Should we include ANY generic product descriptions on our site?
-
Until recently all of our product pages (we run an eCommerce site) had product descriptions copied directly off the manufacturer's sites. Obviously this isn't good from an SEO perspective, so we were planning to write our own original copy.
My question is: should we keep the manufacturer's copy too? This is often good, useful content from a customer's perspective, but obviously it's not original.
Any help appreciated!
Alex
-
Partial duplicate content can be OK if you provide your own product description. The main problem is writing a product description containing useful, unique content that is not already in the manufacturer's description.
If you have the budget to make these useful descriptions, do it and remove the manufacturer content.
-
Hi,
I would completely re-write the content, ensuring that the useful info included in the manufacturers content is included in the re-write.
-
If it is genuinely useful to customers and it won't result in you just repeating everything then include it as well. Try to give your unique content priority though: higher up the page, more obvious. I've often included manufacturer descriptions in a separate tab labelled as such.
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
-
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
Is a micro site the way to go?
Hello, a client has asked us today to quote for how much it would cost them to get a micro site built. A Google employee has told them that because their current URL doesn't include .co.uk or.com it is simply: brandname.word that it will be harder for them to get their website to rank. My understanding is that micro sites aren't a good solution for any problem as Google doesn't like them. Would it be better for them to buy a .co.uk (they are a UK company) url and then redirect the url to their current website or is there a better solution? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | mblsolutions0 -
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect?
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect? If this scenario requires a 301 redirect no matter what, I might as well update the URL to be a little more keyword rich for the page while I'm at it. However, since these pages are ranking well I'd rather not lose any authority in the process and keep the URL just stripped of the ".html" (if that's possible). Thanks for you help! [edited for formatting]
Technical SEO | | Booj0 -
How to handle mobile site with less pages than the main site?
We are developing a mobile version of our website that will utilize responsive design/dynamic serving. About 70% of the main website will be included in the mobile version. What (if anything) should be the redirect for pages not included in the mobile version of the site? Also - for one specific section users will be redirected from that page to the homepage, what is the redirect that should be used for this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Including videos on an eCommerce website.
Hi,
Technical SEO | | ChrisHolgate
We're about to start integrating video content on our eCommerece site in order to bolster the quantity and diversity of useful content that each page presents a potential customer. We’re talking product reviews, information relating to the differences between different products and company information. From an SEO perspective it has been suggested that Google will like this however I have a question regarding the actual method of integration. Usually I would just insert some embed code linking to the correct video on our YouTube channel however I’m really conscious that a search engine will just see the embed code, notice the page loads slightly slower and not really gain anything useful from the video file. I’m assuming that this isn’t the case but I have several questions: - Would you host on YouTube and simply insert the embed code in to the page. Would any alternative site (or even self-hosted) be preferable? - Should I be padding out either side of the embed code with a description of the video and an annotation on OUR site? - Does Google actually look at the link and ascertain the relevance of the video file to the actual page? If it does this does it gain anything useful that could help on-page SEO? These are probably all pretty basic questions for which I do apologise but I want to make sure that before spending a sizable amount of time on this that we start off with a correct integration! Many thanks0 -
Google and QnA sites
My website has a QnA site - a bit like this one except it's not private to premium members. It is a page with a left colomn for category links and it has a list of recently asked questions, each question is a link to view the full question and answers etc. Does google know this is a QnA ? Or will it say - hey, there are far too many links on this page, tut tut. Is there anything I can do to help it understand what the page is.
Technical SEO | | borderbound0 -
301 an old site to a newer site...
Hi First, to be upfront - these are not my websites, I'm asking because they are trying to compete in my niche. Here's the details, then the questions... There is a website that is a few months old with about 200 indexed pages and about 20 links, call this newsite.com There is a website that is a few years old with over 10,000 indexed pages and over 20,000 links, call this oldsite.com newsite.com acquired oldsite.com and set a 301 redirect so every page of oldsite.com is re-directed to the front page of newsite.com newsite.com & oldsite.com are on the same topic, the 301 occurred in the past week. Now, oldsite.com is out of the SERPs and newsite.com is pretty much ranking in the same spot (top 10) for the main term. Here are my questions; 1. The 10,000 pages on oldsite.com had plenty of internal links - they no longer exists, so I imagine when the dust settles - it will be like oldsite.com is a one page site that re-diretcts to newsite.com ... How long will a ranking boost last for? 2. With the re-direct setup to completely forget about the structure and content of oldsite.com, it's clear to me that it was setup to pass the 'Link Juice' from oldsite.com to newsite.com ... Do the major SE's see this as a form of SPAM (manipulating the rankings), or do they see it as a good way to combine two or more websites? 3. Does this work? Is everybody doing it? Should I be doing it? ... or are there better ways for me to combat this type of competition (eg we could make a lot of great content for the money spent buying oldsite.com - but we certainly wouldn't get such an immediate increase to traffic)?
Technical SEO | | RR5000 -
If I redirect my WordPress blog to my main site, will it help my main site's SEO?
I have separate sites for my blog and main website. I'd like to link them in a way that enables the blog to boost my main site's SEO. Is there an easy way to do this? Thanks in advance for any advice...
Technical SEO | | matt-145670