Website SEO Product Pages - Condense Product Pages

[Ed-iOVA]

We are managing a website that has seen consistently dropping rankings over the last 2 years (http://www.independence-bunting.com/). Our long term strategy has been purely content-based and is of high quality, but isn’t seeing the desired results. It is an ecommerce site that has a lot of pages, most of which are category or product pages. Many of the product pages have duplicate or thin content, which we currently see as one of the primary reasons for the ranking drops.The website has many individual products which have the same fabric and size options, but have different designs. So it is difficult to write valuable content that differs between several products that have similar designs. Right now each of the different designs has its own product page. We have a dilemma, because our options are:A.Combine similar designs of the product into one product page where the customer must choose a design, a fabric, and a size before checking out. This way we can have valuable content and don’t have to duplicate that content on other pages or try to find more to say about something that there really isn’t anything else to say about. However, this process will remove between 50% and 70% of the pages on the website. We know number of indexed pages is important to search engines and if they suddenly see that half of our pages are gone, we may cause more negative effects despite the fact that we are in fact aiming to provide more value to the user, rather than less.B.Leave the product pages alone and try to write more valuable content for each product page, which will be difficult because there really isn’t that much more to say, or more valuable ways to say it. This is the “safe” option as it means that our negative potential impact is reduced but we won’t necessarily see much positive trending either.

C.Test solution A on a small percentage of the product categories to see any impact over the next several months before making sitewide updates to the product pages if we see positive impact, or revert to the old way if we see negative impact.Any sound advice would be of incredible value at this point, as the work we are doing isn’t having the desired effects and we are seeing consistent dropping rankings at this point.Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,

[Andy-Halliday]

Hi

Its a tricky dilemma you are having. I would personally say option A.

You mentioned over the last two years you have done lots of great onsite content which is great, but SEO is really boiled down to three area's.

1. Content
2. Link building
3. Technical

You could argue content / link building is the same, but I tend to keep them separate. While over the last two years you have been working on the content part of your overall strategy, have you let something slip in the other two area's.

What new links have you recently gone and got in your niche (not directory links etc, but links from key influencers and websites in your niche. While this article talks about launching a blog, its one of the best articles on here for explaining what you need to do: http://moz.com/blog/my-recipe-for-success-how-to-launch-a-successful-blog.

You have some great blog idea's, why not share these with similar websites (obviously not your competitors), but other sites in your niche and get them to link back to you.

And the third option is technical - have you kept upto date with all the latest recommend changes from Google, is the schema markup correct on your product pages, to help rank the pages higher. Is your sitemap working, so that Google can crawl your site more efficiently, does your site work well on mobile etc.

Writing great content is just part of an overall strategy and on its own won't help you to rank any better. While Google tries to use other metrics to determining ranking, links are still an important factor in where you rank.

All your link in my opinion look spammy and from directory sites and if I am thinking this, Google is potentially seeing the same thing. Have you got any messages in WMT about penalties.

Have you thought about contacting some bloggers and asking if they would like to review your products (Note never asks for a link, but let the website decided if they want to link to you - looks more natural if every mention isnt a link). This way if these bloggers review your products as well as some potential extra links, you are also potentially advertising to new customers.

Hope this helps.

[Ed-iOVA]

Thank you Andy for your response and recommendations.

[Ed-iOVA]

Another quick question about your comment on the link profile quality.

There are currently no messages or warnings about the link profile quality in WMT. Would you suggest still reviewing these backlinks and trying to get them off the link profile?

Thanks!