Duplicate content on Ecommerce site

[BrandingBaw]

Hi there,

Does anyone have experience in building an ecommerce site with duplicate content on it (rankwise)?

I'm currently building a site but it's a LOT of work rewriting all the product descriptions. Is it possible to rank with content from my supplier, which is also used by other resellers like me?

Thanks in advance

 

[redrubies]

I wouldn't worry about rankings as much as worrying about being under cut. It is the fastest way to be undercut by another store. It is also the fastest way to lose sales because you will look like "one of THOSE stores." Those are the resellers with the same junk that every other reseller sells. I am not calling your products junk. I am just stating what the customer thinks. Three tricks to finding the supplier of another store's product. 1. put the image name (which are numbers, not a word) into google images. 2. Put the exact title of the product in google with quotes 3. put the description in google.

The most important things you can do are to change the image names, titles, and descriptions.

 

[BrandingBaw]

Thanks RedRubies, that's useful info.

I do change the upper 'story' parts of my articles, however the stats (dimensions, weight and such) are still the same. Does Google look over this or not?

 

[zxlk21e]

For some things it's not a big deal. You can't exactly rewrite product dimensions, shipping weight and technical details. Doing so would be straight up lying and bad for customers. So I would recommend adding some type of quick anecdote in to the product description. Some type of personal commentary can help increase conversion rates and brand loyalty if done correctly, not to mention adding uniqueness to the pages/products.

 

[Panther28]

The best way is to concentrate on meta tags for ecommerce, you can make these unique, also if you are using google webmasters their will be a number of fields that google finds that you mayt not even have in your store, that still might show up in the code, like shipping dimensions as an example, remove the code that you don't need.

 

[Techxan]

You are making the same mistake many people make. Duplicate content is having the same thing on your site on multiple pages, not you having something on your site that exists elsewhere on the web.

Thanks RedRubies, that's useful info.

I do change the upper 'story' parts of my articles, however the stats (dimensions, weight and such) are still the same. Does Google look over this or not?

 

[redrubies]

Thanks RedRubies, that's useful info.

I do change the upper 'story' parts of my articles, however the stats (dimensions, weight and such) are still the same. Does Google look over this or not?

Don't worry about Google. Worry about sales. The specs you have to keep the same. I have never experienced rankings affected by that and I am 110% positive that Google does not even take that into consideration. Think how many people out there sell sterling silver earrings, sterling silver amethyst earrings, gold studs, tennis bracelets, etc.

I have been in retail for 23 years. Before the age of the internet, I had a catalog. When the internet became popular, I imported a supplier called World of Products which had thousands of products in it. Problem was that many other people also used World of Products. I was one of the highest sales people in the country. Everyone else had "bird house made of acrylic in red and brown." Back in the day, you could do a search on the description and find pages of that bird house. It looked like "the reseller junk that everyone has." I changed descriptions and it looked like I was the only one selling those specific bird houses. It paid off.

 

[BrandingBaw]

That all makes sense, thanks for that kind of information. Looks like I'm heading the right way by reading your stuff so my worries are taken away

 

[BrandingBaw]

You are making the same mistake many people make. Duplicate content is having the same thing on your site on multiple pages, not you having something on your site that exists elsewhere on the web.

Never heard of this one, but very useful. How do we call copied content after knowing this? Just copied content or what?

 

[redrubies]

That all makes sense, thanks for that kind of information. Looks like I'm heading the right way by reading your stuff so my worries are taken away

You're welcome. Don't be afraid to be different. Even if you are selling the same things that thousands of other people are selling, always remember to be different. You must be different when you are a reseller. Do things that the majority aren't doing. Make your own paper catalog featuring some of the things from your store. Put them on sale and show them around in rl. Pick something you think appeals to students and put it on a piece of high glossy paper. Put the picture, description, and price. Make it a one page piece of marketing. If there is a teenager in your life, offer a commission for every one of that item that they sell. There is so much you can do to be creative. You have a store now! Be proud of your store! It's your store and you can open the door and welcome all kinds of customers in it from the internet to rl. This can be a very exciting time for you if you allow it to be. Most of the time people who have ecommerce limit themselves to google rankings and social media marketing. Retail is flooded. You have to do things other than what you read here. Ecommerce webmasters forget to bring their stores to real life and it's a shame because they are missing out on sales. My friend keeps some products in the trunk of her car. So does her husband. I just got an email from someone I was talking to at the mall one day asking me if I remember her. She bought a ring from me. Be confident and proud of what you have. You are a store owner now on the internet as well as in real life.

 

[Looking4Links]

Does anyone have an idea on how much of the content can be duiplicate across the pages. Example will 3 or 4 sentences of the same content on every page be ok?

