How to handle brand description on product pages?
-
Hi Mozzers,
Hope you're doing good. I have a content placement related question.
Assume, I have 1000 products of brand A, 1000 of brand B, and so on. Now, if I want to put brand specific 200-words description on each of these product pages. I'm creating duplicate content across the site by putting absolutely same brand description on these product pages i.e brand A description on first 1000 pages, brand B description on next 1000 products and so on.
Looking for an expert advice around placement of content here i.e how can I add brand description on product pages and avoid duplicate content penalty? Any help?
-
Sure. Thank you so much for confirming the same.
For the first time today, my recommended solution for a problem was supported by you. I'm really happy about it. "Moving in the right direction" feeling
-
If they insist on having brand information, then yes, the alternative is to have a small portion of brand information, with a link to the full brand text on its own page.
-
Hi Sir Alan,
Thank you so much for your response. I agree, actually I also recommended the same solution of creating new brand pages and then linking them from the product pages but they (product team) wants to show brand description on product pages itself.
Could you please recommend any other solution here? If there can be another way to implement this. Or else, we might show a few words of description there along with a link to brand page.
-
Nitin
200 words - what is the point / value of having that repeated on thousands of pages? It's not unique, and regardless of what some people think about it being okay because "lots of sites do it" or because "Major brand that's able to get away with lots of bad SEO because they own a market" can do it.
If there are two hundred words based on non-product specific information, this is not a best practice. Instead, that information should be contained on just one page, and if you believe, from a user experience perspective, providing a link to that from each product page is helpful, that's what I recommend.
-
Thanks Don. I meant this only.
-
HI Nitin,
Doing a follow up here. So you are worried about a particular section of a page is going to be considered duplicate? If so, then that is of no worry, it is normal for many pages to have the same information when it pertains to the overall intent of the page. What is looked at is the page in whole not a section of it.
If that is not what you mean please give me an example so I can help identify options.
Thanks,
Don
-
Hi Don,
Thank you so much for your well detailed answer, really appreciate that.
My question was a little different here. Yes, we're planning to have unique description for the products and recommended products etc. to make the overall content unique. My question was about a specific section on the page where we're planning to show the brand description, which would be exactly same for all the products of a specific brand.
So, how does google (and other bots) consider duplicate content for a specific section, and not the entire page?
-
Hi Nitin,
This is a common issue among Ecommerce sites. The solution is to be creative! I gave an example of how I would go about it, a month ago over on this question. But I also like to analyze how other successful sites overcame the problem.
Take a very similar product like a portable CD player and then head over to Amazon and see how the differentiate them.
Coby Portable CD Player
Memorex Portable CD PlayerFor all intents and purposes these 2 cd players are pretty much the same, about the same price, includes the same items, and performs the same functions. But each page is unique. Amazon has achieved this by including, what others bought, a small product description, manufacturer description, product shipping details, technical details, questions and answers, similar products, and customer reviews. Many of those features are important for buyers but also lend their selves to self generating content.
I know right out of the gate it maybe difficult to put that much attention to a very inexpensive item, but the key here is to spend the time on the backend creating the features that will have a long term reward. You may not be able to go full Amazon compete mode right away, but taking some steps towards that end will have long term rewards.
When I was dealing with this same issue on our eCommerce site trying to differentiate a Nitrile Size 001 oring and a Neoprene Size 001 oring from each other, I spent about a month and half developing content blocks for material, size, primary uses, material qualities, and measurement cross references. Since then the only thing I have had to do is update prices with the market.
