Guilty of keyword cannibalization. What's the best way to fix it without losing link juice?

[benoit_2018]

Hi guys,

I'm new here but I already spent hours reading the forums. I didn't post before because I didn't feel the need to, but today it's different. I don't want to take fixing steps that are not optimal for my website situation.

So here's the problem :

I am working on an affiliate website that is growing day after day and is already profitable. It is not by any mean a thin affiliate site. It's a french language website with product reviews on it.

Right now there is 1 main page (hero page) per review in which I describe the products, put affiliate links, present useful information, etc. These pages have a good word count and I am targeting 1-2 main keywords on them which I consider a good practice.

Couple of months ago I decided to add a product page for each one (normally it's 5 products per review) so I added 5 more page per review, targeting product names as new keywords. Problem is that :

1. Product names are very similar to the main keywords (keyword cannibalization problem)
2. There is very little added information on the product page when you compare it to the hero page (too thin)
3. A lot of information is repeated on each of the product pages. I think this is bad.

So I decided to keep only the hero pages to keep more link juice, avoid keyword cannibalization, improve page authority and get more content on one single page (only information that was not repeated have been added to hero page). I removed ALL THE LINKS to product pages (from the hero page).

So now for my questions :

1. Is it better to keep the product pages in my sitemap or to delete them right away?
2. Is it better to let the product pages die by themselves over time or to 301 redirect all the product pages to hero page to keep link juice?
3. The next question is a bit more complicated. Hope you guys understand what I mean. Considering that product pages are now gone, this will for sure weaken my bounce rate % because only hero page with good/deep information will be accessible to visitors (there is not a lot of internal links in each review, except to other, RELATED reviews). Is setting up goals in google analytics + telling google that it should consider a click on an affiliate link as a NEW PAGE VIEW (like it would act for a click on a link of a product on my own domain) will help for SERPs and SEO?? Or it will just help ME to see a lower bounce rate and setting goals? In other words, is tracking these links and let google see them as new pages clicks will help for the page rankings or not? Because from what I am understanding, a good bounce rate helps for rankings.
4. If the changes made to avoid keyword cannibalization work, when could I potentially see the effects/benefits in the SERPs and trafic?

[donsilvernail]

I would 301 redirect the product pages to the hero pages they best represent. I would not let them 404 you could loose valuable traffic that way.