Product Attribute pages and Duplicate content

[bongoheads]

Hiya

I have two queries is about a jewellery shop running on wordpress and woocommerce.

1. I am a little indecisive on how to index the product categories without creating duplicate pages which will get me into trouble.

For example:

All earrings are listed on the category page:  chainsofgold.co.uk/buy/earrings/

We also have product attribute pages which lists all the subcategories for the earrings:

chainsofgold.co.uk/earrings/creoles/    
chainsofgold.co.uk/earrings/drop/    
chainsofgold.co.uk/earrings/studs/

I have the category URL and the product attribute URLs set to be indexed on my sitemaps.

Will this get me into trouble creating duplicate content with the main category page? Should I only have  the main category indexed and "no-index, follow" all the product attribute pages?

2. I am also thinking about incorporating these product attribute URLS into my menu so when people hover over earrings they get shown the types of earrings they can buy.

However, I have the woocommerce faceted navigation working on the category pages.

So if someone is visiting the page chainsofgold.co.uk/buy/earrings/

The user can click on the left hand side, and select "drops".

The URL they will get though is one which is not indexed: http://www.chainsofgold.co.uk/buy/earrings/?filter_earrings=123

Can I link to those product attribute pages without the risk of getting accused of creating duplicate content?

Thank you for your help.

Carolina

[DJ123]

This is what canonical urls are for: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

[DeanAndrews]

1. 'Will this get me into trouble creating duplicate content with the main category page? Should I only have  the main category indexed and "no-index, follow" all the product attribute pages? '

I don't feel that you have anything to worry about here, however having an extra element of descriptive text would help on the sub category pages ie. on chainsofgold.co.uk/earrings/studs/   etc..

2. 'Can I link to those product attribute pages without the risk of getting accused of creating duplicate content?'

Linking is fine however to ensure the search engines do not consider those extra parameters you should filter them via robots.txt ie Disallow: /?filter_gold-type OR Disallow: /?filter_* (if all your filters begin with '?filter_')

You should also link your sitemap from your robots.txt file