How unique do product descriptions need to be?
-
I'm rewriting approximately 10,000 product descriptions, but for feasability it's useful to sometimes reuse some of the phrases that are there (and on other websites as they come straight from the manufacturer -eg. key features), how unique does the content have to be - are we talking 100%, 75%, 50% for it to be effective in google?
Same question goes for the product title!
Many thanks.
-
Hi Chris
Great insight, and you've confirmed some of my initial thoughts and feelings on the matter. I don't want to rewrite purely for google's sake (although that was the tone of the question due to this being an SEO website!). Many of the descriptions we have (from the feed) are rather poorly written, or block text which is hard to scan and read as a customer. I want to make that clearer.
I'm glad you've confirmed that picking a handful of products and doing those really well is a good idea... we're on the case!
As for user generated content, yup, we're asking for reviews but probably need to encourage more in-depth ones.
Thanks for taking the time to answer, it's much appreciated.
-
Hi Panu
Great response, thanks for taking the time to answer. It's not just about google (although we were hit by the panda update big time due to selling similar products to other websites using the same feed of descriptions - mainly manufacturer driven). The benefit of rewriting was two-fold;
1. Making the descriptions clearer and easier to read for our customers.
2. Providing unique & better content to differentiate ourselves in both the customer's eyes and therefore hopefully google's.
We're writing some great and indepth guides (1-2k words) in our blog, and have a very strong customer service ethos. However, in order to stay competitive we need a presence in google obviously, and at the moment there is little or none.
It's really tricky to know what to focus on. We are writing some really great and in-depth descriptions that our customers do love for some key products which are also highly competitive but don't feel that'll be enough... maybe time will tell!
50% is a good starting point, thank you.
Ewan
-
The best thing you can possibly do for getting more unique content is to encourage user-generated content which is typically in the form of reviews, but can be anything (photos, video reviews, FAQ's, etc).
Product descriptions are inherently and necessarily non-unique. I really believe that simply spinning phrases or rewriting a paragraph here and there is a low value activity. A much more sustainable activity is to pick a handful of interesting, current, high margin products and create the absolute best page about them on the web. A personal story, a groupon-style humorous reference, some unique research... whatever, and just dominate that product with content. You'll rank for that and also probably earn some love from customers for being so cool. Keep doing that one by one and carve out a niche. I bet if you do that 10 times really well you'll get a much better ROI for your time and/or cash than 10,000 pages of slightly varied copy.
Unique content only goes so far. A strong domain with piflered copy will outrank others with the same content all day long. They sometimes even beat sites with totally unique content. As unfair as this is, building domain authority takes of time and investment, and is rewarded with traffic for having trusted content.
Finally, my dablings in the dark side have taught me that Google is getting much smarter about spun content, aka content that is thinly unique. 30-40% unique is definitely not unique enough. Varying synonyms is not enough. Significantly unique content varies in theme, length, and style - all of which are algorithmically detectible. Hope that helps.
-
That really depends on how much authority your website has. I have noticed that websites with a lot of authority can stand to have a lot less unique content than new websites with few incoming links. However, since you are not scraping content from another website, I think it's safe to say that having product descriptions that are just about 50% unique should be fine just as long as you have unique titles, headings and some useful unique content.
Then again, since the Panda update has made it significantly more difficult to rank with thousands of pages of feeble content, I wonder how much effort should be placed into these product descriptions. Are they something that searchers will love to see in the SERPs? Is it really necessary to rank with all of these product pages or should you perhaps consider doing a few (say a hundred) high quality landing pages which link these product pages?
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
-
Image Titles and Descriptions Question
Hello, I have a question about optimizing the SEO on my pages through image titles and descriptions. There are a few times on my website that I use the same image on multiple pages. I am under the impression that giving it a title such as "social-media-marketing-agency-graphic.jpg" will help the SEO for the phrase "social media marketing agency" on that page. My question was, if I want to use the same image on multiple pages, am I better off uploading an entirely new image with a new title to make it more relevant to the new page? Or will this not make large enough of a difference? Or is there an easier solution? Please let me know your thoughts on how to best optimize the pages
On-Page Optimization | | brightsocial0 -
Generating a meta-description
What are some things I should know before implementing a process whereby (public) user account data is used to generate a meta-description? I can't find much information in the existing forums. Are rich snippets a better option in 2015?
On-Page Optimization | | CallumClothierfairs0 -
How to: Meta description for home page
My latest crawl diagnostic is telling me that my homepage is missing a meta description. I am using wordpress and thesis. How do I add a meta description to my main page? ex www.mynewsite.com Mahalo!
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
How to mass change Title and Description of a website
Hey , I recently landed a client and his website has a lot of pages. After running a diagnostics in SEOmoz it seems like a lot of them dont have titles and descriptions. Also the ones that have titles and descriptions are not well optimized. I want to change/create titles and descriptions of this website but the problem is it has got 1000s of pages. So I was wondering is there an automated way of doing this? Thanks a lot in advance. Regards
On-Page Optimization | | MerilynL0 -
Missing Meta Tag Description
I have received a number of missing meta tag descriptions on my website. They all are with the comments to posts and it says /feed at the end of most of them. What is causing this error??
On-Page Optimization | | haveuheard0 -
How to Define Best Structure of Title Tag and Meta Description?
I want to define best structure of Title Tag and Meta Description for my eCommerce website. There are too many categories over there and many be increase in near future. There are 7K+ products live on website so, it's quite hard to develop Title Tag and Meta Description for all product pages. That's why I have set automatic Title Tag and Meta Description creation with help of developers. I want to do similar stuff for my category pages. Can anyone suggest me structure of Title Tag and Meta Description which suppose to help me in well over Google's organic result. I have define structure as follow. Title Tag: Category Name: FREE Shipping & Discount Category Name | Vista Stores Meta Description: Category Name with FREE shipping, 100% price guarantee, Buy and save 20% to 40% on attractive, modern and discount Category Name. Meta Keywords: Category Name I also want to give real time example with specific URL. (http://www.vistastores.com/69_21/outdoor/patio-umbrellas.html) Category Name = Patio Umbrellas so with help of above structure Title Tag and Meta Description will be as follow. Title Tag: Patio Umbrellas: FREE Shipping & Discount Patio Umbrellas | Vista Stores Meta Description: Patio Umbrellas with FREE shipping, 100% price guarantee, Buy and save 20% to 40% on attractive, modern and discount Patio Umbrellas. Meta Keywords: Patio Umbrellas So, Does it matter for good performance? If any inputs in same direction so I am eager to read it.
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Alt tag matching product titles - e-commerce
Hey all, Just wondering if it is ok to match the alt tag to product titles. Imagine an e-commerce site that lists a whole lot of products on any one page for any one category. Each product listing has a thumbnail image beside it. The easiest way to implement this dynamically is to use the product title for the alt tag. Anyone had any experience with this? Is it overkill / spam of keywords - given that the product title is repeated. Our current situation is that our alt tags are simply blank or say 'photo' which is no good, and we have hundreds of thousands of pages. Cheers, Croozie
On-Page Optimization | | sichristie0 -
Keyword use in meta description
Anyone know if its important that the target keyword is used AT THE START of the meta description, or is it enough that it is anywhere in the description...? I have a few big ones that are at the end of the description and I was wondering if I should move them up to the front... Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0