[e-commerce] Should I index product variants?

[seo22]

Hi guys,

I have e-commerce site, that sells car tires. I was wondering would I benefit from making all Product Variants ( for example each tire size ) as different page, that has link to the main product to provide some affiliation, or should I make each variant noindex, and add rel=canonical to the main product.

The benefits from having each variant indexed can be many:

• greater click through rate

• more relative results for customers

• etc.

But I'm not sure how to handle the duplicate content issue ( in this case, only the title, URL and H1 can be different ).

Regards.

[anthonydnelson]

I agree with Mat on this one. Also, building links to one page and making it stronger can lead to it ranking well for those same long-tail terms that are only in the on-page copy instead of in the page titles.

Also, I think the one page approach is a better experience for the users.

[matbennett]

Unless you can genuinely and legitimately justify unique content for each I would either canonical them from the start or better still get them on one page.

I know it sounds like an easy long-tail win, but it can go horribly wrong.  I'm currently working on a site that is being heavily penalised as a result of a similar approach and we're having a nightmare getting the thin content out of the index.