Create Unique Product CopyAll too often online retailers will use images and product descriptions from the manufacturers of the products they are selling. Using the images can be a good strategy as long as the images are good and proper republishing permissions have been obtained. However, utilizing the manufacturers' descriptions isn't conducive to success. How can this be? After all if a company designs and develops a product, one would assume that they would also provide the best description. While that might be the case, think of all of the other retailers that are going to use that same product description.
Search engines like unique content. In fact, Google will penalize pages that it believes duplicate content from other sites. If you think about it from a search engine's perspective, how would you rank a product page from one retailer higher than another when the content is exactly the same? It's not a simple answer although there are algorithms in place to make those decisions. Not only is it possible that the duplicate pages will be penalized, they may not show up in a search engine's index at all.
Another advantage to writing unique copy is that you can cater it more towards search engines. This means being a bit more liberal with keyword usage than you might otherwise be. Also, consider creating some links in your descriptions to other products or category pages in your online catalog. Links to other products with the relevant keyword anchor text tend to help the ranking of those target products.
Writing unique content for every product in your catalog may seem like a daunting task and may not be realistic if you carry thousands of products. If you do use manufacturer's descriptions, at least try to append some unique content to the standard copy that adds value. Also, consider starting with your most popular products. That is where you will most likely get the greatest gain for your time spent.
With the holidays approaching quickly, anything you can do to distinguish yourself from the competition will make for a more prosperous holiday season. Creating unique content on your product pages can help your search engine rankings, which leads to more unique visitors and hence more revenue.
