Good sources of information for product page SEO from a manufacturers perspective
-
I'm working with a manufacturer whose product copy is used by many many many retailers online. This copy is typically exactly the same or very similar to their own brand website. We're ok with that as most of the time our brand website is seen as the source of the information.
Retailers, however, aren't so ok.
Understandably they want unique product description content but we can't supply that for every retailer. So I want to acknowledge that whilst unique product copy is important there are other factors that they should consider such as site usability, the frequency and recency or ratings/reviews, etc.
I've skimmed through google and reviewed the message boards and can see a number of posts touching on this topic but I wonder if anyone can recommend good sources or care to share their insights?
Thanks in advance
-
Hi
I am in a similar situation, regarding improving the content on product pages. I'm going down the route of adding product reviews to our pages and after my research think it's a great idea.
Read https://econsultancy.com/blog/9366-ecommerce-consumer-reviews-why-you-need-them-and-how-to-use-them/
https://moz.com/blog/ecommerce-seo-making-product-pages-into-great-content-whiteboard-friday
I know it's difficult - we have thousands of product pages and only a couple of us working to improve and write content.
-
I'd like to jump in and agree.
I work for a retailer of suppliers/manufacturers similar to those you mention and we know their product descriptions are repeated across the web.
We don't have a big team but we make sure internally for the success of our site, that we rewrite them, take our own images if necessary and take the extra steps for our own site. It takes time, and we have had to in some cases upload the content we have from them and go back and work on it in priority order.
We don't ask manufacturers to provide unique content, we work with what they have and tailor it for our site - it's our website at the end of the day and our job to rank it.
-
What if a retailer is unwilling to rewrite the content.
If I was a manufacturer, I would not worry about it. That retailer will not compete with me in search. More sales for me.
The manufacturer doesn't want to invest resource in doing the same thing.
If the manufacturer has the time and interest to produce more content, then it should be to improve the manufacturer's website with "how to fix".... "how to enjoy".... "how to select"... etc. content. The manufacturer's highest profit margin can come from being the primary retailer. If the manufacturer wants these sales and can produce the service and the content then he/she should take them.
The reality is that retailers often call the shots and manufacturers need to balance the needs of many retailers.
I am not a manufacturer. I am a retailer. And for my main retail websites I have more content and better content than all of the retailers and manufacturers in the produce niche. A retailer can produce the content if they want to, but it is hard to give that job to freelance writers or interns because they don't know the product. This is the reward for the retailer who wants to serve his customers and at the same time advance their business.
If a retailer wants to run a dingy store, display products poorly, describe them poorly, that retailer puts himself at a competitive disadvantage. It is a CHOICE made by the retailer.
**Do you see there being other successful avenues of focus, such as supporting the retailer in getting product reviews. **
We use a review service. It gets us useful feedback from our customers. Positive feedback and negative feedback are both useful. These reviews should be at the full expense of the retailer. I think that it would be biased if the manufacturer was involved in this.
If I was a manufacturer, I would not spend any time worrying about this. The good retailer will rise to the top on his own. Give them helpful tips for success online, but allow them to succeed or fail based upon their own incentives and abilities. You want the best businesses succeeding. You don't want to carry the lazy ones because they will probably not support the customer as well and that will result in more complaints, returns, chargebacks, bad reviews, etc. These will appear online as bad reviews against your products and your brand will be smeared online.
If you want to support or give incentive to anyone, give that to your best retailers. I don't know how my manufacturers treat each of their retailers but I know that mine treat me really well. I believe that I get referred sales and better prices because I do a better job of representing their products and their brand and take care of the customers.
-
Great advice. What if a retailer is unwilling to rewrite the content, and the manufacturer doesn't want to invest resource in doing the same thing. The reality is that retailers often call the shots and manufacturers need to balance the needs of many retailers.
Do you see there being other successful avenues of focus, such as supporting the retailer in getting product reviews. Or do you feel that copy and imagery is the 'be all and end all' when it comes to on page SEO for product pages?
Really keen to hear views on this.
-
Very helpful, Patrick. I will check it all out!
-
If I was a manufacturer I would tell my retailers and affiliates that they will get best results in search engines by writing good, substantive, unique content accompanied by original images. I would tell them
"Yes, you can use our text and images, but your results in the search engines will be poor. Why? Because you have nothing unique and Google will not fill their search results with duplicate content. So, our advice is to write the best possible product descriptions that you are able to produce. Show your customers that you know your industry and know your products. Write helpful guides for using the products that are better than the ones that we have written for our own products. Then you will get best possible results.
If you simply copy/paste from our site, you will not have good results because you compete against the industry brand and hundreds of other website who have simply done copy/paste. We are telling you this for your own success. We are telling you this so that you can effectively compete against us. Now, get off of your duffs and get to work. Success is earned and not produced by copy/paste."
