Duplicate Content

[Andrew]

Hi, my question is about duplicate content.

i have an ecommerce site that takes product info and descriptions directly from the distributor, how concerned should one be about duplicate content issues.

For example, most sites sellinng PlayStation 2, all have the same description of the prroduct as it is given to them by Sony. Will a site be penalized for this, or is Google smart enough to penalize duplicate content for certain 'types of pages' opposed to others? Or should a site rewrite the description for every product? (i have over 3000 products and dont relish the thought of re writing every single description). thanks for listening.

[c14h20o4]

Hi Andrew,

When you say it takes product info directly from the distributor, are you saying the site is built by automation software?

Anyways, there isn't really a duplicate content penalty so you don't have to worry about that but in this case, having duplicate content doesn't really help you here either. If you think about it, your site is just another drop of water in the ocean of sites in Google's index so where do you think you'll get ranked for that? In other words, you're not going to get hurt but you're not standing out enough either. If it were my site, and I haven't seen it and could be totally wrong so take that into account, I'd look for some good keywords related to the product categories and try to build some pages, with original content for the products that way. Here's an example....

Let's say I did the keyword research and the term "Retro Gaming," had good numbers ie search volume etc., and the competition was weak. You could then create a page about retro gaming and perhaps have a subsection titled something like, "Top Game Consoles of 2000" for which your playstation 2 product could go there. You could then do something similar with the games and other product categories.

Hope that was clear,
Chris

[Andrew]

Hi Chris,

First of all thank you for taking the time to reply.

The sites database is populated by XML feed provided by the supplier. Therefore the product descriptions are the same on my site as they will be on any other site that uses the same XML feed.

I understand your point about standing out from the crowd and I will now create some pages with completely unique product descriptions and see if they rank higher.

If I understand you correctly, if I was to choose 10 products and rewrite their descriptions uniquely incorporating some good keywords would you expect these pages to rank and would that in turn assist my homepage to rank higher?

Doing a site search on Google shows that Google has indexed over 800 pages, if I make the 10 unique pages would it be advisable to submit these pages to Google in order to ensure they are indexed?

I have begun a link campaign and I am starting to see those links in Google analytics.

Thank you for your assistance

regards

Andrew

[c14h20o4]

No problem Andrew, glad to help,

If I understand you correctly, if I was to choose 10 products and rewrite their descriptions uniquely incorporating some good keywords would you expect these pages to rank and would that in turn assist my homepage to rank higher?

Here, I wasn't really talking about rewriting the descriptions, I was talking about looking at the products you have and seeing if there isn't a way that you can logically group them together so that they fit under a low competition keyword and then writing an article for your site based on that keyword with those grouped products featured on the page within the article. So if you wrote an article titled, "Top Retro Gaming Consoles and Accessories of 2000" that article would feature those products within the article and you would not need to change the description. The advantages here are that google loves to index content and grouping related products together has on-page seo value.

if I make the 10 unique pages would it be advisable to submit these pages to Google in order to ensure they are indexed?

I wouldn't worry about them getting indexed, Google will find your pages. If you do want to speed things up a bit, get some links to those pages using that low competition keyword you researched as the anchor as well as using the individual products as the link anchors as well.

Hope that helps,
Chris

[Onlinejobs]

Hi, my question is about duplicate content.

i have an ecommerce site that takes product info and descriptions directly from the distributor, how concerned should one be about duplicate content issues.

For example, most sites sellinng PlayStation 2, all have the same description of the prroduct as it is given to them by Sony. Will a site be penalized for this, or is Google smart enough to penalize duplicate content for certain 'types of pages' opposed to others? Or should a site rewrite the description for every product? (i have over 3000 products and dont relish the thought of re writing every single description). thanks for listening.

Google's definition of Duplicate content is when you have 2 pages on your site that has exactly the same content. So, duplicate content is applicable only within same website.

[ngovgroup]

Recently it has been very difficult to find reviews or comments on products. All you get in google is SE spam. And that's the real problem. To find relevant content. One way is avoiding duplicates.

[seeajay10]

Hi, my question is about duplicate content.

i have an ecommerce site that takes product info and descriptions directly from the distributor, how concerned should one be about duplicate content issues.

For example, most sites sellinng PlayStation 2, all have the same description of the prroduct as it is given to them by Sony. Will a site be penalized for this, or is Google smart enough to penalize duplicate content for certain 'types of pages' opposed to others? Or should a site rewrite the description for every product? (i have over 3000 products and dont relish the thought of re writing every single description). thanks for listening.

If your site is indexed first then other website data will be treated as duplicate content.But if his site will be indexed first then your information will be treated as duplicate content.

[Kim_smith]

Content of the any article on a site should be fresh and unique. You should avoid using duplicate contents.