Product names which repeat (or Kwd Density issues) =Duplicate Content Penalty?

[luckychucky]

Say you sell Stainless Steel Widgets, and that's all you sell. They're sold in a number of variations, for example:

• Classic Pattern Stainless Steel Widgets
• European Designer Stainless Steel Widgets
• Economy Stainless Steel Widgets
• Smooth-Finish Stainless Steel Widgets (Large)
• ClearCoat Stainless Steel Widgets (Medium)
• Stainless Steel Widget Assortment: Starter Kit
• Children's Mini Stainless Steel Widgets
• Special Overstock Stainless Steel Widget Closeouts
• Wholesale Bulk Quantity Stainless Steel Widgets
• Antique Reproduction Stainless Steel Widgets
...and so forth.

Of course, every product unavoidably shares the same consistent keyword phrase:

"Stainless Steel Widgets".

Again and again the phrase is within link text from a main category thumbnails page over to each solo product page, where it's then repeated in each URL, meta description tag etc. &c.

What happens with SEO?

(Apologies in advance if I'm asking a question that's already been well answered elsewhere. Please forbear and lead me to those posts, if you'd be so kind. Thanks much.)

[phranque]

I don't think that anyone will say - "Those european designer stainless steel forks are cool"

especially if they are wood forks...
=8)

it's simple:
the page title and url probably need to have "stainless steel" in them.
not every internal link needs "stainless steel" anchor text.

[zeus]

Im sorry, but it really gets on my nerves that we the last 2 years dont make a website for our customers, but for google. some times a different view of the same product was nice for a customer, now we have to be careful with text, duplicated,..... you can not just make a site anymore for the customers, special when we talking eCommerce.

[JD_Toims]

some times a different view of the same product was nice for a customer, now we have to be careful with text, duplicated.

I'd make both and throw a rel=canonical on the "secondary view" -- Also, I'm not sure if I should point it out or not, but people have this over-blown fear of duplicate content, imo, because there's duplicate content here and has been for years, which doesn't seem to be having a negative effect at all [It's even linked to -- Gasp!] -- And no, it's not canonicalized or noindexed, or at least wasn't last time I checked [right now] and, yes, I checked the server headers and even the "logged out" version search engines see to make sure it wasn't done there.

The "hype" and FUD surrounding duplicate content being some "huge, crazy, will absolutely tank your site, so it must be avoided at any and all costs" that leads to the "I can't do what I think is best for visitors" line of thinking has really gotten out of hand, again, imo.

[fathom]

If people can't figure out they're reading about HTML 5.1 when they visit the link

How does one arrive at any website whether they search for a phrase or typed in the destination address or clicked on a link in an associated story/document and they didn't know they wanted to search for that, or type that in or weren't interested in that story or document?

Hypothetically discussions can also have flaws... e.g. it would never likely happen in the real world that someone would want shoe shining tips only to arrive at the W3C Standard for HTML 5.0 instead and needing exact matched link-oriented breadcrumbs to find their way around the shoe shining HTML tips guide Standard 5.0.

Where was the guide anyway?

[silver4dracs]

I would like to throw this combination as I have asked it before and have never seen a clear answer.

For stainless steel forks we were displaying several collections/brands that are annually based but only certain patterns are available for those years.

Stainless steel fork from manufacturer X from 2000 are available pattern X, Y, and Z
Stainless steel fork from manufacturer Y from 2000 are available pattern X, Y, and Z
Stainless steel fork from manufacturer Z from 2000 are available pattern X, Y, and Z

Stainless steel fork from manufacturer X from 2001 are available pattern A, B, and C
Stainless steel fork from manufacturer Y from 2001 are available pattern A, B, and C
Stainless steel fork from manufacturer Z from 2001 are available pattern A, and C but not B

Stainless steel fork from manufacturer X from 2002 are available pattern X, Y, and Z
Stainless steel fork from manufacturer Y from 2002 are available pattern X, Y, and Z
Stainless steel fork from manufacturer Z from 2002 are available pattern X, Y, and Z


This hypothetical is demonstrating three different manufacturers that are offering their version of the stainless steel fork with similar but their version of a classic pattern. What is estimated to be the best way to display these products without overusing roughly the same anchor text?

The method that we selected to try to differential the anchor text was to have the year and pattern along with the brand first, but still maintaining stainless steel forks. Isn’t there still some concern that manufacturer X for years 2000 and 2002 would be very close to duplicate because only the year of the collection is different?

Categorically what we deemed the best possible way to display this was to categorize the year, then show all of the appropriate items for that year, thoughts?

I agree with many that we can no longer build e-commerce categories that are relevant to the way people search, talk, and ultimately buy products without fear of upsetting the Google Algo God.

[incrediBILL]

This hypothetical is demonstrating three different manufacturers that are offering their version of the stainless steel fork with similar but their version of a classic pattern. What is estimated to be the best way to display these products without overusing roughly the same anchor text?

Same as the other examples, just normalize your data and put them into categories.

Once you get to the product detail page, you can obviously put the full text in the title, etc. and Google is usually smart enough to correlate your link from the category page and know that the category of "stainless steel widgets" with a link of "blue" anchor text relates to the title "Blue Stainless Steel widgets".

I always tell people to reference big websites any time you to know how to do it and see how Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc. all do these things and you usually can't go wrong following their lead. They spend tons of money to get this stuff done properly.

Additionally, if you have an industry leader in your niche, see what they're doing and see if it's working for them. No need to second guess and reinvent the wheel.