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
-
Multiple page rank - harm or good?
Can someone explain this to me, as I just ranked a page on our website and intended to do the same for 3 other pages. our home page is currently ranked well, but after reading this (below from Moz) I'm concerned if i'm doing more harm then good. I just ranked the page 3 days ago, I haven't seen any drops yet. When multiple pages with the potential to rank well are combined into a single page, they not only stop competing with each other, but also create a stronger relevancy and popularity signal overall. This will positively impact your ability to rank well in the search engines. Thanks in advance, Lauren.
On-Page Optimization | | MissThumann0 -
Understanding why our new page doesn't rank. Internal link structure to blame? + understand canonical pages more.
Hi guys. Sorry it's an essay...BUT, i think a lot of you will find this an interesting question. This question is in 2 (related) parts, and I imagine it would be an 'advanced' SEO question. Hoping you guys can help bring some real insight 🙂 Always amazed at the quality for this forum/ community. **Context... ** We had a duplicate content issue caused by this page and it's product permutations, so we placed canonical tags on all the product permutations to solve it. Worked a treat. However, we now have more **product ranges. **We now sell Diaries, Notebooks & Music books, which are clearly different from one another. So...we've placed canonical tags on all the product permutations leading back to the 'parent' theme. In other words, all the diary permutations 'lead back' to the diary page. All the notebooks permutations 'lead back' to the main notebook page. So on and so forth. Make sense so far? Context end..... Issue. Amazingly our Diary page outranks our notebook pagefor the search term 'Design your own Notebook'. The notebook page is well optimised for this search term, and the diary page avoids the word 'notebook' altogether (so no keyword cannibalisation going on). Possible reason? Our Diary page has a vast amount of internal links to it throughout our site. The notebook page has only a few. Could this be the issue? If so, what reading/ blogs/ content/ tools would you recommend to help understand and solve this problem? i.e) Better understanding internal link structure for SEO. 2nd part of the question (in the context of internal linking for SEO). When there are internal links to a page with a conical tag does that 'count' towards the 'parent page', or simply towards that specific page? I really hope that makes sense. If it's clear as mud just shout. Isaac. EDIT: All pages in question have been indexed since we added these changes to the site.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
On page SEO Strategy / What pages to use?
What is the best page to use for targeting your hard to rank keywords? The keyword phrases in question here are "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing", "Custom Aquariums", & "Acrylic Aquariums" As of right now we have created 3 separate pages for each one of these keyword phrases. http://seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums for "Custom Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums/acrylic-aquariums/ for "Acrylic Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/services/acrylic-tank-manufacturing/ for "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing" Or are we better of using the home page http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/ for the our main hard to rank for terms. Generally speaking I would think more people will link to our home page.
On-Page Optimization | | SeaQuatic0 -
What kind of pages are they?
Hi all, after making an analysis of my website the tool has found two pages that I don't know what refers to: /?page id=2058 (only one page of this kind) /?attachment id= (only one page of this kind) does anyone know what kind of pages they could be? Do the have relevancy regading SEO? The plattform is Wordpress. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
How to improve On-Page Grades for Top Ranking Pages
please help me - i dont know or understand how to improve on-Page Grades for Top Ranking Pages
On-Page Optimization | | pwwukpw0 -
Autogenerated pages
My main product is database conversion software. As it supports tons of databases, it's fairly easy to generate thousands of landing pages simply by variating source/target database names, connection information etc. In fact, I autogenerated almost 25k pages that way. As I didn't want to jeopardize my main site, I placed all that content to a new microsite (www.fullconvert.com) which had no history and no inbound links. Results were nice - site is live two months and in second month already had 1300 visitors. Now, my question is - should I create the same thing on my (old and rather authoritative) main site www.spectralcore.com? I could use a different template to avoid duplicate content. Of course, my main concern is being penalized by Google. In my opinion, this autogenerated content is fine because it provides (tons of) laser-focused landing pages, so visitors will instantly recognize they found what they're looking for. But Google might disagree! What do you think? Is there a danger in trying to leverage authority of my main site in adding 20k+ autogenerated pages with inbound no links to them?
On-Page Optimization | | metadata0 -
Does keyword density on a landing page effect SEO?
I'm relitavely new to SEO, and I just wondered how keyword dense the homepage to our businesses site should be? Is there any value in loading the frontpage at the potential expense of readibility, or should our content elsewhere be responsible for our yield in search engine results? Look forward to any responses. Thanks, Mark
On-Page Optimization | | RobertHill0