What's the step-by-step for consolidating duplicate product variants?

What's the step-by-step for consolidating duplicate product variants?

'Q: Each color of my t-shirt is its own URL. Are they competing with each other?'

Short answer: Usually yes — pick one canonical product URL and treat colors/sizes as variants of it, not separate pages.

The longer version: Run this.
— Decide your model: one product page with a variant selector (preferred) OR separate variant URLs that all canonical to a master.
— If consolidating to one page: 301 the dead variant URLs to the master, keep variant images, and expose variants in hasVariant schema.
— If keeping variant URLs (e.g. each color has search demand): self-canonical each, but make sure titles/descriptions differ meaningfully.
— Never canonical to a URL with different price or availability — Google may ignore it.
— Update internal links to point at the chosen canonical.

Example: a brand had 9 color URLs splitting equity nine ways; consolidating to one master page with a swatch selector doubled the master's rankings.

Rule of thumb: variants share a product, so they should usually share a page.

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