Why you should really write better product descriptions
If you're selling products online you should't use their generic descriptions
We all know the value of sales copy when trying to sell a product or service. We know that you need to include the benefits, the features and a call to action. Manufacturers will spend thousands of pounds (or dollars) having product descriptions created to ensure that their product’s copy is the finest within their marketplace (although some can’t be bothered!).
So what’s wrong with this copy for selling online? If you are reselling someone else’s products or services using e-commerce through your online store, then you probably aren’t the only reseller. This means that all of the other resellers will be using the same product description as you; roll on duplicate content!
There you have it, duplicate content. Most businesses that are in a competitive field find it hard to rank in the SERPs as it is, let alone trying to fight their way out of supplemental results because of duplicate content. The pages that fall into supplemental results aren’t crawled very often, if at all. So when fixing the duplicate content, you may also need to create new product URLs.
Write a unique product description
The way to avoid this is to rewrite your product description so that it is unique. There is no need to remove the value of the manufacturers product description, hopefully their’s will include all of the benefits, etc.
- Add your own writing style to fall in line with the rest of your site
- If the description contains bullet points, change their order
- Use synonyms; this is a great way to improve content
You’ll even find a thesaurus and single word changes go a long way in helping make your content look unique.
Creating reseller content
The product manufacturer or brand will suffer from the same issues as the reseller, unless their content is unique. Personally I can only see one way to resolve this duplicate content fight, the creation of two product descriptions.
- One for the manufacturer’s web site that no reseller can use
- The other for the resellers, which can be manipulated as they wish
Double the work but it’s all about brand protection.
Keep on top of it
Make sure that you are aware of where your product pages are placed in the SERPs. See if they drop or move into supplemental results.
You also need to check and make sure that no one else is using your copy. Copyscape offer a really nice free duplicate content checker; they also do offer a professional version for bigger sites.
Final note
If your products only have a small description, don’t expect to rank or keep them out of the supplemental results. Content is king!
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