one product many sales pages on one site

[pwrkid]

I have a list of products I want to sell online; each product can be described in many different ways depending on who the target customer is. What I mean is that when people would search for the product they would search for it differently depending on exactly what they looking for. e.g.:

"Black Leather chair" or
"Adjustable office chair" or
Or "chair with good back support"
Etc...

I don't want one page for the product to have all these keywords because it becomes an unpleasant shopping experience for the visitor. So what I have decided is to create many sales pages for the one product, each describing the product for a targeted audience.

So in essence there is no duplicate content. (Yet)
I also deliver the product state wide. But would like to show up in searches where people type the name of the town where their main shopping district is: e.g.:
"Buy black leather chair Springfield"

In this case I want each of my product pages (every version) to have a version based on the town. For example it will have:
"We will deliver your black leather chair to Springfield and all surrounding areas”

I intend to make each product page per suburb slightly different from the main description perspective, but in the same context. So now there would be a page for:

"black leather chair Springfield"
" black leather chair Shelbyville"
" red leather chair Springfield"
" red leather chair Shelbyville"
“adjustable office chair Springfield” and so on..

I know the content part is a lot of effort, so please don’t comment on that. I have got that part taken care of.
My pertinent questions are these:

1) How do you suggest I structure my site to link to all these pages? A simple browse would be ridiculous. As someone who enters the site from the start page is not going to be looking for one particular thing, but rather just chairs.
2) How do you think G search engine sees this? Is it considered onsite duplicate content or is it considered optimizing content to attract certain keywords thus seen as an attempt to please the search engines and penalized accordingly?

[timbow5745]

For answer 1) I would use a db and have a couple fields that would link the 5 products together. 1 of the fields would just have the group id. The other field would have like a rank 1 to 5, 1 being the chair you will show if people are just browsing/searching chair, the other chairs will remain hidden. Also if someone is searching for black leather chair, you would get two results of the same chair, but the one with the higher ranking will get shown. I will let someone else answer the other question, but I don't think it would bother google if you kept the duplicate content somewhat different. Hope this helps. Tim Willis(mybizzone.biz).

[deepsand]

Having multiple pages for the same product, where the only difference is the search string, brings no benefit to either you or the visitor. Bear in mind that, when entering search strings, few specify exact match, i.e., most do not enclose the string in double-quotation marks; and, they may use different strings on different occasions even though seeking the same thing.

Should you actually succeed in making the content of each page sufficiently different as to avoid duplicate content, confusion will be sowed in the minds of those visitor who do more than visit your site but once, and then view but a single page for the product in question. You will end up creating that which you say you wish to avoid, "an unpleasant shopping experience for the visitor."

Furthermore, any PR accrued will be scattered amongst a myriad pages, thus diluting its effective value.

Don't slice the pie any finer than necessary.

[timbow5745]

Another thing you could do is have the same page for all the chairs and just dynamicly change the picture and the city name on the page itself based on the search criteria.
goodluck tim willis(MyBizZone.biz)

[deepsand]

But would like to show up in searches where people type the name of the town where their main shopping district is: e.g.:
"Buy black leather chair Springfield"

How many people include the city in such searches?

[rwil02]

How many people include the city in such searches?

Anyone who wants to pick up, or only pay local delivery fees?

[pwrkid]

Thanks for the feedback.

I think people looking to buy chairs offline at local retailers will be searching for furniture stores in their local district that have their products viewable online. That is why I am targeting search terms based on town.

So, yes I guess I need to consider what happens when someone doesn't include the town name in their search?

My strategy at this point (and I would love to hear feedback on this) is to have an additional page that is not town specific. This product page will be the first of many result pages served up when browsing or searching the site. Town specific pages will be accessible on page 2..last page. Similar to when you have many ebay auctions for the same product. I guess I will be ranking the pages (Thanks timbow5745)

From a usability perspective most visitors would only visit page 1 and 2 of the result set.

I could prevent links to duplicate content being shown to users who have already viewed one version of the product page. But that may look suspicious to a SE when spidering the site.

Essentially I want everything indexed for access from a SE Search, but not necessarily accessible for a user accessing from the website front page. Any examples of this practice?

[deepsand]

Anyone who wants to pick up, or only pay local delivery fees?

Which is how many?

[deepsand]

I think people looking to buy chairs offline at local retailers will be searching for furniture stores in their local district that have their products viewable online. That is why I am targeting search terms based on town.

So, yes I guess I need to consider what happens when someone doesn't include the town name in their search?

My strategy at this point (and I would love to hear feedback on this) is to have an additional page that is not town specific. This product page will be the first of many result pages served up when browsing or searching the site. Town specific pages will be accessible on page 2..last page. Similar to when you have many ebay auctions for the same product. I guess I will be ranking the pages (Thanks timbow5745)

From a usability perspective most visitors would only visit page 1 and 2 of the result set.

I could prevent links to duplicate content being shown to users who have already viewed one version of the product page. But that may look suspicious to a SE when spidering the site.

All of these concerns can be better handled by using a hierarchical organization, rather than having separate pages for each and every possible terminal node.

For example, Product Line --> Item --> GeoLocation --> Store; or, GeoLocation --> Store --> Product Line --> Item. Given that the more probable search will not include Location data, the former example would be the better, with the Location specific pages being served up via an on-site search function.

Essentially I want everything indexed for access from a SE Search, but not necessarily accessible for a user accessing from the website front page. Any examples of this practice?

This may not be such a good idea, for 3 reasons.

As earlier mentioned, you will:
1) Run the risk of having what is deemed to be duplicate content;
2) Dilute the effective value of accrued PR.

And,
3) There is no good reason for assuming that a visitor will not have a legitimate reason for viewing pages other than those predicated on his initial search and/or location string(s).

[pwrkid]

Which is how many?

Most of the "purchasing" customers since, the products carried are high priced niche items that people will want to inspect in person before committing to purchase.

The purpose of the project is to draw their attention to the item and get them to visit the store.