No product descriptions
-
Hi all,
Wondering if I could get the opinions from other Moz user's on this issue please...
A client is building a new online store, it is in the flooring niche, using the drop shipping model. The plan is to launch the site with about 1,000 products and then add more as we go. All good so far (the site is magento based)
However, the issue we are facing is down to product descriptions. The client needs to get the site up and running asap to start generating sales but the wholesaler has not provided any product description information for the products - save the size, shape and colour.
Can anyone foresee a major issue in launching the website with no product descriptions, from a seo point of view, and then adding the descriptions as we go. Have been trying to establish what Google defines as being a thin site and all the information on the topic is suggesting it is more due to duplicate content where, for example, retailers are all still using the default manufacturer description or have spun the content. I cannot find much which would suggest that product pages missing a description would classify as thing. I am happy to be corrected though. I accept that it would be easier to rank with a good product description but the client is a two person business and it is pretty hard to find things to say about 1,000 different kinds of rugs!
Any thoughts would be most welcome please.
Thanks.
-
Hello Every one,
recently I have launched my ecomap store including products like rugs you may check out at ruggallery.net
let come to main point of discussion, i just want to ask to i need to add description to all of my categories pages or will it work without that too. here are the few sample pages of my store please can anyone look at them and let me know if they are doing fine or do i need to change anything on these page. here are few categories pages.
1. Beige Rugs
2. Black Rugs
3. Blue Rugs
4. Brown rugsHere are the other category pages without description
1. Turquoise rugs 2. [Navy Rugs
p](https://ruggallery.net/color/navy/ "Navy Rugs")lease any one review these page and let me know if we need to update anything on the category pages
-
Tom,
Thanks for the links I will check those out. I agree, in an ideal world there would be product descriptions before things start. The trouble being trying to convince the client to spend a lot of money having a large number of descriptions written before they make any returns from the site. They are at the point where they want to see money coming in before more money goes out.
The lack of product descriptions isn't to say that the site doesn't have any content, it has a good number of very detailed guides on rug shopping, different styles of rugs, rug care etc. There are a few dozen guides type pieces, all of which were written for the site.
The category pages have category descriptions, a couple of paragraphs about the type of rug but it's just the individual products letting the side down at the moment.
Interestingly I have noticed that there are a few affiliate stores in the niche and they tend to rank the search results page so all one gets is a page relevant to the search query which has the product images and product names and no information over that that. They seem to be doing well will have to monitor things
-
To be honest from a UX point of view there is very little one could add to a product description which isn't covered by the 'meta' information. A Round, Pink, Wool Rug would have these tags assigned in the information tab so not much extra to say about that product.
I guess will have to go down the split testing route and try a sample range of products with descriptions and some without to see if there is a conversion difference.
-
Hi there
What I would first do is look at two or more product pages with CSS, JS and images disabled, or run them through a "simple search" in the free SEO Browser tool.
That will show you what the page is going to look like to a Googlebot - how similar does it look to you? Do the pages look 70% identical? 80%? You could also use the PlagSpotter tool to see just how similar those pages appear.
The point is, it really would be best practice to get as many product descriptions ready before the site goes live - not only to avoid any duplicate/thin content issues but to also help those pages rank outright to begin with. The Panda algorithm (that deals with thin content) refreshes monthly (perhaps even quicker), so there is a small window there to get all of the work done, if you were to set it live with no product descriptions. Would you necessarily be penalised straight away? Or at all? I honestly can't say as that would be guess work - but I don't like to take chances on stuff that I can't calculate and so I really would recommend you to get as many product descriptions on there as possible.
Have you considered using Mechanical Turk for this? You could outsource the description writing at a very low cost to hundreds of people, dramatically speeding up the process. If you give clear criteria in your job spec and provide all that a person would need to complete the job, you have a better chance at quality control. Rand wrote a blog post on this a while back, and a great blog post, albeit on a different topic, on how someone used MTurk and how they set up their job can be found in this CustomerDevLabs post, which is well worth the read.
I hope this helps.
-
Hi,
From an SEO perspective I don't think you need to worry.
However, from a UX & CRO point of view, descriptions is something you may want to consider.
