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Hello Jim,

Ben's suggestion is typically what I would suggest as well, but I understand you have a situation that is unique to companies that sell parts to items like boats, vehicles, appliances, etcetera... in which case a single product page with variables won't work because you're dealing with completely different skus / part numbers.

In this case I like your idea of creating a single landing page and then using the rel canonical tag on the others. This way the other pages are still available to users who need a specific product part number, but search engines can see that these are all URL-variations of the same content.

Another, similar option would be to use variables in the URL and instruct Google and Bing to ignore those variables and treat them as if they were the base URL. Example:

www.savvyboater.com/store/p/Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-17-X-92-.aspx**?variant=72216P**

www.savvyboater.com/store/p/Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-17-X-92-.aspx**?variant=72217P**

And this would be the canonical / base URL:

www.savvyboater.com/store/p/Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-17-X-92-.aspx

That may be a problem from the development side because your standard URL includes the product's unique identifier at the beginning, as in:

http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/**2100**-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-14-X-74-.aspx

An example of a problem that could arise is if you decide to just choose one product to be the main one, as in:

http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/**2100**-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-14-X-74-.aspx**?variant=72217P**

http://www.savvyboater.com/store/p/**2100**-Cover-for-V-Hull-Fishing-Boat-with-Side-Console-O-B-14-X-74-.aspx**?variant=****72216P**

But then what happens if 2100 goes out of stock or is removed? Would every other model then be inaccessible at that URL?

I'd have to know more about this before helping with that issue, but it may not be a problem at all. You'll have to discuss options with your developers and go from there.

Good luck!

Hello Peter,

Best practice is to avoid looking like a thin affiliate site. That means making the content very useful and unique, obviously, but also linking out via non-affiliate links to other resources as well. In situations where you have several followable links going out to high-quality, trustworthy sites about the topic I have not found it necessary to hide or redirect affiliate links. I used to advise putting the js that controlled the redirect into an external .js file within a /script folder and then blocking that folder, but have found that Google still executes the javascript (they have to or they wouldn't be able to navigate half the sites out there) even if the file is blocked.

However, if your site is mostly affiliate links (like a review site) and you don't feel comfortable with, or don't have time, to link out to trusted resources and create unique, useful content that provides a lot of value, then I would recommend going ahead and using some type of redirect script. In my opinion you'd be better off going with an ad management tool of some sort over an known affiliate redirect script or plugin, which may raise a red flag right away.

Long story short: There is nothing wrong with sending links through a redirect first if you want to track the clicks and other metrics. I just wouldn't use a tool called "affiliate cloaking script" or something like that.

Good luck.

Nathan please see my response to this question in the Private Q&A section. In short, I don't think this has to do with Google's goof-up a couple weeks ago, or with some of the other shifts, but I do think you are in violation of some of their guidelines on a pretty massive scale, although unintentionally and with good reason. I'll go ahead and paste my answer below, but the Private version includes links and other information that could identify the site.

Hello Nathan,

There were some pretty major shifts on the 16th, 19th and 24th-26th so the time-frame raises a red flag. However, with the little information I have (basically your indexation count) I think you may have a problem that isn't related to any of the recent algorithm shifts.

Assuming you are talking about ####.com, I show 462,000 indexed URLs from that domain. Nearly half a million URLs is quite a bit to index and you can imagine that Google might want to thin that out a bit and focus only on the ones that are important and original.

If you have 460k + pages, but most of them are duplicate content or significantly duplicate content, and most of them have no external links, this would put you in danger of being affected by several different algorithms/filters/penalties put in place by Google to keep such pages from bloating their index and outranking what they think to be "better" content.

That can be a hard pill to swallow because you know your content is good and people like what they find there. But let's look at this from the perspective of an impartial machine...

The following EXACT phrase appears, word-for-word, on about 22,800 different pages, most of them from within your site: "PHRASED REMOVED FOR PUBLIC VIEWING"

The following is typical of the "Related Terminology" section of your pages, which could be interpreted by Google as being keyword spam: "You may have searched any one of these terms to find this product: Keyword1, keyword2, keyword3, keyword4, keyword5, keyword6, keyword7, keyword8, so forth and so-on for a few dozen keywords".

A lot of these pages, possibly most of them, have very little unique/exclusive content. Instead, they list out features and uses from a database. Because of this you have many thousands of pages all with the same potential pool of words, each choosing to show more or less the same words in various orders and combinations. Furthermore, it is obvious that the pages are generated by a machine. Looking at this example, a "better" page would be one that has an introduction telling the visitor what "Polybenzimidazole (PBI) is and what it's used for in paragraph form, in addition to the list of features and uses: http://www.###.com/###/ . I'm sure most of your users will know what PBI is for if they search the site for it, but remember we're dealing with machine algorithms designed to detect spamming attempts, such as article spinning, which uses pretty much the same technique of switching around the order of words to generate hundreds or thousands of "articles" from a single original.

I wouldn't venture to provide specific advice on how to fix these issues without knowing more about your business. My suggestion is to look for a reputable outside SEO agency who can help you overcome these issues, which may involve removing a lot of pages from the index, allowing more content to be seen on each datasheet, or some other measures.

Good luck!

I can see right away that not everyone agrees on how to optimize a category page. This is just my opinion based on experience, but I really don't think that 500 words, or several paragraphs, is necessary or even desirable on a category page. And I don't recommend putting the copy down at the bottom either.

If you use the word "SEO copy" to explain a chunk of text, right away that should be a red flag to you. If you claim that copy is good for users, why would you put it way down at the bottom? Because it kills your conversion rate? Well then it's not good for users is it? What's good for users will improve your conversion rate. Remember that.

In my experience a category page only needs about two-three useful sentences with appropriate keywords to rank. And by "useful" I don't mean just saying "This is our Green Widgets page where you'll find the bets green widgets in the world. We have big green widgets, small green widgets and cheap green widgets."

I mean something like "Find the best green widget for your needs by using our filtering options above. Choose to see green widgets sorted by price, color and popularity, or simply browse the offerings below. Call 1-800-Green-Widgets or click the 'Chat' button to the right if you have any questions."

If it is a complicated topic, like something scientific or technical, you may consider adding more copy for the users to help them choose the right brand / product. In this case, a drop-down "Read More" type of div works well, as does a link to a larger "guide" on another page. If they don't know what they want yet, maybe your category page is too far down in the funnel, in which case sending them to a separate "guide" could be beneficial.

I'll leave this topic open for discussion for awhile since others my find some very good reasons to disagree. In the end, what you really need to do is test out a few different options on different category pages and go with whatever works best for your users and your site.

Hello SKE,

I've dealt with this or similar situations several times and have found the following to be the best course of action:

1. Report the scraper site to Google using the DMCA complaint form:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?pli=1&

2. Take measures to protect yourself against future scrapers.
http://www.affiliatebeginnersguide.com/articles/block_bots.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/postpanda-your-original-content-is-being-outranked-by-scrapers-amp-partners

Good luck!