agree adding some unique content to help differentiate them would help.

Hope that helps