Long tail keywords and duplicate content (product description)

[azaiats2]

Hi <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> pro's, how are you doing these days? Hope everything is fine...

Let's get down to business: I've got a little question about ecommerce sites with duplicate content (product descriptions). I'm already ranking top #1 for exact keyword matche's (did a lot of backlink work with exact keyword). That's fine.

The question is: long tail keywords still getting lower results than the competitors, because they published the content first. How to beat them? What I need to do/work to outrank competitors on long tail keywords? (I really need this because almost keywords/products from my niche only have 10% of exact search's).

Hope someone can give me a word of light on this!

Thanks!

[EGOL]

Best long term answer is beat their content. Another solution is to beat their links, but you are one panda-style update away from losing any questionable links.

There you have it in two clear sentences.  The methods and the risks.

Thumbs up!

[RyanKent]

EGOL's answer is clearly the way to go.

If you offer identical content to your competitor, then it comes down to the remaining on-page and off-page factors. If both you and your competitor optimize your pages well, then it becomes a battle of links.

Best long term answer is beat their content. Another solution is to beat their links, but you are one panda-style update away from losing any questionable links.

[kdaly100]

If your product is re Huey get-2015-45B then putting some thought I to even some modest optimisation of the product page is worthwhile. SEO is often about experimenting. So for the above widget why not test expanding g the product description, working the detail for 3-4 products and see the before / after impacts.

[EGOL]

Or you, as a SEO guru, are telling us: just focus on [exact match] and forget the rest...

My advice was either:  A) get more links or B) rewrite all of the descriptions.

If I owned a site with this problem I would rewrite the descriptions.  It would be expensive but I bet I would make a lot of money. 

[azaiats2]

Hmmm... maybe a way to became an authority page for the specific keyword would help...

And yes, I known it's a "magic bullet" question that will crack our minds down.

Or you, as a SEO guru, are telling us: just focus on [exact match] and forget the rest...

Thanks again for replying me.

[EGOL]

It sounds like you are looking for a "magic bullet" answer?

[azaiats2]

Thanks for the answer but I still need to know how to beat the duplicate content.

Think about the product description as a table of specifications (dimensions, etc). We are working with engineering products...

[EGOL]

How to beat them?

Lots of people would say... "Beat their links"....

If this was my site I would say... "Beat their content"..that means a rewrite of the standard yada yada yada text that everybody is grabbing from the manufacturer's datafeed.  Then you are not competiting with the competitor on a lot of the long tail terms and you might be able to reoptimize for parallel terms that searchers are still using.