No product descriptions

[daedriccarl]

Hi all,

Wondering if I could get the opinions from other Moz user's on this issue please...

A client is building a new online store, it is in the flooring niche, using the drop shipping model. The plan is to launch the site with about 1,000 products and then add more as we go. All good so far (the site is magento based)

However, the issue we are facing is down to product descriptions. The client needs to get the site up and running asap to start generating sales but the wholesaler has not provided any product description information for the products - save the size, shape and colour.

Can anyone foresee a major issue in launching the website with no product descriptions, from a seo point of view, and then adding the descriptions as we go. Have been trying to establish what Google defines as being a thin site and all the information on the topic is suggesting it is more due to duplicate content where, for example, retailers are all still using the default manufacturer description or have spun the content. I cannot find much which would suggest that product pages missing a description would classify as thing. I am happy to be corrected though. I accept that it would be easier to rank with a good product description but the client is a two person business and it is pretty hard to find things to say about 1,000 different kinds of rugs!

Any thoughts would be most welcome please.

Thanks.

[7marlete.oliveir]

Hello Every one, 
recently I have launched my ecomap store including products like rugs you may check out at ruggallery.net
let come to main point of discussion, i just want to ask to i need to add description to all of my categories pages  or will it work without that too. here are the few sample pages of my store please can anyone look at them and let me know if they are doing fine or do i need to change anything on these page. here are few categories pages. 
1. Beige Rugs
2. Black Rugs
3. Blue Rugs
4. Brown rugs

Here are the other category pages without description

1. Turquoise rugs           2. [Navy Rugs

p](https://ruggallery.net/color/navy/ "Navy Rugs")lease any one review these page and let me know if we need to update anything on the category pages

[daedriccarl]

Tom,

Thanks for the links I will check those out. I agree, in an ideal world there would be product descriptions before things start. The trouble being trying to convince the client to spend a lot of money having a large number of descriptions written before they make any returns from the site. They are at the point where they want to see money coming in before more money goes out.

The lack of product descriptions isn't to say that the site doesn't have any content, it has a good number of very detailed guides on rug shopping, different styles of rugs, rug care etc. There are a few dozen guides type pieces, all of which were written for the site.

The category pages have category descriptions, a couple of paragraphs about the type of rug but it's just the individual products letting the side down at the moment.

Interestingly I have noticed that there are a few affiliate stores in the niche and they tend to rank the search results page so all one gets is a page relevant to the search query which has the product images and product names and no information over that that. They seem to be doing well will have to monitor things

[daedriccarl]

To be honest from a UX point of view there is very little one could add to a product description which isn't covered by the 'meta' information. A Round, Pink, Wool Rug would have these tags assigned in the information tab so not much extra to say about that product.

I guess will have to go down the split testing route and try a sample range of products with descriptions and some without to see if there is a conversion difference.

[TomRayner]

Hi there

What I would first do is look at two or more product pages with CSS, JS and images disabled, or run them through a "simple search" in the free SEO Browser tool.

That will show you what the page is going to look like to a Googlebot - how similar does it look to you?  Do the pages look 70% identical? 80%?  You could also use the PlagSpotter tool to see just how similar those pages appear.

The point is, it really would be best practice to get as many product descriptions ready before the site goes live - not only to avoid any duplicate/thin content issues but to also help those pages rank outright to begin with.  The Panda algorithm (that deals with thin content) refreshes monthly (perhaps even quicker), so there is a small window there to get all of the work done, if you were to set it live with no product descriptions.  Would you necessarily be penalised straight away?  Or at all?  I honestly can't say as that would be guess work - but I don't like to take chances on stuff that I can't calculate and so I really would recommend you to get as many product descriptions on there as possible.

Have you considered using Mechanical Turk for this? You could outsource the description writing at a very low cost to hundreds of people, dramatically speeding up the process.  If you give clear criteria in your job spec and provide all that a person would need to complete the job, you have a better chance at quality control.  Rand wrote a blog post on this a while back, and a great blog post, albeit on a different topic, on how someone used MTurk and how they set up their job can be found in this CustomerDevLabs post, which is well worth the read.

I hope this helps.

[SilverDoor]

Hi,

From an SEO perspective I don't think you need to worry.

However, from a UX & CRO point of view, descriptions is something you may want to consider.

Would your users benefit from having a description? If so, it's worth adding. You can do this after launch though.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks

SilverDoor