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That's good solid advice. Thank you. Other ecommerce sites in the niche are nothing to write home about. Where they win is where this site has some major issues (larger than the one I'm asking about) that need fixing too.

I'm just trying to come up with a cohesive plan for a site that will blow the competition out of the water on Google (achievable) and increase sales / visitor. This is part of that.

Much as I don't like your suggestion due to the amount of work it is going to take to implement, I do think you are right and it's a better solution than the canonical tags.

That said, I suspect the canonical tags will be tried first, and then we will end up going with the content writing.

I did consider that. It's in the hundreds and it could be done, but I'm not sure that's the way to go for the following reasons:

1. The number of consumables in the list is going to be at least 8 per page (each with snippet information and order box). That means that it would take a significant amount of text to make the content significantly different.

2. There is not a lot of difference between many of the machines, so writing a decent amount of text per item would be a major task. The more text written the more it affects point 3.

3. The text would have to come before the products for SEO (after the products just looks like the boilerplate-esque text that it would actually be) and that's not good for the consumer who just wants to see the consumables.

Also, we are finding more problems with the site every hour and we may not have the resources to get the text accomplished in a reasonable time-frame. Certainly, I'd have to be more certain of getting a "win" from it than I currently am before I suggest spending on it over other issues.

I may be missing something, but wouldn't canonical tags sort out your sort orders at least?

The scenario:

Online shop selling consumables for machinery.

Consumable range A (CA) contains consumables w, x, y, z. The individual consumables are not a problem, it is the consumables groups I'm having problems with.

The Problem:

Several machines use the same range of consumables. i.e. Machine A (MA) consumables page contains the list (CA) with the contents w,x,y,z. Machine B (MB) consumables page contains exactly the same list (CA) with contents w,x,y,z.

Machine A page = Machine B page = Consumables range A page

Some people will search Google for the consumables by the range name (CA). Most people will search by individual machine (MA Consumables, MB Consumables etc).

If I use canonical tags on the Machine consumable pages (MA + MB) pointing to the consumables range page (CA) then I'm never going to rank for the Machine pages which would represent a huge potential loss of search traffic.

However, if I don't use canonical tags then all the pages get slammed as duplicate content.

For somebody that owns machine A, then a page titled "Machine A consumables" with the list of consumables is exactly what they are looking for and it makes sense to serve it to them in that format.

However, For somebody who owns machine B, then it only makes sense for the page to be titled "Machine B consumables" even though the content is exactly the same.

The Question:

What is the best way to handle this from both a user and search engine perspective?

Hi,

I have two sites. One is a new .co.uk site which contains duplicate information to a .ie site.

Currently, if I do a search for the company name in Google.co.uk it returns the .ie site. The .co.uk site needs some localisation done and some links (really is brand new).

I was going to place hreflang tags as follows on both sites:-

The order would flip for the .co.uk site from the above order.

However, just to make things interesting, the .ie site was hit by Penguin and it hasn't recovered yet (and won't recover for another few months while I fix the issues).

So the question is, what should I do?  Do I go ahead an let Google know for sure that these sites are linked despite one of them having been penalized? Or do I let Google think that there is a .co.uk site with duplicate content to another .ie site?

Just because it works doesn't mean it should be used though. If you are saying "This content is more important on that site", then you could quickly end up with very imbalanced sites. If lots of content on a site has canonical tags to another site then surely it negates the purpose of having multiple sites to start with....

.... but the reasoning behind splitting up a site like that is another discussion entirely!

rel="canonical" is not going to be of any help because you are dealing with separate sites. The only way to have the same content on different sites is to have that content made unique by rewriting it.

rel="canonical" would work with your current structure.

A very late reply, but just in case anybody else has the same question.... I've been using Tribulants shopping cart. Once you get the kinks worked out it's good. I included SEO tips in my review.

The short version is that it is a well featured cart and it's very cheap.

I'm going to have to make some assumptions for this.

