E-Commerce Panda Question

[saultienut]

I'm torn. Many of our 'niche' ecommerce products rank well, however I'm concerned that duplicate content is negatively effecting our overall rankings via Panda Algo. Here is an example that can be found through quite a few products on the site.

This sub-category page (http://www.ledsupply.com/buckblock-constant-current-led-drivers) in our 'led drivers' --> 'luxdrive drivers' section has three products that are virtually identical with much of the same content on each page, except for their 'output current' - sort of like a shirt selling in different size attributes: S, M, L and XL.

I could realistically condense 44 product pages (similar to example above) down to 13 within this sub-category section alone (http://www.ledsupply.com/luxdrive-constant-current-led-drivers). Again, we sell many of these products and rank ok for them, but given the outline for how Panda works I believe this structure could be compromising our overall Panda 'quality score', consequently keeping our traffic from increasing.

Has anyone had similar issues and found that its worth the risk to condense product pages by adding attributes?

If so, do I make the new pages and just 301 all the old URLs or is there a better way?

[EGOL]

If you are ranking well for these you probably don't have a problem - at the moment.

But, if you have lots of these kinds of pages beyond what you mentioned them it might be to your advantage to consolidate multiple similar products onto one single page.

Many of the items that we sell are on pages with several similar items.   I believe that this gives you a more compact site, with more substantive pages that ranks better.

[saultienut]

thanks for responding.  The thing about  'ranking ok' is that these aren't the only products on our site and while we do rank wll for lots of the examples I mentioned, these products have also been something we have carried for many many years and were the first to sell them.  We have become an authority on them, however, again I'm concerned that panda is seeing lots of duplicate content and giving us a 'bad grade or score', which may not seriously hurt those particular pages, but in-turn negatively effect the site as a whole.

My thought is that if I condense all the variations onto their own pages using 'attributes' then Panda would improve our score and consequently improve traffic to the site as a whole???

Anyone done this with success?

What do you think?

[Mike.Bean]

Brooke,

Having a website with many similar products, I know what you're experiencing. The best move would be to have as many attributes on one page as possible. Colors, Sizes, Slightly different styles. Less products with a higher quality will also improve the shoppers experience and keep them on one page.

Thanks,

- Mike Bean

[saultienut]

thanks for responding.

any particulate advise on making the switch?

I'm not too excited about losing all the URLs we have had for years and adding 301s.  I guess the upside out weighs the short-term down side.

[saultienut]

nice site btw. i looked through it and good rankings. 1st page for your tag line!

[Mike.Bean]

Brooke,

Are you going to be keeping the url for your main product? If that is the case, you shouldn't have to worry about losing any juice, only waiting to gain it. Your product pages will actually gain page authority for having less products under a category. If you do redo the url's there will be a slight fall for a while, but use Webmaster Tools to manually re-index your main pages and it will be quick.

Thanks,

- Mike Bean

[Mike.Bean]

Thanks!