Having the same product descriptions say for 20 products

[learner2020]

Hello, I'm just starting to design my website in the backend and I need to ask for some advice. Say you have 20 products that are the same thing but in different patterns and designs and you list each one individually and you put the same product description for all 20 products word for word is this ok to do that or do you need to have the description for each product for all 20 with totally different descriptions and can't be the same at all.

I'm a bit confused as I have heard in the past that when Google crawls your website and comes across the same wording its classed as spam and also marked bad with Google. Can anyone hear explain this and the way it needs to be as I also don't want to stuff up SEO. 

[Merryn · Accepted solution]

Hi there

Do not copy and paste product descriptions from your manufacturer. You're absolutely right with regards to Google and SEO; if you're relying on organic traffic, anything Google flags as duplicate content will negatively affect your search rankings. 

If you're focusing on paid search or Shopping Ads, this probably won't be an issue because your Shopping Ads are triggered by product data and not keywords. 

But if you are focusing on organic search, and you have multiple products with the same descriptions, then each of those product pages are going to compete for traffic when they're triggered by search queries. So overall, I'd say best to rework your descriptions as best you can. 

If this was helpful please choose it as your solution or like my reply 🙂 

Sincerely 

Merryn, ShoppingFeeder.com

[Answerbase]

Many times this comes into play when there are options for a specific product (size, color)...known commonly as "Product Variants"...and it does become a bit tricky to ensure that you have unique descriptions for every variant of a product.   So, until you've built that out to have unique descriptions and content on that page....better to only have one be indexed on Google.

Now....you don't have to let it sit there, you can work to create pages that Google does find unique with unique product information....even on variants.  The most effective method that I'm aware of us through adding product questions and answers to  your product page...under your product descriptions.   This does a few things for you which I'll note...

1) Creates Original Content for that specific product variant

There are product question and answer apps on the App store that will recognize/associate the questions being asked to the specific variant and then show that unique Q&A content on the page when it renders.   That allows you to generate and grow unique content per variant, which will help with your issue.

2) Gives insights on how to optimize your product description for that variant

Once you get the Q&A activity flowing...and you've created original content for specific variants...then you have the opportunity to see what content is being engaged with the most and help that create and shape a unique product description for that specific variant.   You can use your original description as a foundation...but then optimize it with content being requested from your current customers through the Q&A activity...which allows you to edit the description in a way that optimizes for both conversions as well as SEO.   Conversions because it's filling in content gaps that your customers are actually interested in...and SEO because you're optimizing the description with quality and original content that is addressing the needs of your audience.

There are other benefits as well to this process, given that Answerbase (a Shopify product Q&A app) has case studies where up to 75% of the product questions answered have convert to a sale and you can also build out landing pages with that Q&A content automatically through that process....where you start to show in Google results like this:

So, its a pretty straightforward process where you can address this problem over time with duplicate product descriptions, and turn things around to benefit you.

[jam_chan]

No, repeating the product description is not good for SEO. I suggest you can give each product a special name and make slight variations to product content. If your products are in a niche, you can research which keywords are more popular and stuff them in your product content.