Mass Referencing Supplier Product Info & SEO
-
Hi
I have a mass referencing project which will mean taking between 1000-2000 SKUs from a supplier, taking all their content & loading it onto our site.
I need to make a case for not doing this from an SEO perspective. As these are pages I want to rank.
I'm going to push for optimising titles/meta titles before they're loaded in.
However if not, I may be forced to load in the products as they are & go back to optimise everything - does anyone see a real issue with this?
I know there are so many 'similar' descriptions of products on ecommerce sites & across the web, so how does Google deal with these? The pages won't be identical as the templates are different, but maybe 100-200 words of descriptions could be until we work through them.
Although this isn't ideal - what are the implications?
The problem for me is, the managers just want the products on the site, without much thought regarding organic traffic/categorisation initially.
Thanks!
-
Becky,
I think Sean has given you some great advice. I'd just like to add a few things.
I have seen rankings drop when sites add a bunch (thousands) of products with manufacturer descriptions and allow them to be indexed. I have seen rankings rise when these are either removed from the index, or improved with unique copy.
However, you have the manufacturer description so why not leverage it? One idea I have proposed to a few clients is to use that as the description provided to channel partners, affiliates and sites like Amazon, eBay and Google Shopping. Let them deal with the duplicate content while you keep yours unique. Otherwise you'll write all of that unique copy and within months they'll all have it on their sites (because you gave it to them in feeds) and that hard work and money will have been for nothing.
-
Great thank you!
-
Hi Becky,
Authority-wise, they were product pages that were deep down in the IA of the site so they had very little PA anyway. And rankings-wise, they were very niche, branded products so we didn't have a great deal of competition anyway - rankings were always pretty good.
Even if you're selling something unbranded and generic, I would say that you should create the pages ASAP to start the ball rolling. You're not going to get penalized in the first instance of loading them on and when you come back later to optimise them, you should gain rankings.
Cheers,
Sean
-
Hi Sean
This is helpful thanks.
Did you see any drop in authority/rankings when loading them in unoptimised to start with?
Thanks!
-
Hey,
I used to work for a company that had me loading on around 10,000 product SKUs into the system at one time. Rather than lifting the supplier descriptions of each item, we used excel to template up the descriptions of the products based on the stock information we had - ranges, sizes, materials etc. Page titles, however, we left auto generated by our CMS until we had a chance to go back and review them.
I would get them loaded on the site in bulk to get them indexed/available for product PPC bidding with the intention of coming back to them later to optimise - meta descriptions, page titles, product descriptions etc.
In the end I think we used a crowdsourcing platform like Elance to hire several freelancers to write the product descriptions uniquely. It was a great investment from an SEO and written copy perspective. Might be something to think about?
Cheers,
Sean
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
WordPress Themes and SEO
I am helping out a client with updating their website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cangelmarketer
The theme they currently have hasn't been updated in ages (I am going to guess years). Would there be a difference in updating to the most recent version of their theme and changing them to a completely different theme? Or because they update in the current theme is so large anyway, it won't make a difference in terms of SEO. The reason I ask is that they don't know their Themeforest details to log in and download the most recent version of the theme, so they would have to re-purchase it, and with the hosting, they have access to a range of themes includes in their package. Thanks0 -
Pagination & duplicate meta
Hi I have a few pages flagged for duplicate meta e.g.: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches I can;t see anything wrong with the pagination & other pages have the same code, but aren't flagged for duplicate: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=2 I can't see to find the issue - any ideas? Becky0 -
What is the best SEO way for a shop
Hi there ! A client want to sell some products on its future website but just a small range (the most part of this website will not be an online shop). The idea is to add a "shop" button in the menu to redirect clients in this shop. I would like your opinion about how should I construct this shop, what do you think is the best for SEO : "www.website.com/shop" or "shop.website.com" thank you in advance for your answers !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnjinFrance0 -
A/B Testing - Should I add product descriptions on my category landing pages as well as on product pages and if so . how to do this to avoid duplicate content
Hi All, I recently relaunched a new design on my tool hire eCommerce website and now display my products in grid form on my category landing pages as opposed to just a list view which we previously had on the old design. My bounce rates are alot higher than they use to be and my gut instinct is telling me maybe this is wrong . I want to do some a/b testing using a list view. My question is , previously in our list views we just showed the images and pricing and had on page content on the bottom of the page. The user would click on the product image and they would then we taken to the product page which has the product description , t&c, etc etc.. If I was to do this in my a/b testing but change it so we also displayed the product descriptions as well on the category landing pages . Is there a special way to do this as in effect, we would have duplicate content as the product descriptions are also on the product page?. Does anyone have any thoughts on this as to whether its a No No from an SEO point of view ?... Heres a short url link to one of my category pages - http://goo.gl/QJv5gw Historically we use to rank well for the category landing pages and not for the product pages.Our Rankings are down , bounce rates are higher so I am trying to sort both. We have good content on pages etc. Any advice greatly appreciated as always thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Updated My Business Profiles & Still Not Ranking in Local SEO... What Next?
I have used Get Listed and a few other services to update my profiles for my company Health Care Associates (its a home health care agency). http:healthcareassociates.net. I have added pictures, categories, descriptions, key words, etc. and it doesn't seem to help. We are still not ranking in the search engines for "home care grand rapids", "home health care" etc. What else can I do to optimize the local search? Todd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | t1kuslik0 -
Local SEO (Rankings) + UK-wide SEO (national rankings) - achieving both
Hi All, For clients wishing to sell online / generate leads nationally, yet still want to have a local online presence to attract town / county-wide customers, I've often placed Town / County locations within both the Title Tag (or just County if space is limited) and Meta Description, plus within the Hx headings, Alt-text and within the footer of every page. My question is, does adding the location of the client within these fields really infringe their attempts to rank nationally, as some nationally ranked pages have no mention of location while others have their location (Town, County or Both) shown within them? Any help, insight or feedback greatly appreciated 🙂 Happy New Year Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tony-Dimmock0 -
Critique My Site For SEO
Hi Everyone, I was wondering if someone might critique my site and let me know what you think. I've done pretty much everything I know to do proper seo for my site. I'd love to hear some critiques about what I am doing wrong. I'm not sure if my titles are okay, being that they are similar amongst pages. The other thing is that for all the javascript buttons on the top I have no followed them since they don't have any anchor text. The way google will crawl my page is through the links in the footer. I was thinking of moving them throughout the body of the page since I hear google isn't giving as much weight to footer links. I also wanted to hear what you think about putting a blog on my site and updating with fresh content as opposed to creating a separate blog and then linking back to my website with anchor text. Thanks for all the help. And glad to be a member Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wsh150 -
Your Biggest SEO Jobs Explained
What have been your most proudest moments in SEO ? What would you consider as being you best achieved job and in what industry was it achieved it. What are the reasons you have this down as your biggest achievement ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinemediadirect0