Is it worth De-duplicating a large e-commerce website?

[truckguy77]

Hi all,

Most e-commerce websites use the same product description as the manufacturers. We know duplicate content is a huge negative for SEO. We are thinking about de-duplicating ours but our website is so big - it has tens of thousands of products. To de-duplicate it would require a ton of resources. Do you think it's worth it to go ahead de-duplicate our website? Do you have a website where de-duplication was done and did you see any positive result? (if so, did you see a certain percentage increase?)

Thank you in advance

[truckguy77]

Hi Marie,

Thank you for responding. I'd be happy to share it with you if we do see a positive result.

[truckguy77]

Hi Matthew,

Thank you for your suggestion.

From what I can see on our analytics, the product detail page, which is the page with the duplicate description, isn't getting any organic traffic. The page is indexed but it's just not ranking. Other websites including manufacturer is out ranking it.

Good suggestion, we are planning on doing the top 250 SKUs and hopefully we'll get some positive result.

On the websites that you've worked on, did you see an increase after you de-duplicate it? The reason why I'm asking is because I'm being asked by higher ups of what kind of percentage increase should we expect from this. I have no answer for it but they want a ball park answer, e.g., 10% or 20% increase.

[Debdulal]

Ok mate. You are in trouble and there is no shortcut. Sorry I am going to disagree. You must have unique content in your page and there is no two ways about it. If you are still getting visitors even after harbouring duplicate content, you should thank your lucky star.

_Now, why not start generating unique content rather than wasting your time looking at the size of the complexity. _

[JaredMumford]

I was going to respond to this however Mathew and Marie are spot on.  First order of business is to check positioning for your products to see if you are being marginalized behind other pages with the same descriptions. (While youre in there check the pages Page Authority and backlinks to compare to yours as well). Check to see how many of your product pages are indexed. You can also do a litmus test on a few products by adding unique descriptions and waiting to see if there is improvement.

[MarieHaynes]

Matthew's got good advice for you.  I have a few thoughts to add.

How well are you ranking for these products right now?  Anywhere near the top?  If not, it's worth a try.  And I really like the idea of trying it with a small sample first and seeing if your rankings improve.

I wanted to share with you about a real estate site I work with.  In real estate almost every realtor uses the MLS listing description for each listing.  This means there is a lot of duplication going on.  For our listings we create a unique description and title for each listing and we usually end up ranking #1 for address searches for these listings.

If you do de-duplicate and see an improvement I would love to write about your site on my blog as it would probably be considered a Panda recovery of sorts.  Let me know!

[NakulGoyal]

I agree with Mathhew. completely. Test it on a small scale, there are so many other metrics that influence the rankings that it's best to test it and if it works, do it on a larger scale. Quoted from Mathhew's response "Another way to approach this would be to take a sample of ~50 products that get some traffic from search right now. Take unique pictures and write unique content for those products. Then, measure the results. Did organic traffic increase after 30, 60, 90 days? If so, you know that you've got a problem with duplicate content worth correcting."

[Matthew_Edgar]

How much traffic do you get to those duplicated pages right now from Google/Bing? Are all of those pages indexed? Can you tell if you are losing out to the manufacturer websites? If the pages are indexed, you are getting traffic, and seem to be "beating" the manufacturer's website, I wouldn't worry too much. On sites I've worked on, I've seen duplicated pages get no traffic (or only one page gets traffic, but not all pages) or they get some traffic but the manufacturer's website ranks considerably higher. That is when you know you have a problem worth correcting. Another way to approach this would be to take a sample of ~50 products that get some traffic from search right now. Take unique pictures and write unique content for those products. Then, measure the results. Did organic traffic increase after 30, 60, 90 days? If so, you know that you've got a problem with duplicate content worth correcting. I hope that helps.