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The pages were not intended strictly for SEO value, they were mainly built for user value, i.e. returning a 100% focused page on the part number they searched for. Remember, many people use Google as a navigational tool and they also consider the product to the the part no. they searched for, not the main manufacturer of the product (ATE).

I understand what you are saying though and think building stronger product pages is the way to go, although I will try on a subset of pages and monitor results.

Now to decide which approach to take to yield the best results:

a.) SEO focus on ATE MK70 (list all the vehicle makes/models/years this product work on, including list of part numbers)
or...
b.) SEO focus on vehicle makes/model (then list all the manufacturers of suitable products, with corresponding part numbers)

Thanks,
Woody

Thanks guys

William

What's the thought process of creating a bunch of new pages, even though it's the same product, just referred to differently by different companies? Just for the unique URLs and titles?

Samuel

Would you want to create a separate page for "red Honda Civic," "green Honda civic," and countless other colors? Of course not.

To hopefully address both questions with one answer; the reason for building separate pages was to give SEO focus to the unique part numbers and the product type by vehicle make / model / year.

Very few people in the industry search for the product by name, it's always by part number. In fact, I'd go as far as to say there's few who would actually know the brand of "the product", that being ATE MK70 in our example above.

I understand the logic of building a strong single product page with all these part numbers listed, but would this page really rank well for searches on part number? Bear in mind, unlike the red, green, blue Honda Civic example, where there's perhaps a dozen different colours, we're talking literally 100's of part numbers per product and variations of it's formatting.

I welcome further conversation and ideas on this
Thanks so far guys!

Thank you for your answer William and taking the time to respond,

I understand what you are saying but I am a little skeptical as that being a logical/achievable solution?

Let's say we did write some content for each product, the content would be "thin" to say the least.

As an example, we have over 700 products (per language), this being on of them - http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/product/ate-mk70

This product alone works in over 43 different vehicle marques, illustrated in the list of on the page.

The only thing different about them is the part number, i.e. what the manufacturer refers to this part as (Audi A3 refer to it as 10097003153, Peugeot 206 refer to it as 9659136980). There really is nothing more to say about the product, without creating more dupe content and getting into Panda territory, so I don't see this being a viable solution?

We have the pages in place as mechanics/garages search by manufactures number, not product type.

Any more thoughts/ideas?

Hi all,

My site is www.actronics.eu

Moz reports virtually every product page as duplicate content, flagged as HIGH PRIORITY!.

I know why.

Moz classes a page as duplicate if >95% content/code similar.

There's very little I can do about this as although our products are different, the content is very similar, albeit a few part numbers and vehicle make/model.

Here's an example:
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/audi-a4-8d-b5-1994-2000-abs-ecu-en/bosch-5-3
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/bmw-3-series-e36-1990-1998-abs-ecu-en/ate-34-51

Now, multiply this by ~2,000 products X 7 different languages and you'll see we have a big dupe content issue (according to Moz's Crawl Diagnostics report).

I say "according to Moz..." as I do not know if this is actually an issue for Google? 90% of our products pages rank, albeit some much better than others?

So what is the solution? We're not trying to deceive Google in any way so it would seem unfair to be hit with a dupe content penalty, this is a legit dilemma where our product differ by as little as a part number.

One ugly solution would be to remove header / sidebar / footer on our product pages as I've demonstrated here - http://woodberry.me.uk/test-page2-minimal-v2.html since this removes A LOT of page bloat (code) and would bring the page difference down to 80% duplicate.
(This is the tool I'm using for checking http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php)

Other "prettier" solutions would greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thanks,
Woody

I wouldn't do a no follow however

I agree. My solution was to use NOINDEX, FOLLOW.

Hey Prestashop

To add a little more clarity - would you:

a.) add /search/ to robots.txt, like so:
Disallow: /search/

or

b.) add noindex/nofollow at page level: like so:
in the search results page template.

I would opt for option b, but it would be interested to hear your thoughts too and why.

Thanks,

Would general running blogs, be considered a related niche for "running shirts" to google

Well I'm not going to second guess how Google sees it, but from a logical POV, I would say it's fine.

Hey Matt

Using affiliate links as a backlink strategy can be risky business. Especially if you're allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry join the program.

In answer to your question, hashed URLs will pass PR, and should be fine if the affiliate is in a related niche/sector. That's a widely used SEO strategy to bolster your backlink profile, albeit slightly grey hat.

However I would seriously look at using the rel=nofollow attribute when providing links to affiliates in unrelated niches.

Make sense?

Agreed. This won't result in a penalty.

