Canonical tag: how to deal with product variations in the music industry?

[fablau]

Hello here.

I own a music publishing company:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/

And we have several similar items which only difference is the instrument they have been written for.

For example, look at the two item pages below:

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/Canon2Vl.html

http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/score/Canon2Vla.html

They are the exact same piece of music, but written in a different way to target 2 different instrumental combinations. If it wasn't for the user reviews that can make those two similar pages different, Google could see that as duplicate content. Am I correct? And if so, how do you suggest to tackle such a possible problem? Via canonical tags? How?

To have a better idea of the magnitude of the problem, have a look at these search results on our site which give you product variations of basically the same piece of music, the only difference is in the targeted instruments:

www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Canon+in+D

www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Meditation

www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Flight

And, similarly, we have collections of pieces targeting different instruments:

www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Wedding+Collection

www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Christmas+Collection

www.virtualsheetmusic.com/s.php?k=Halloween+Collection

Any thoughts and suggestions to tackle this potential page duplication issue are very welcome!

Thank you to anyone in advance.

[EGOL]

There are a few ways to solve this problem when you are offering very similar products.

1. Spend what it takes to write unique and substantive content for each product variant.  I use this for my most important products, often writing over 1000 words and adding several photos and sometimes a video.

2. Combine similar products and offer them all on the same page.   I do a lot of this with color, size, material variations.

3. Publish pages similar to what you currently have and risk a duplicate content problem.  (this is called "take your chances with Panda)

4. Noindex similar pages or use rel=canonical to assign the duplicates to a single URL.  I have a site with lots of pdf documents.  All similar documents are offered via an image and a download button on the same page.  The pdf documents are blocked from indexing and assigned to a single .html page using rel=canonical via htaccess.  (I had a Panda problem on this site because of the many pdfs and their host pages.  Rankings went down across the domain.  After I noindexed pdfs and assigned each pdf to an html page with rel=canonical via htaccess my rankings came back in a few weeks)

[danrawk]

Only thing i would be to add is to review your google webmaster account and seomoz spidering results to see if any of this is already showing up as duplicate. that way, you know for sure that you have a problem "right now".  You're ahead of the game though in recognizing that the thin-ness of your product pages will cause an issue.

[fablau]

Yes, I think the best way to move for me, in the long term, will be to add unique contents to each page, but in the short term the Canonical tag could help to consolidate similar page.

I have an additional question though about using canonicals for this kind of music pieces:

If I have 3 versions of a piece named "Wedding Collection" like this:

1. Wedding Collection for violin and piano

2. Wedding Collection for cello and piano

3. Wedding Collection for guitar

And I consolidate all three pages with a canonical pointing to a main "Wedding Collection" page that lists those 3 different versions, what happens if someone search for "wedding collection for violin and piano"? Will I be able to rank for those specific keywords? And if so, what page will show-up in the index? Here is how the use of the canonical can become confusing to me... thanks for any further help!

[fablau]

Good point Danrawk, I am currently in a  "thin content and duplicate content cleaning-up" phase of my website due to Panda issues, and I am getting rid (via noindex meta-tag) of thousands of very similar and thin content pages that may have hurt me (gradually, Google takes time to noindex pages), and I plan to keep just the best products and special items inside the index, but even by doing so I will end up having still similar pages due to the above "variations" issue, which in the long run could still give me trouble.

[EGOL]

This is not a simple question.

Keyword research, knowledge of how YOUR visitors search, and information about the content potential of your site should all be considered to arrive at an optimal decision.

Since I don't know much about your website, traffic, visitors and keywords I should not give poorly-considered advice.

[fablau]

Well, what I am trying to understand is if consolidating 2 or more pages into a "main" page via canonical (in my case would be possibly 2 to hundreds of similar pages sharing the same piece of music for different  instruments) will keep the same potential as having single indexed pages from a user search stand point.

I hope my question/concern makes sense... thanks!

[fablau]

Any ideas about what I just asked?

Thanks.

[EGOL]

If you combine these topics you will have a loss of relevance for each of them individually..

The only way to avoid the loss is to write substantive and unique content for each keyword variant.

There is no way to get out of this work unless you give up and allow your site to suffer from the thin content and duplicate content.

[fablau]

Thank you, I think you clarified the problem very well.

Appreciated your help!