Basic Unique Pages Question

[Miop]

I know this sounds like a very basic question but since the G u-know-what I am starting again from bottom up and would like to ask the experts.
What is the best way to place links from a product page to other similar or related product pages without ending up with pages that look too similar to a SE?
For example, I have a page that sells widgets in green, but also another page that sells the same or similar widgets in red (they are very similar widgets but they are made of totally different materials = red and green so cannot be mixed on the same page).
If someone finds the red widget page directly, I want to be able to quickly show them that we also sell green ones.
Problem I have found is that in checking pages for similar content, putting these links/descriptions affects that.
Which leads to my second question which is how different should pages be from one another? I have two pages which look totally different but are acually 38% similar even though there is hardly anything on one of them! Is there a level which one should seek to keep under wrt similarity?
Thanks.

[jbinbpt]

I don't believe that similar pages in the same domain would be a problem. Provide a link that describes the other marterial (red abs widgets) and make the title different.

jb

[claus]

This is "the basic shopping cart syndrome" - pages that do not have a lot of copy text and has identical function (product display) will easily look as duplicates although for a human they might appear naturally as being about entirely different products.

Some ways to make them less similar and more unique:

1) Add specific unique copy text for each product
2) Use different titles and H1 - H2 tags
3) Use different metatags
4) Use different alt tags on images
5) Use a bit of bold and/or italic on the discriminating words.

Try to use the different term "red" vs. "blue" more often in these important places than you use the common term, eg. "widgets"

Of course you would want to link from the red to the blue or green from a conversion and usability wiewpoint. Try to make those internal same-level-page-to-page links so that they do not have the common term in them, unly the difference, eg:

not: <a>Red widgets</a>
but: <a>Also available in Red</a>

Of course you will also want anchor text with the full qualifying name - use that on other pages, eg. higher hierarchy level pages (product category front pages, site maps, etc).

Hope this helps.
/claus

[Miop]

Thanks for the help.
BTW one thing I did since the update was to add cross indexing to the subindex pages, (so that someone entering the site at the green widget page would easilty that see we did red widgets too) and those pages with that linking on them are no longer found anywhere within the top 100 pages. I don't know if that is why, but pages without that cross referencing have remained where they were.

[Miop]

One more question - if you are a shop selling widgetry in four different types of materials, what would people advise to put on the index page and in the Title Tag of the index page, given that the shop is divided up into four sections?