Should we create separate product descriptions for our customers' web sites?
-
Still got my SEO learner plates on, but I'm trying to help a small e-commerce site which makes and sells baby products . They have upwards of 150 independent retailers also selling their products.
Mindful of the fact that many of these retailers are copying the same product descriptions to use on their own web sites, I wondered if there was any value in creating separate sets of product descriptions, one for our web site and one for all their trade customers, in order to minimise the amount of duplicated content devaluing our site. In theory Google ought to know that ours is the original source of the content, but some testing has shown customers ranking higher for the same product descriptions.
We have a separate area on the site for trade, which contains lots of media information they can use, and we could include a set of product descriptions in this area for trade customers to download, keeping a unique set of product descriptions for ourselves. We won't stop duplicate content entirely, I realise - but do you think it's worth the effort of trying to implement? Our web developer thinks it's a total waste of time and not worth bothering with for the miniscule benefit he thinks we'll gain.
Grateful for any pointers.
-
Glad to hear it.
-
Thanks Thomas, that's helped to reinforce our original plans. Whether by "beating the resellers" you mean outselling or outranking them I'm not sure, but it's a "no" in both cases just now. Just got to tell the web site developer that he's outvoted now and to stop procrastinating!
-
Are you beating the reseller sites for those products? If you are the established authority and are beating the resellers then you have little reason to change. If you are not beating the resellers then yes you should create unique product descriptions and images for your main site. You would also do well to get some customer reviews on your site and to use the schema.org mark up for the reviews.
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
-
Canonicalising a product with multiple variants
I am working with an ecommerce site and have encountered an issue I haven't come across before and would appreciate some advice on how to proceed. There are multiple variation products with one master product and then up to 20 or 30 variant products, the variation could be colour, size or both. The site has been set up to canonicalise all the variations to the master variant product, which I understand to be best practice. But, this is where the issue occurs, the master variant product URL 302 redirects to one of the variant product URLs. Example below. My question is, is this harmful to our SEO efforts? Would be be best to canonicalise to a preferred colour or size variation? EXAMPLE: Master variant product: www.example.co.uk/primary-category/product-123 Seeing this product on the page and clicking will 302 redirect to www.example/co.uk/primiary-category/product-123/colour-456 On page www.example/co.uk/primiary-category/product-123/colour-456 the canonical tag is www.example.co.uk/primary-category/product-123 Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | SimonKenworthy0 -
Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content?
Hello Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content? Example: For a full selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages, please click here. OR Example: Please click the following link for a selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages. This is my product page to help you better understand the context: LikeChimp
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Translated the site but traffic is not coming
Hi, We've build a lawyer directory website (www.iranianlawyers.com) which already has good Google rankings for related terms (Ex. Iranian lawyers, Iranian lawyers california, etc). About 1.5 months ago we translated the site to Farsi and published it online: www.iranianlawyers.com/farsi However we have yet to see any new traffic generated from those pages. The website has a decent back-link profile and there are no almost no competitors in our space with translated pages. Would someone please take a look at our translated pages and let me know if there are any major on-site issues that you see that we need to address? I've checked for noindex or nofollow tags but they dont seem to be an issue. Not sure if I'm missing something here. Thank you very much
On-Page Optimization | | Heydarian0 -
Site appears to rank very low
Hi, A site we manage is ranking very low for it's main key phrases. The site is www.moremouse.com. For example for the phrase "orlando vacation rentals" it ranks around page 12 which seems very low considering the DA, PA, links, etc. compared to many sites ranking much much higher. Can anyone see anything obvious that is causing it to rank so low? Thanks Pete
On-Page Optimization | | QbicIS0 -
How to use canonical with mobile site to main site
I am pretty sure that the mobile version of the main site needs to be the same canonical link from what I understand. I am trying to find good docuementation that supports this. Even better if its from Google or Matt Cutts. I have a main domain like http://www.mydomain.com the mobile version of this is http://www.mydomain.com/m/ Should my canonical be rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com"/> for both these pages?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
Client has 2 websites... won't do away with old site.
Ok my situation is: We have built a new site for a client and they would like to keep both sites working. Should I just attempt to optimize both sites to rank well in their area? Or should I be suggesting a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new? Other options? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | IntermarkGroup0 -
Product Page Optimization
I work for an ecommerce site and we are currently in the process of redesigning our product page. Any useful, must-do tips for this? If it helps, our site has both hard goods and apparel that can be imprinted and customized to the buyers liking. Thanks for any help!
On-Page Optimization | | ClaytonKendall1 -
Monitor site loading speeds
We all know that site loading speed is important for google ( and getting more important), and currently we are considering moving to a dedicated server. But I would like to measure pur current loading times and compare them to our competitors. I know that webmaster tools shows you your loading times, but its seems a bit random with its results, and I know analytics also now records speed, but the sample sizes seems to be too low. When I googled website load times, I got a load of different free tools but they seem to give conflicting results e.g one said that our avg kb load time was 0.02sec and our competitor was 0.01, but a different site says our sites loads in 1.7 secs and our competitor loads in 11sec (our home pages have similar total file size for our homepage. ) Also what would be useful would be a way to monitor of website loading speed to see when it slows down, so we can figure out why. Does anyone know of any good reliable programs or sites that does this?
On-Page Optimization | | eunaneunan0