Tips to Avoid Product URL Duplicate Content
Last week I had the good fortune to speak on Pagination and SEO at SMX East in New York. The panel speakers consisted of Vanessa Fox from Nine By Blue, Maile Onye from Google and myself. The core focus of the panel was Pagination and SEO. Individual topics ranged from managing duplicate content from pagination, new rel=”next”/rel=”prev” meta tags and paginated categorical merchandising.
The title of my presentation was “Paginated Categorical Merchandising & SEO.” The primary focus was tips to avoid product URL duplicate content when merchandising products in multiple categories. To download a complete copy of the presentation, click here.
The answer to the question of “should I merchandise my products in multiple categories” is “yes.” When looking at the Consumer Decision Process or sales funnel (slide 6), the opportunity to increase a retailer’s customer reach (e.g. search demand) by creating more categories in lower tiers of the funnel can be very high. The ability to promote products by season, sales, new arrivals, and the like enable a retailer to create new entry points and better align their brand with the consumer decision process in each stage. The example in the presentation illustrates this opportunity by an increase of 4x based on monthly search volume (click on the image to enlarge).
