How often should we refresh or rewrite product descriptions?
-
is it good practice to rewrite our product descriptions every few months?
Thanks
-
I recall Matt Cutts, in one of his videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z07IfCtYbLw), addressing product descriptions (Scraped from the manufacturer) with E-Commerce sites, especially those sites that are selling products that a hundred, or even a thousand other retailers are selling. He said that you would be ahead of your competition if you took the time to rewrite those descriptions, so they are original and not duplicate content . It is not necessary to refresh or rewrite them every couple of months. Just having a unique description that no one else has for that product will put you ahead of everyone else selling that product.
It would be a good idea to try and get your customers to write reviews on your products and post them on your product pages. This is unique, original content that is fresh. Amazon is a good example of doing this.
-
Google looks for sites with two types of content: Fresh or Evergreen. Fresh would be something you would expect on a news site or blog, while Evergreen is for something that doesn't change, or changes very infrequently.
If you provide content that is in an industry where specifications / news can change regularly, then it could be of benefit. If not, then don't do this just for the sake of it.
However, as Egol said, if you can improve on what is already there, then this could prove a positive move.
-Andy
-
No..... but if you IMPROVE them occasionally it could be beneficial.
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
-
Should I change our main category pages to product listing pages?
With the thought of improving user experience, as well as rankings in Google, I'm considering changing our main category pages to product listing pages (with sub-categories remaining, still). These main category pages are very standard and don't link to any informational content, such as buyers guides, etc. What's driven this is the latest Google core update. I've noticed our main competitor (who we were out-ranking before... but not now) now uses this approach. I can see the benefit from a user perspective, i.e. less clicks to reach products. What's the pros/cons from an SEO point of view, please? Could the potential duplication of content be an issue? For context, we have about 2,000 products and website is on Magento 2.
On-Page Optimization | | alifeofjoy1 -
Random important product pages dropped out of index week ending Dec 22: why???
Hello We've been around a very long time, and I have a long running pet set of core terms and pages tracked using Moz and other tools. With no changes to the content or site or htaaccess or robots.txt or sitemap, insignificant backlink changes etc, we saw a ton of important product pages drop out of the index the week ending December 22 2019. We are still ranking for many of the terms associated, but at far worse positions since the pages G is choosing instead for those terms are not as focused. I need to be clear that this has not happened across the board, but seemingly at random. When I look in G Search Console, the pages are submitted and indexed (last crawl yesterday), mobile friendly, have breadcrumbs, and the only warning are product level for lack of optional fields under offers (nothing new, not particular to the dropped pages in question here). So, what happened the week ending December 22???? Should I expect the dust to settle and the pages to return? Extremely strange. Thx
On-Page Optimization | | jamestown0 -
Will it upset Google if I aggregate product page reviews up into a product category page?
We have reviews on our product pages and we are considering averaging those reviews out and putting them on specific category pages in order for the average product ratings to be displayed in search results. Each averaged category review would be only for the products within it's category, and all reviews are from users of the site, no 3rd party reviews. For example, averaging the reviews from all of our boxes products pages, and listing that average review on the boxes category page. My question is, will this be doing anything wrong in the eyes of Google, and if so how so? -Derick
On-Page Optimization | | Deluxe0 -
Products and Services - Reselling - What about the description?
Hi, Let say there is a company which resell products and services of other companies. What do you think should be the strategy for putting the description of every service/product? 1. Should I copy the text from the original website and paste it on my page. In this case we get a website that has a lot of copied content, although it is a valid content. I notice that this is quite popular practice with local distributors who sell products of other (multinational) companies. If so, should I rel=canonical to the original product? But than I wouldn't rank for this product on local market right? 2. Should I come up with original descriptions? Would that give me and advantage over the websites that have copied the description from other pages? Appreciate your answer!
On-Page Optimization | | LeszekNowakowski0 -
IMG ALT tags - should they be the same or the product title?
I have about 300 products. Should I make all my IMG ALT tags with my keywords, such as sea glass jewelry, sea glass necklace, sea glass bracelets? Or, should I make them what their title is, some of which do not pertain to the keyword, such as By the Sea. Some of my products do have keywords in them, but not all. I am hesitant on changing all the titles, as almost all URLs are indexed.
On-Page Optimization | | tiffany11030 -
Is there anything wrong with having duplicate description tags if they are relevant to their pages?
I have duplicate description tags, but they make sense for the pages they're on. Is there anything wrong with this? Thanks for reading!
On-Page Optimization | | DA20130 -
Ecommerce, Adding Content To Categories/Product Pages
In an eCommerce store, when is it appropriate to add quality category pages content and when is it more appropriate to add content to the actual product pages instead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
How should we handle ecommerce section pages (flagged with duplication) containing the same products?
We've removed a ton of errors, duplication and other stuff since signing up to SEOmoz Pro, but we're getting to the point where what we have left isn't that easy to fix. On one of our (ecommerce) sites we have several sections where people buy products that are applicable to the area of the home. In one or two instances, a particular list of products is the same for two or more different areas - for instance the "Bedroom and Landings" and "Hallway and Stairs" sections may list the same 10 products. This is obviously flagging up as duplication in our reports. What is the best way to handle this situation? Make the one with the highest authority canonical? Point both to another canonical page? Or, try and convince the product department that we should have a more generically name section that both link to? Thanks for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | Safelincs0