 

[BrandingBaw]

You're welcome. Don't be afraid to be different. Even if you are selling the same things that thousands of other people are selling, always remember to be different. You must be different when you are a reseller. Do things that the majority aren't doing. Make your own paper catalog featuring some of the things from your store. Put them on sale and show them around in rl. Pick something you think appeals to students and put it on a piece of high glossy paper. Put the picture, description, and price. Make it a one page piece of marketing. If there is a teenager in your life, offer a commission for every one of that item that they sell. There is so much you can do to be creative. You have a store now! Be proud of your store! It's your store and you can open the door and welcome all kinds of customers in it from the internet to rl. This can be a very exciting time for you if you allow it to be. Most of the time people who have ecommerce limit themselves to google rankings and social media marketing. Retail is flooded. You have to do things other than what you read here. Ecommerce webmasters forget to bring their stores to real life and it's a shame because they are missing out on sales. My friend keeps some products in the trunk of her car. So does her husband. I just got an email from someone I was talking to at the mall one day asking me if I remember her. She bought a ring from me. Be confident and proud of what you have. You are a store owner now on the internet as well as in real life.

Thanks a bunch for all your (positive) info, that's really appreciated. I bet a lot of e-commerce newbies will use this in their future since what you said is all a business owner should do. It is as you said running like a real shop, you just sell your things through the internet - and not in person. That makes the only difference.

 

[BrandingBaw]

 

[Thesiege84]

Hi there,

Does anyone have experience in building an ecommerce site with duplicate content on it (rankwise)?

I'm currently building a site but it's a LOT of work rewriting all the product descriptions. Is it possible to rank with content from my supplier, which is also used by other resellers like me?

Thanks in advance

Hey, yeah i have done this before. I ended up using the descriptions that the supplier gave us and created a Detailed Description below it and had an article writer write 100-200 (not sure on numbers anymore) words on each product.

Did wonders for the long tail at the time and increased rankings of most of the the inner pages however the site is now going through a long dance or penalty at the moment but i doubt it was the content, it was quite a poor writer actually. My excellent writer is writing full steam for my other projects but its definitly on the list of to do's...

hope this helps, bottom line, i think its worth the money to send a writer through. We have 1,100 products if that helps...

 

[BrandingBaw]

That's a lot already - quite costly to add written content on there. But hey, if your own time brings more money than writing it sure is the way to go and it's a great investment. I hope you'll be getting out of that dance with some nice rankings after putting all that content up. Even if it's "bad" written content, you're atleast over-ranking your competitors that work with the standard descriptions (only text wise tho). Now it's a matter of having very good on-page SEO and some good juices flowing in to your site and you're golden. And yes, your info sure helped, it wasn't new for me but I bet many can benefit from this. It might be nice to hear once if your site landed well at the end of it's current dance.

Btw, do you use G 4dword for that site?

 

[Thesiege84]

That's a lot already - quite costly to add written content on there. But hey, if your own time brings more money than writing it sure is the way to go and it's a great investment. I hope you'll be getting out of that dance with some nice rankings after putting all that content up. Even if it's "bad" written content, you're atleast over-ranking your competitors that work with the standard descriptions (only text wise tho). Now it's a matter of having very good on-page SEO and some good juices flowing in to your site and you're golden. And yes, your info sure helped, it wasn't new for me but I bet many can benefit from this. It might be nice to hear once if your site landed well at the end of it's current dance.

Btw, do you use G 4dWord for that site?

Yeah for sure, these days my job mainly involves running a team so it sure if a wise investment.

Yeah the dance is a pain in the arse, luckily the site is still bringing in some serious cash so its not THAT bad, mostly returning customers though. Im seeing some very weird results in google at the moment like some others but haven't collected enough data to know exactly what the hell is going on. You may find this useful, my 2ct on some ranking changes ive experienced over the last couple of days.

From this thread if your interested:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...527617-there-another-google-update-today.html

My E-commerce site in .co.uk rankings got hit today for the highest niche related keyword. Went from position 3 to page 4 and slapped my traffic to a tenth of what it was. The uk search results have gone f*cking mad. 90% of SME's have been hit hard and been replaced with very old established companies inner pages, most without any backlinks. I even have f*cking harods, DIY and kwickfit above me and they don't even sell what i sell. Only positive was the page rank update but that doesnt give me $$$'s

My global rankings are still stable however have not moved for a month or so. Only a 5 month old site but its stopped at the top of page 3, high diversity in link profile but lacks high PR links. The serps for this niche in general have REALLY changed though, the classic 77% (copyscape says) spun article on a tumblr blog with no backlinks and no outbound links is now on first page. At least 5 of the first page results are now different with some sites that have dominated first page for months have got hit HARD!!

This has to be a major update, everything i type in brings up REALLY f*cked up results. Its like Google has uploaded the wrong algo file when they launched their update! GOD I HATE THEM!!!!

Im not too worried about the future though, serious marketers learn to adapt to big changes and always succeed with determination. These changes are horrible, just horrible, i knew i should have diversified my traffic sources.

Maybe backlinks are worthless now and they brought their 2 year plan for social forward to trick us.

Or it could be the idiots that used the disavow tool that gave them everything on a plate!!!