-
Hey Will
Great question - one of the best resources I have found in this area is Inflow - they have a ton of great content surrounding eCommerce SEO, product reviews, as well as a great blog that is updated quite frequently. I would also take a look at Moz's eCommerce posts on YouMoz - there's a ton of great ideas and posts.
Hope this helps!
Patrick
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
-
Seeking Advice on Improving On-Page SEO for my Website
I'm looking for some expert advice on improving the on-page SEO for my website, CCTV Camera Installation. Despite following best practices, I feel that my site isn't performing as well as it could be in search engine rankings. Here are a few specific areas where I'd appreciate some guidance: Content Optimization: I've ensured my content is keyword-rich and valuable to my audience. Are there any advanced techniques or tools that can help further optimize my content? Meta Tags and Descriptions: I've written unique meta titles and descriptions for each page, but I'm unsure if they're as effective as they could be. What are some tips for crafting compelling meta tags that improve click-through rates? Internal Linking: I've set up a basic internal linking structure. How can I enhance this to better distribute link equity and improve user navigation? Page Load Speed: While my site's load speed is decent, I'm aware that even minor improvements can have a significant impact on SEO. Are there any specific optimizations or tools you recommend for speeding up my website? Technical SEO: I've covered the basics like XML sitemaps and robots.txt files. Are there any advanced technical SEO practices that I should be aware of? Here is the link to my website for your reference: https://www.acssllc.ae/ Thank you in advance for your help! Best regards,
On-Page Optimization | | Htdbf
Israr Khan0 -
How can I write unique and seductive product descriptions about multiple, very similar products?
We are an eCommerce store who sell personalised phone cases, macbook covers, mugs and the like. Our target market is primarily 16-25 and female. We're in the process of redesigning our website www.mrnutcase.com and we desperately need some more enticing product descriptions before the redesign goes live. The problem is that most of our products are exactly the same. For example iPhone 5 case, iPhone 5S Case etc. At the moment our product descriptions are almost the same, but written in a slightly different way. Not only is this dangerous in terms of duplicate content, but it's also extremely boring for the user. With our users being young and female, writing about boring technical specifications isn't going to cut it with the crowd. Obviously, i want each of our pages to rank in Google so I don't want to NoIndex or canonicalize any pages or anything. How can I write unique and enticing product descriptions for very similar products? Would appreciate any ideas! Thanks, Danny
On-Page Optimization | | DannyNutcase0 -
SEO JOB
I am looking to hire someone who could help me to rank my page better: pediatric-dentist.org. If you are looking for a job and think you might be able to help me out please let me know thanks. I am looking to hire someone ASAP who could start ASAP. Good SEO practice for both of us. Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | help4561 -
Search Pages outranking Product Pages
A lot of the results seen in the search engines for our site are pages from our search results on our site, i.e. Widgets | Search Results This has happened over time and wasn't intentional, but in many cases we see our search results pages appearing over our actual product pages in search, which isn't ideal. Simply blocking indexing of these pages via robots wouldn't be ideal, at least all at once as we would have that period of time where those Search Results pages would be offline and our product pages would still be at the back of ranking. Any ideas on a strategy to replace these Search Results with the actual products in a way that won't hurt us too bad during the transition? Or a way to make the actual product pages rank above the search results? Currently, it is often the opposite. Thanks! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
Seo Moz says there are 124 links on this page - do you see it?
I'm look at the report under Crawl Diagnostics Summary/Too Many On-Page Links It says there are 124 links on this page. I don't see it?! do you? http://www.kisswedding.com/blog/category/garden-wedding-ideas/
On-Page Optimization | | annasusmiles0 -
On Page SEO Tool
Hello - I'm looking for one tool that does the following and was wondering if anyone knew of such a tool? In a perfect world I would like to enter in one domain name and have a report generated that shows All Internal links, link titles, and anchor text All internal broken links / redirects All images, image size and image alt, if the image alt is missing. I'd love to be about to export these reports to excel and quickly run my on page optimization. The goal is to produce a checklist for a developer to execute quickly. Thanks for your help Gabe
On-Page Optimization | | Gabe0 -
Link Product Thumb & Product Name with same anchor link?
We have an issue on one of our sites we're monitoring a campaign for that seems to have TOO many links on each page. I think the biggest reason is that each product listing on each category page has two separate anchor links into that page. One for the thumb and one for the name. So even though there should only be 60-70 links on each category page, that amount is being inflated because each product listing technically is being split into two separate links. Question is, should I place the thumbnail and name within the same anchor link? We do this on a lot of other sites we operate, but I'm not sure what's a better strategy. It would seem to me that it would be better to have a single anchor link that shares the thumb and product name.
On-Page Optimization | | AarcMediaGroup0 -
Results in the On-Page
I put one site (www.fmredesdeprotecao.com.br) and register some keywords, but the keywords don't appear in the results On-Page like the other campaigns. How can I solve that?
On-Page Optimization | | Ex20