Two pages for, essentially, the same product.

[BallyhooLtd]

My client currently has a page on their website that advertises one of their products. The product in question is manufactured by someone else but branded by my client.

Recently, the manufacturer have released their own version with their own branding which is available to the public. My client has decided that they are going to stock both their own version and the manufacturers version of the product to avoid losing any sales.

This have left us with trying to find the best way to add the new product to the site without it competing with my clients own product in search engine results.

We want the page to be indexed so that people searching for the manufacturers product can still find it on our site but at the same time we risk cannibalisation and essentially having two pages with what will essentially be the same content.

Does anyone have any ideas for a suitable solution? I am unsure whether we should create a new page for the new product or whether we should somehow incorporate the new product in to the existing page.

[Silkstream]

Is there enough of a difference between the two products that you could write unique content for each? Even if they are the exact same product but with different branding, if the two pages are uniquely written then this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Consider an online furniture store selling a hundred different wooden dining chairs - they're pretty much all the same thing really just with a few variations, but you could still write about each one uniquely targeting brand name, etc.

[Andrew_Birkitt]

Even though the products are identical in what they do I would still go down the route of having a separate page for each. We have a client that sells many flea products but have still managed to give them unique product descriptions.

If you are concerned about keyword cannibalisation make the focus for the manufacturer on their brand name rather than the product or what it does.

[Daniel_Morgan]

You said that the manufacturer's products have a different branding so for me that's a clear point of differentiation that warrants two product pages. If there are also differences in pricing etc. then that's also a good reason to create the new product pages. If the new pages are optimised for the manufacturer branding and the existing pages for more generic terms then you shouldnt suffer from cannibalisation. The generic keywords should still generate proportionally more traffic to the existing pages, which importantly for your client means more sales of a product which t make a higher margin on.

[BallyhooLtd]

Thanks for the replies.

It makes sense to add a new product page for the manufacturers product. As you say, if I make the content as unique as possible and try to focus on the brand then I shouldn't encounter any issues - I will maintain traffic to the original page and will hopefully rank well for the manufacturers product - win win.

Thanks again.

[Andrew_Birkitt]

No problem and good luck with your endeavours.