No adwords on this site, main source of traffic is from search engines and some affiliates. I used to rank so well time to get my hands dirty on this baby

EDIT: Not sure if its a bit cheeky but i really need some help on this thread and ive researched it so much and come back with NOTHING Maybe you could cast your eye over it?
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...tic-translation-software-authority-sites.html

 

[redrubies]

BrandingBaw, make use of direct mail too. Many ecommerce owners don't bother with direct mail but they should. Direct mail still accounts for a lot of sales. You can buy a mailing list or make your own. You can have coupons or advertisements printed or make your own. Direct mail is a valuable tool for internet based stores.

 

[LadyBugz]

i think you will be banned for having duplicate content. i think i might have read that on one of the forums but forgot the details eventually. but im pretty sure you will be banned. so i suggest you dont try it

 

[GiorgioB]

Great advice Redrubies.. I have an ecommerce store with around 1000 products, and every single product title, description and images is unique and keyword rich. The benefits of this is really under-rated. For the product descriptions, I do something like this:

"Repeat product title

Short descriptive paragraph of 2-3 sentences explaining how awesome the product is

Specifications (size, color, wattage, number of XYZ, etc..)


Sentence like "check out the rest of our BLABLABLA category for more awesome deals and special offers"


This gives you a template that you can easily make unique for each product.

 

[BrandingBaw]

Yeah for sure, these days my job mainly involves running a team so it sure if a wise investment.

Yeah the dance is a pain in the arse, luckily the site is still bringing in some serious cash so its not THAT bad, mostly returning customers though. Im seeing some very weird results in google at the moment like some others but haven't collected enough data to know exactly what the hell is going on. You may find this useful, my 2ct on some ranking changes ive experienced over the last couple of days.

From this thread if your interested:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/black-hat-seo/527617-there-another-google-update-today.html



No adwords on this site, main source of traffic is from search engines and some affiliates. I used to rank so well time to get my hands dirty on this baby

EDIT: Not sure if its a bit cheeky but i really need some help on this thread and ive researched it so much and come back with NOTHING Maybe you could cast your eye over it?
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/black-hat-seo/520580-need-your-advice-automatic-translation-software-authority-sites.html

I noticed you've gotten some replies on your translation issue, but since it's unknown to me I can't really help out with that one. I completely build my E-commerce site from scratch, and have put in 3 different languages on top of the main one manually. This worked out perfectly fine, so perhaps translating through G Translate might be not liked by search engines, but again - I truly have no idea.

BrandingBaw, make use of direct mail too. Many ecommerce owners don't bother with direct mail but they should. Direct mail still accounts for a lot of sales. You can buy a mailing list or make your own. You can have coupons or advertisements printed or make your own. Direct mail is a valuable tool for internet based stores.

Hi there RedRubies,

If you're talking about direct mail as in physical mail (post), yes that works out really good. However I'm in a 'shady' niche and it would create a lot of upset or perhaps offended people when I'll be dropping my folders in their mailboxes. I do however advertise in niche related magazines, which are bringing me shitloads of orders. We're here on BHW mostly for the online part, that we're staring ourselves blind at that and how to gain the most from the web. However I'm convinced that if you take a step back and overlook things - combined with thoughts about how people in your niche used to run their businesses before this whole Internet thing... You'll be seeing some very nice opportunities and if turned the right way, will work out maybe even better than trying to obtain sales over the Internet.

Thanks once more for your advice, it's greatly appreciated!

i think you will be banned for having duplicate content. i think i might have read that on one of the forums but forgot the details eventually. but im pretty sure you will be banned. so i suggest you dont try it

It would be interesting if you had some more info or perhaps a source on this one. It's impossible that you'll get 'banned' (whatever you mean with banned...) from Google or any other place just because you have the same content someone else has on their site. As mentioned earlier in this thread, there are (for example) thousands of sellers who've got the same ring for sale, and since the specifications of this ring are all the same, you'll be having a huge amount of banned sites due to this double content.

Great advice Redrubies.. I have an ecommerce store with around 1000 products, and every single product title, description and images is unique and keyword rich. The benefits of this is really under-rated. For the product descriptions, I do something like this:

"Repeat product title

Short descriptive paragraph of 2-3 sentences explaining how awesome the product is

Specifications (size, color, wattage, number of XYZ, etc..)


Sentence like "check out the rest of our BLABLABLA category for more awesome deals and special offers"


This gives you a template that you can easily make unique for each product.

That's exactly how I pull it off as well. As you said the benifits from this are very under rated, since most webmasters nowadays think, "Hey, I can do SEO - let's start a webshop, import all data (pics, product info, prices, etc. etc.) from the suppliers database, throw some links on there and I'm ready to go". The funny thing is, after having tested it myself, rankwise it is working out (and will always be so if SEO is done correct). However as this thread showed clearly already, it's not what 99% of your customers are looking for. Unique content is way more attractive and makes the people feel like they're buying it from an expert - which generates trusted sales. Those sales make you build a reliable clientbase that will come back for more...

Good luck to all and thanks for all the replies, by the looks of it we're all gaining some knowledge on things regarding E-commerce here!