Unique page for each product variant? (Not eCommerce)

[SanjidaKazi]

Hi Mozzers,

Just looking for a little advice before I launch into a huge workload. We have landing pages for vehicle manufacturers. We then have anchor links in that page for each vehicle model that manufacturer has, with further info on the model further down the page.

So we're toying with the idea of launching a unique page for each of the models rather than having them all on the same landing page.

This will take an age and a minute but if it is worth it, we want to do it. Do you guys see a benefit to having unique pages for each model? Do you think it would attract more natural links? Would this help or hinder the manufacturer landing page in general? Should the manufacturer landing page be noindex so as to avoid duplicate content issues?

I can see a lot of work and risk, just looking for a few opinions.

PM for more info.

Thanks a lot people,

Jamie

[_nitman]

Hi Jamie Booker,

Interesting point. I would like to share my points to handle it from UX and SEO perspective neatly. So, here's my understanding about your product: you have multiple product pages and their variations, say you have a product "My Product" which has 2 variations "Variation A" and "Variation B" (variation can be based on color, type etc. attributes).

Here, you can itemise these product variations and consider the following solution to handle it:

• Variation pages would be available at www.example.com/my-product/variation-a and www.example.com/my-product/variation-b respectively for "Variation A" and "Variation B" of the product "My Product".

• Make sure you have the canonical URL without the variation id/title set for your variation pages. For instance,

  for these variation pages.

• Mark one of these variations as your default product which will be available at www.example.com/my-product. For example, www.example.com/my-product will display the same content that www.example.com/my-product/variation-a will display.

This way you'll have one single URL for a product page for bots which is www.example.com/my-product and all other variation pages exist with variation identifier which will resolve customer's experience point. Also, as we're exposing only single page to bots in this case, we're neatly able to handle duplicate content penalty issue as well.

You can refer the following 2 variation URLs for the same:

• Apple iPhone 6 - Gold: http://www.flipkart.com/apple-iphone-6/p/itme8ra6fzzme5sz?pid=MOBEYHZ2VSVKHAZH
• Apple iPhone 6 - Silver: http://www.flipkart.com/apple-iphone-6/p/itme8ra6fzzme5sz?pid=MOBEYHZ2VRNZZ2J5

Hope this helps!

[netzkern_AG]

I recently posed this question the other way around, i.e. a site had different pages (technically totally unconnected) for each product variant and it caused certain problems: https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-through-product-variants

I am not sure if this 100% applies to you: I would not use "different model" and "variant" as synonyms. If they are different models, they are different, unique products and have distinct features, advantages, maybe extras etc. Variants, to me, are for example different colour, maybe the same model with different extras or similar. There might be some grey zone where different models might actually be quite like variants, differing little from each other - then I'd ask if they differ enough to say something about each and/or contrast them.

For different models I would in fact chose different pages that go deeper into details. (Think of different books from the same publisher!) For variants, having more than one page is problematic. If I had the free choice, I'd bundle all variants on a single page with dropdowns to select the variant. There is also the question if variants are sufficiently different to write unique content for each - if that is the case, it could justify separate pages. A definite benefit of those is that they can be linked directly.

Regards,

Nico

[SanjidaKazi]

Cheers for the input Nico, you're right. Variant is not the right word I just can't find the right terminology ha!

Our product is always the same it can just be applied to all models of car/van etc so this may be one of those grey areas. It's a vague question really, I think we'll just have to run a trial and see what happens over a few months.

Thanks for taking the time!

Jamie