Would your users benefit from having a description? If so, it's worth adding. You can do this after launch though.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks
SilverDoor
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
-
Do WooCommerce product tags effect SEO?
I'm just curious if I need these product tags and if they impact in any way at all SEO? - whether that be positively or negatively. on1iRin
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Duplicate Content Re: Product listing body copy on Website, Amazon & Ebay - issues ?
Hi Is it ok to have identical product body copy on market/platform listings same as the websites product listings ? In this case the products are the websites/own brand products (all pages canonicalised), so i take it shouldn't cause any issues or are you supposed to differentiate the product body copy on marketplace listings ? Im asking re seo reasons All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How to Manage Comparison products website
Hi Mozzers I have been Working on a Comparison Website ; Where We are comparing Single products to many other Products with same specs. E.G : Product A vs Product B and Product A vs Product C ? How We can manage it So that WE donot have duplicate Content issues. Remember: Products are digital so cannot change much Content in there.
On-Page Optimization | | Asjad0 -
Different Categories, Same Meta Description?
I've heard that having duplicate meta descriptions is bad for SEO and can even be the cause of penalties. However, a duplicate meta description would make sense for different categories on many sites. So I'm wondering what the best solution is for a case like this? One of my sites has around 150 topics, and each topic page is exactly the same, aside from including only things that are related to that specific topic. So why would I want to create 150 different meta descriptions? Not only is it time consuming, and nearly impossible to create 150 unique descriptions for the same type of content, but it also serves no purpose for visitors coming from the search engines. A logical approach would be to use the same meta description and just switch out the topics in the description... but then all of those descriptions would be 95% the same - and I imagine Google might see that as spam. So... suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
How would you target alternative names for your product with the use of internal/landing pages?
Recently, there has been some new industry names that have emerged for the type of software we provide and we want to make sure that we rank for those terms (of course!). The 3 names combined are too long for a title tag and would look odd to incl all 3 in the homepage. Any suggestions (or examples) of how this could done without looking spammy? I also don't really know where to put this within our website. e.g. enterprise portal, enterprise information portal (EIP) or corporate portal Any suggestions would be most welcome
On-Page Optimization | | alexpeps0 -
Bogus duplicate meta descriptions in GWT
UPDATE:
On-Page Optimization | | PatioLifeStyle
The same type of error (returning a page structure with no content and no CSS) can be replicated by adding a trailing slash to any valid URL. This leads me to believe that there is a problem on the server. It should be serving the custom 404 page instead of junk. I have fixed the "ezine" directory problem by doing a wildcard 301 on that directory, so you can ignore that issue. We are experiencing issues on one of our sites that we cannot resolve. It is an issue that many sites seem to have, according to discussions within the Google Webmaster Tools forum. We have tried several of the suggestions made in that forum, without success. We need somebody to help us resolve this: who has experience with this issue who knows exactly what is causing it who knows how to fix it Definition of Problem Location:
Google Webmaster Tools | Optimization | HTML Improvements | Duplicate meta descriptions (similar issues also appear in the same area under Duplicate title tags) By drilling down into a listed error, we see two versions of the problem: Multiple instances of the page are displayed, and appended to the URL is another URL of a page that has no relationship to the first. The screenshot also shows a directory (/ezine) that was deleted and renamed. See attached pic
duplicatemetadescriptions1.jpg Also by drilling down in the same way, some of the instances show unique URLs, but the ones listed (other than the correct one), do not exist. See attached pic
duplicatemetadescriptions2.jpg Please offer only KNOWN solution(s). Thank you. 79cNe0 -
SEOMOZ returns duplicate title and description
Hi, When SEOMOZ returns the crawl report results and it shows duplicate descriptions, is it referring to the meta description or is it referring to the actual product description? I have up to 30 products for many different sports teams. Since I have 30 products for as many teams, most of my products are the same and he only thing I did when I populated the site was to change the team name. I left the product description the same otherwise. Thanks, Don
On-Page Optimization | | ge01734000 -
Meta Descriptions - Duplicate Content?
I have created a Meta Description for a page that is optimized for SERPS. If I also put this exact content on my page for my readers, would this be considered duplicate content? The meta description and content will be listed on the same page with the same URL. Thanks for your help.
On-Page Optimization | | tuckjames0