What to do when writing unique product descriptions is impractical?
-
Hi Guys,
Obviously in an ideal world all product descriptions would be high quality and unique. But do you ever have a client who you know they'll be totally impractical for?
For example, one of my clients is a niche book store with 10,000s of products. There are only two members of staff. They currently C+P the blurb. I would love to recommend that they write unique copy for all their books, but considering the books have a low retail value and a fairly short shelf life, I doubt that unique descriptions would be worth the ROI.
My initial thoughts are:
- Identify the high priority books/best sellers and write new product descriptions for them
- Encourage more customers to leave on-page product reviews
Can anyone recommend any better solutions?
-
Thanks Miriam, they're a bit reluctant to hire a copywriter because of the relatively short shelf life of many of the books. I think it's a matter of prioritising and working through as many high priority descriptions as possible. Thanks for the advice!
-
Hi Alice,
I think you are on the right track, identifying top selling books for which it will be a priority to write unique copy. The key here will be setting up a manageable task list. Whether the owners can handle writing 5 new descriptions a week or 25, figure out what the golden number is that they can achieve without feeling overwhelmed. Progress on a project like this typically has to be modestly paced, because the inventory is so large. Can they, perhaps, hire a copywriter to help them with some, if not all, of the work?
-
Thanks Jakub! Two really great ideas
-
This two are good. I would try to find bloggers (followerwonk) writing about books, and ask them to leave a review about their favorite book at this store. It should be simple to get a nice scale.
Next step can be organize contest for best book review. Books as awards, and best reviews you can use as deafult to that product.
If some new ideas will come to my mind, i'll let you know!
btw: this is good topic for brainstorm.
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
-
Duplicate content? - Ecommerce reviews loading the same products on every page
Hello there! I use a plugin on my ecom site that shows customer reviews - not product reviews but general shopping experience reviews. The plugin also loads links and short descriptions of products those customers bought. Having installed it site-wide, on every page there are short descriptions of the same products. Of course, as people leave new reviews the content changes (but it doesn't happen very often). So the question is: Is having links and short descriptions of the same products on every page harmful for SEO in this case? I'd be grateful for any insight into this matter.
On-Page Optimization | | thpchlk0 -
Ensuring that Google Display my Meta Descriptions
Hello, I have a few pages that appear in SERPs with the page copy as opposed to the meta descriptions I wrote, is there any way to try & force the meta descriptions to be displayed? Its a WordPress site using Yoast
On-Page Optimization | | jasongmcmahon0 -
Can I reuse meta description tag on another site?
Hi....lets say i sell widgets and on my site i have redWidgets, blueWidgets and greenWidgets. Each of these widget page's has a meta description tag that seems to help click through. I now have a different site that would like to do a right up about each widget and will dedicate a independent page to each widget. Can i safely provide them with the original meta descriptions (from my original site) for each widget i have on my site to then use on these "right up" pages (as they seem to work well and are informative of the subject matter). I am not sure if this is a seo issue or not. I would think not but would appreciate any input. thank you
On-Page Optimization | | nomad-2023230 -
Smae Category Descriptions but in Different Cities
Hi, I was curious, if I have a guide with 20 categories, and that guide is in 10 different cities, can I have a category description for each city that simply swaps out the city name? Seattle Big Widgets
On-Page Optimization | | EBKMarketing
We offer the largest selection of widgets in the Seattle area. We have small widgets, medium widgets, large widgets. We have so many widgets, most people in Seattle are blown away by our selection. Portland Big Widgets We offer the largest selection of widgets in the Portland area. We have small widgets, medium widgets, large widgets. We have so many widgets, most people in Portland are blown away by our selection. Would this be considered duplicate content, if it's followed by distinct city listings? Writing 20 decriptions would be nicer than writing 200. Just trying to think about SEO, resources, best use of time, etc. Thanks0 -
Category descriptions and magento
Hi Any eCommerce experts out there, please? I run a magento store and am looking to improve the performance of my category pages in the listings, to aid this I have created category descriptions - a hundred or so words about what, for example, a Maxi Dress is, an example can be seen here http:// yochic.co.uk/dress-267864/ maxi.html (I have broken the link as not sure on the linking policy of the forum). I have noticed, however, that this category description is appearing all on sub pages of the section, so it is on page 1,2,3,4 etc. Is this likely to lead to me receiving a penalty for internal duplicate content? The store uses rel="next" in all the category pages, so shouldn't that help limit any problems caused by the duplication of the page descriptions? I notice that when I search for a sub page, 2, 3, 4 etc in Google using the url of page two http://yochic.co.uk/dress-267864/maxi.html?p=2 it returns the first page, so am i right in thinking with the tags that Google sees all the sub pages as being page one. In which case, doesn't that limit my ability to rank for the products listed on pages 2+? Long story short, the site cannot rank it's product pages because the vast majority of the product descriptions are 100% duplicate because the site is an affiliate fashion store. Many thanks Carl
On-Page Optimization | | carl_daedricdigital0 -
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 -
Number of Words Product Pages
Hello, Can you give me some examples of how many words you use for product pages? I know it's going to vary and that quality is more important than number of words, but what's been optimal for you and why?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Duplicate Content for Spanish & English Product
Hi There, Our company provides training courses and I am looking to provide the Spanish version of a course that we already provide in English. As it is an e-commerce site, our landing page for the English version gives the full description of the course and all related details. Once the course is purchased, a flash based course launches within a player window and the student begins the course. For the Spanish version of the course, my target customers are English speaking supervisors purchasing the course for their Spanish speaking workers. So the landing page will still be in English (just like the English version of the course) with the same basic description, with the only content differences on that page being the inclusion of the fact that this course is in Spanish and a few details around that. The majority of the content on these two separate landing pages will be exactly the same, as the description for the overall course is the same, just that it's presented in a different language, so it needs to be 2 separate products. My fear is that Google will read this as duplicate content and I will be penalized for it. Is this a possibility or will Google know why I set it up this way and not penalize me? If that is a possibility, how should I go about doing this correctly? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | NiallTom0