Product descriptions, when do they become classed as duplicate content, how different do they have to be?
-
I look after 3 sites which have a lot of crossover on products. We have 1000s of products and I've made it a requirement that we give each it's on description on each of the sites. This sounds like the right thing to but it's very hard for our content writers to write three different versions descriptions, especially when we have variations on the products so potentially writing unique product descriptions for 4-5 very similar products on three separate sites. We've worked very hard to create unique content deep through the site on all categories, subcategories and tag combinations and along with the other SEO work we've done over the last couple of years is producing great results.
My question is now far do we have to go? I'm busy writing some product descriptions for a 3rd party site for some of our products, the easy thing to do is just copy and paste but I want Google to see the descriptions as unique. Whilst all SEO advice will say 'write unique descriptions' from a practical point of view this isn't especially useful as there doesn't really seem to be much guidance on how different they need to be. I gather we can't just move around the paragraphs or jumble up sentences a bit but it is easier to work from a description and change it than it is to start from a blank slate (our products range form being very interesting and unique, to quite everyday so sometimes tough to create varied unique content for).
Does anyone know of any guidance or evidence of just how clever the Google algorithm is and how close content has to be before it becomes classed as the same or similar?
Thanks
Pete
-
Hi Pete,
Andy nails most things so ill just talk about the "how different part".
Google is very good at identifying the structure of a sentence and determining its meaning. To simplify things I always look at it like this
"It is warm" is the same as "It is hot"
changing text like this and hoping its unique is asking for trouble. Instead try to write as if you are a different personality appealing to a different type of person within the context of the site.
Site: 1 Mr technical writes the content for this site. Your all about the technical features, why they outshine the other specifications and why thats good.
Site 2: Mr indulgent writes for this site, he is less concerned with the technical and is all about actually using the product. He talks about the ease of use and how great if feels to use etc.
Site 3: Mr in the middle, he has a descent amount of respect for the technical elements and mentions them, and has a more speculative approach of explaining why this would be good.
These three personalities all talk very differently, use a different pool of words, create these persona's and be them as you write. This will give you the base difference to make identical information very different.
To combat similar products, my approach has been to not try to distinguish them too much but to engage with the similar products and talk about them. For example product A is the same as product B except product B has a special paint on it that makes it look good so it costs more. So product A is all about value, its the cheapest in the range so great value for money, affordable but with all the necessary perks. Product B is luxurious, not only does it have everything product A has but looks dang good and is a real head turner.
This approach allows you include all the important content needed to get the word count up and make it a good page but present in a way that is very different.
-
Anecdotally... when Panda first hit back in 2011, the vast majority of coupon sites fell off the map. We did not. The difference was that while everyone else was scraping product descriptions and titles etc., we were writing everything by hand.
-
Great answer!
-
Hi Pete,
I think it's important to remember that Google doesn't penalise duplicate internal content...
John Mueller - Google
John clearly states “We don’t have a duplicate content penalty. It’s not that we would demote a site for having a lot of duplicate content.” and “You don’t get penalized for having this kind of duplicate content” in which he was talking about very similar pages. John says to “provide… real unique value” on your pages.There is no direct guidance on just how similar 'similar' needs to be before it is picked up as duplicate - if it were all on one site, it would be less of an issue, but as you have these crossovers on 3 sites, this might cause problems.
Try and avoid templated copy with a few changes because this can be seen as 'boilerplate' which Google doesn't like either.
I'll be honest, carrying the same products on different sites is a bit of a dangerous game in most cases, but there are exceptions.
Lets say you have 3 sites that are Football, Cricket & Tennis. One product that might be the same could be socks. If you differentiate here and write about socks for each sport (and each site), then you will be OK, even if it is the same product.
I hope this makes sense?
-Andy
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
-
Images & Duplicate Content Issues
Here's a scenario for you: The site is running WordPress and the images are uploaded to the media section. You can set image attributes there such as the Description & Alt Tag. Let's say you'd like to reuse the same image in two different blog posts. The image keeps the same Description & Alt Tag associated with it in the media section. Would this be considered duplicate content? What would be the best practice in this case to reuse the same image in multiple posts?
Content Development | | VicMarcusNWI0 -
My New blog has NO content since 2 months, the day it was launch, What to DO? Is it "DEAD"???
2 months ago, I publish a NEW blog, http://www.mervrating.org The blog has only 3 posts. I don't have much time to work on it. Does it HURT my SEO? Can I start working on it on regular basis and try to built authority or does it looks "dead" to search engine? I would like to bring it alive and give it a second chance, will it be hard if it has no content since the beginning? What is your opinions? Thank you, BigBlaze
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
How to optimize content pages with ecommerce?
Some content pages act as buyers guides for certain products for example Used Paddle Boards for Sale - http://www.islesurfboards.com/used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx this is a content page that gets huge amount of traffic and is pure content with no products on the page, but we also have a ecommerce section of the site that is Used Paddle Boards for Sale -http://www.islesurfboards.com/buy-used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx however this page just has a small paragraph and all the ecommerce product related to this section on the page. The content only page above gets all the traffic and rank and then they click over to the actual ecomm section wiht the products from a link on that page. Should i merge these two together so its just one page and put the content on the ecom page? If i do all the content with push the ecommerce products down which is not good so what does anyone recommend as a best practice? Also will this mess up the content pages rank is i merge them assuming i redirect? or Keep them seperate like i have with a content page regarding "used paddle boards for sale" and an ecommerce page that sells acutal "used paddle boards for sale"
Content Development | | isle_surf0 -
What is the best way to get around duplicate content when you are advertising exactly the same content on two different sites?
I am currently trying to improve exposure for an online degrees website but the content for the degree program pages is exactly the same as the company's main website. What would you suggest for getting around the duplicate content issue as a lot of the curriculum content will obviously be the same for each module, etc? Thanks
Content Development | | BeattieGroup0 -
Article Distribution - Duplicate content or not?
Many SEO's disagree on this subject so I wanted to see what everyone thinks. Producing an article and then distributing to multiple article directories. In the eyes of Google is this considered spam(duplicate content) or it is not? As I understand unique content is good SEO. However, I also understand that visibility of the content on multiple sites is very important. What do youthink?
Content Development | | DmitryP0 -
Archive older, low ranked content to help new content in Panda 2.2?
After watching the white board friday re: Panda 2.2, it got me to thinking about old content. One of the sites that I work with generates 3-10 new articles/day (movie reviews, interviews, guides, event previews, etc) and has been doing so since 2005. Now, they have almost 10k articles, 7k of which are indexed. The quality of the content varies, and much of it is dated (movies, events) much of the amount of older content gets 0-5 pageviews/month, made in the days BEFORE the site was using Google News + social tools to spread the word (and backlinks). Note that those older articles also of course tend to have 100% bounce, and small/zero TOS. Is this hurting the site? With 75-100 articles/month being published, I want to make sure they get maximum exposure. I'm also concerned that crawlers get sucked into the site chasing down old BS content, and that is hurting it as well. What to do with this content? Should I unpublish unpopular, dated content and get it off the internet? Or, do I leave it on, but NOINDEX it so Google won't crawl it?
Content Development | | EricPacifico0 -
Duplicate content and Facebook
If i have content on my site and the same content duplicated on my facebook pages, will google treat this as duplicate content? At the moment when i copy and paste a line of text from the content on my site Facebook is returned first.
Content Development | | Turkey0