To add; as most privacy policies are linked from the footer, so you might want to add a rel="nofollow" to the link.

Hi Vadim,

Sorry for late reply .

Thanks for your response. That's great news and assuming %%ParentCategory%% can be used in the same way, I am able to do what I need, or as they say here in England, I am Home and Dry!!

Thanks,
Woody

Thanks Vadim

Can you expand on this further?

Does this allow you to add category tags to meta title, like %%Category%%, which would display Category in selected language?

Thanks,
Woody

hi,
I am using WooCommerce with WPML and would like to be able to create dynamic title and description meta tags for product pages using variables like product name, category name, parent category, product types etc.

Something like this for meta titles:

%%ProductName%% | %%ParentCategory%% > %%ChildCategory%% | %%SiteName%%

And something like this for meta descriptions:

Buy our %%ProductName%% today, the best %%ParentCategory%% available online only at %%SiteName%%

Obviously ProductName, ParentCategory etc would all output the correct value for selected language.

Is this achievable with Yoast's SEO plugin? If not, any other recommendations on plugins?

Thanks,

Woody

Hi Linda,

Thanks for sharing this.

At £450.00 just for the PDF report on SEO in Middle East, I think I'll chance my luck and find someone on oDesk who can do the job for less than the cost of the report

Although I'm sure the report would be extremely well written and very useful.

Cheers.
Woody

Hi All,

Can anyone recommend good SEOs who specialise in Arabic?

I've had my client's website translated into Arabic but the translation company do not specialise in local keyword research. They've translated literally I think (obviously not being an Arabic speaker, I can't confirm this).

I need someone to review the translated site (only 4 pages so far), with a marketing head on, and ensure it includes the relevant local keywords used in UAE countries.

Will also require deeper keyword research for a Google.ae PPC campaign and Ad copy written in Arabic.

If I fail to find someone here in the moz community I'll head over to oDesk, where I'll find everyone and their mother-in-law proclaiming to be the worlds best Arabic SEO
I like recommendations!

Thanks,

Woody

Hey Purple Indigo,

Sounds to me like you are one of the few thought leaders in your niche which is why you're struggling to find others, and perhaps "others" are "competitors", where your not going to get a mention/link from in a million years.

If you're still struggling with this, my suggestion would be slightly different and approach thought leaders of CLOSELY RELATED niches, and introduce yourself as the thought leader in your niche. You'll need to put a spin on the introduction and how phone unlocking is linked to their niche.

Think niches like...

gadgets/tech
mobile/app developers
PC repairs/over-clockers etc
Money saving tips

I'm sure you could find some middle ground with thought leaders in these niches? You just need to get creative and be prepared to share their content first.

Hope this helps

Woody

Yep, that's a useful post, thanks

I was planning to continue building US links anyway but just wondered if there was anything else, any fellow SEO's, in the same position, found to work well?

Cheers

Hi CleverPhD

Thanks for taking the time to answer, and I'll certainly look into Earth Class Mail

Perhaps I've mislead you or you have interpreted my questions incorrectly, but there's not two domains, just one.

companyname.com

It's an international business, with HQ located in the UK. Unfortunately it's only physical location is in the UK but it's products are available internationally. You order from through the website, the product is built in the UK and then exported to the US (or any other country).

If I set the Geographic Target to US in GWT wont we lose rankings in google.co.uk? Which is by far our biggest market, (only because we rank so well in google.co.uk), the potential is in the US.

Just seems strange that the en-us keywords are identical to en-gb keywords, so why are we so far behind on google.com?

Any other ideas?

Cheers
Woody

Hi all,

I have a UK client with a .com domain, hosted on a US server, but the physical business premises is based in the UK. Their product is a really great product and available for export to the US.

I want to rank them higher in the US, more specifically Google.com.

I've helped them rank very well organically in the UK (google.co.uk) for some great terms, however they rank almost nowhere in google.com (gl=us) for the same terms, for example:

In Google.co.uk they rank #3 for the key-phrase.
In Google.com they rank #90 for the same key-phrase.

I've got them some great US focused links with PR coverage including MSN Cars, nydailynews.com etc.

I just wondered if there was any one "golden ticket" for boosting US rankings? I've read that a physical business premises located in the US helps a lot. Can anyone confirm this and if so, would a rented PO box in the US help?

The site has great social signals too, growing twitter following and many FB likes/shares etc.

Any other tips/advice?

Thanks in advance,
Cheers,
Woody

Thanks EGOL,

So you'd definitely recommend a long article for ranking my secondary key phrases even though the page will not be optimised for them, like it would on their own page?