I hope this makes sense and helps,
Don
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
-
Duplicate content on product pages
Hi, We are considering the impact when you want to deliver content directly on the product pages. If the products were manufactured in a specific way and its the same process across 100 other products you might want to tell your readers about it. If you were to believe the product page was the best place to deliver this information for your readers then you could potentially be creating mass content duplication. Especially as the storytelling of the product could equate to 60% of the page content this could really flag as duplication. Our options would appear to be:1. Instead add the content as a link on each product page to one centralised URL and risk taking users away from the product page (not going to help with conversion rate or designers plans)2. Put the content behind some javascript which requires interaction hopefully deterring the search engine from crawling the content (doesn't fit the designers plans & users have to interact which is a big ask)3. Assign one product as a canonical and risk the other products not appearing in search for relevant searches4. Leave the copy as crawlable and risk being marked down or de-indexed for duplicated contentIts seems the search engines do not offer a way for us to serve this great content to our readers with out being at risk of going against guidelines or the search engines not being able to crawl it.How would you suggest a site should go about this for optimal results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FashionLux2 -
Product Pages & Panda 4.0
Greeting MOZ Community: I operate a real estate web site in New York City (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). Of the 600 pages, about 350 of the URLs are product pages, written about specific listings. The content on these pages is quite short, sometimes only 20 words. My ranking has dropped very much since mid-May, around the time of the new Panda update. I suspect it has something to do with the very short product pages, the 350 listing pages. What is the best way to deal with these pages so as to recover ranking. I am considering these options: 1. Setting them to "no-index". But I am concerned that removing product pages is sending the wrong message to Google. 2. Enhancing the content and making certain that each page has at least 150-200 words. Re-writing 350 listings would be a real project, but if necessary to recover I will bite the bullet. What is the best way to address this issue? I am very surprised that Google does not understand that product URLs can be very brief and yet have useful content. Information about a potential office rental that lists location, size, price per square foot is valuable to the visitor but can be very brief. Especially listings that change frequently. So I am surprised by the penalty. Would I be better off not having separate URLs for the listings, and for instance adding them as posts within building pages? Is having separate URLs for product pages with minimal content a bad idea from an SEO perspective? Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can recover from this latest Panda penalty? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Best way to handle page filters and sorts
Hello Mozzers, I have a question that has to do with the best way to handle filters and sorts with Googlebot. I have a page that returns a list of widgets. I have a "root" page about widgets and then filter and sort functionality that shows basically the same content but adds parameters to the URL. For example, if you filter the page of 10 widgets by color, the page returns 3 red widgets on the top, and 7 non-red widgets on the bottom. If you sort by size, the page shows the same 10 widgets sorted by size. We use traditional php url parameters to pass filters and sorts, so obviously google views this as a separate URL. Right now we really don't do anything special in Google, but I have noticed in the SERPs sometimes if I search for "Widgets" my "Widgets" and "Widgets - Blue" both rank close to each other, which tells me Google basically (rightly) thinks these are all just pages about Widgets. Ideally though I'd just want to rank for my "Widgets" root page. What is the best way to structure this setup for googlebot? I think it's maybe one or many of the following, but I'd love any advice: put rel canonical tag on all of the pages with parameters and point to "root" use the google parameter tool and have it not crawl any urls with my parameters put meta no robots on the parameter pages Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
Any downsides of (permanent)redirecting 404 pages to more generic pages(category page)
Hi, We have a site which is somewhat like e-bay, they have several categories and advertisements posted by customers/ client. These advertisements disappear over time and turn into 404 pages. We have the option to redirect the user to the corresponding category page, but we're afraid of any negative impact of this change. Are there any downsides, and is this really the best option we have? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vhendriks0 -
What is the better of 2 evils? Duplicate Product Descriptions or Thin Content?
It is quite labour intensive to come up with product descriptions for all of our product range ... +2500 products, in English and Spanish... When we started, we copy pasted manufacturer descriptions so they are not unique (on the web), plus some of them repeat each other - We are getting unique content written but its going to be a long process, so, what is the best of 2 evils, lots of duplicate non unique content or remove it and get a very small phrase from the database of unique thin content? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20101 -
Product pages content
Hi! I'm doing some SEO work for a new client. I've been tasked with boosting some of their products, such as http://www.lawnmowersdirect.co.uk/product/self-propelled-rear-roller-rotary-petrol-lawnmowers/honda-hrx426qx. It's currently #48 for the term Honda Izy HRG465SD, while http://www.justlawnmowers.co.uk/lawnmowers/honda-izy-hrg-465-sd.htm is #2, behind Amazon. Regarding links, there's no great shakes between the pages or even the domains. However, there's major difference in content. I'm happy to completely revamp it, I just wanted to check I'm not missing anything out before starting to rewrite it altogether! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Internal page ranking
If I have a domain: Example.com I want this domain to rank for several keywords. I build a page on the domain called Example.com/glasses If I SEO the page Example.com/glasses with backlinks etc... will that URL come up on google or will it simply bring Example.com up on the SERPS. If I have three keywords, should I make a subpage for each page and SEO that page? Will that make the domain rank for all three keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Page URL Issue
Hey Friend, I am having sort of a problem. I currently have a subpage with the url of: /musclecars/ I also have a subpage at /muscle-cars/muscle-car-restoration.html Obviously my main url is not listed here. My problem is I am trying to rank for the term Muscle Cars but the first URL does not have the keywords seperated so I rank no where. If I type MuscleCars into google I rank though (but nobody types the keyword in like that). So my question is can I create muscle-cars.mydomainname.com and rank well with that? Or is it better to just use mydomainname.com/muscle-cars/ even though that second term I am ranking for already has that in its url?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shandaman0