Lets take a florist in Boston as an example of an internal page.  Once you've taken care of the on-page SEO (url, title tags, h tags, mentions in content and of course unique content) then I'd start looking for links from pages about both floristry and Boston.  That should give a strong indicator of local and product relevance.

Where you can run into problems is when you have the same text with only minor changes for location.  If you have a page about florists in Boston, one in New York, one in Dallas etc and the only text that differs between those pages is the location then you are going to have to rethink your site / database structure (Panda no likeee).  Unique information is vital.

If on the other hand you are a florist with branches in each of those places then I don't see a problem with creating individual location pages, but again with unique content. I mean all unique, not substantially unique or slightly unique.  In your google local you could use each branches internal url as the website url.

Hope that's of some help. You may have to be a bit more specific with your question though.

I've never used video other than embedding youtube videos.  This time I want to host my own with encryption for the subscriber content and sample videos for general consumption.  Would love any pointers at all.

I would also like the content to be streamable on ipad etc.  What platform would you use (adobe etc)  and why?

I don't want to start out on one road to discover down the line that it sucks for SEO.  Obviously the subscription content will suck since it will only be available to logged in users, but the rest.....

In a nutshell I want to know how to host video well for SEO and make it shareable, but with the option to also have some of the video content subscription only. (should have put it like that to start with probably.)

I'm going to have to make some assumptions for this.

Lets take a florist in Boston as an example of an internal page.  Once you've taken care of the on-page SEO (url, title tags, h tags, mentions in content and of course unique content) then I'd start looking for links from pages about both floristry and Boston.  That should give a strong indicator of local and product relevance.

Where you can run into problems is when you have the same text with only minor changes for location.  If you have a page about florists in Boston, one in New York, one in Dallas etc and the only text that differs between those pages is the location then you are going to have to rethink your site / database structure (Panda no likeee).  Unique information is vital.

If on the other hand you are a florist with branches in each of those places then I don't see a problem with creating individual location pages, but again with unique content. I mean all unique, not substantially unique or slightly unique.  In your google local you could use each branches internal url as the website url.

Hope that's of some help. You may have to be a bit more specific with your question though.

Get rid of your second h1 tag.  A page should only have one. You are right, if your plugin is not picking it up then it's a problem with the plugin.

I think it's a bit harsh to say that h1's have minimal impact.  If you were to have a page with just a h1 title then it's not going to do much, but it's all about context.  Does your url relate to your h1, does your h1 relate to the content on the page, do your subsequent h tags ( h2, h3, etc) relate to the surrounding text.

It is true that h1 tags do not have as much weight as they once had, but just because Google et al have downgraded the importance a bit does not make h1 tags irrelevant.

Aside from search engines, h1 tags are an important part of page structure for your users (the visitors that really count).  Don't forget about users with disabilities too.

Been thinking a bit about tags myself.  Time was (not very long ago) when tags were great. They gave alternate page titles and Google never seemed to mind the duplicate content under separate headings.  Add six tags to a post and you got 7 pages indexed essentially, each with meaningful headings.

It does still work, but less so, and I'm noticing a lot of changes with how wordpress behaves in the SERPS now - particularly with new sites.

I used to always write a post about each page I created too and link to it.  So with tags and categories, each page would then be starting out with an extra 10 or so internal links (each tag and category having a different url).  Google used to seem to go "oh, a page with links from 10 other pages... it must be the most important".  Now it goes "huh, what do I do here?  I think the blog post is maybe the most important this week, but I'll try out a tag next week, and hey, lets devalue the page because it has internal links with the same text from multiple pages".

Love to hear your thoughts....

Freelancer.  Some days I wish I was in an agency though. On the other hand, when the wind is behind you there is no better way to be! (IMHO of course).

rel="canonical" is not going to be of any help because you are dealing with separate sites. The only way to have the same content on different sites is to have that content made unique by rewriting it.

rel="canonical" would work with your current structure.