How do you get great content for a small business?

[Towelsrus]

We always talk about great engaging content being the way forwards for sites. As a small business this is an expensive commodity to outsource when you have probably in the region of 250 pages that could probably all use some work.

To that end I have some questions.

1. how do do you make a product or category description engaging?
2. Should they still contain a certain number of words ( personally I hate ready reams of text)
3. As on-page SEO what should we be striving to achieve?

I am sure this has all been asked before but what the general consensus right now?

[EGOL]

how do do you make a product or category description engaging?

get a writer who uses the product, knows it really well and has the skill to tell everybody everything that they want to know about it... and what they need to know that they have not realized that they need to know.

how do do you make a product or category description engaging?

For my most important products I often have a short product description at the top of the page... below that I will have paragraphs with subheadings that describe specific details of the project (how to use, maintenance, supplies needed, etc).   I also have a lot of long articles (on separate pages) with video and lots of photos that show how the product is used.  These article pages often rank higher in the SERPs than my product or category pages.  They pull a lot of traffic and I have house ads and links on these pages that direct traffic to purchase pages.

I find it much easier to rank and info page than a product or category page.  The more competitive the category the better article pages compete.

** As on-page SEO what should we be striving to achieve?**

I honestly have more success building an info site with a store than building a store and try to make the product descriptions substantive.  In some of the areas where I compete my sites have more info than all of the other competitors combined.... and all of those info pages get me out there into just about every possible product, accessory, part and information SERP - to the point of keyword cannibalization.

[Towelsrus]

Hi Egol,
Many thanks for your answers, really helpful.

The trouble with our products is that primarily they are the same things with a size, colour or quality change so you end up with the same old description re-written several times over to avoid duplicate content.....not engaging, dynamic or enticing in anyway.

I would be interested to scan a site you work on if possible, more from do you have a url? I appreciate this is a bit cheeky so tell me where to go if so

The trick is finding a good copywriter in our domain. The company owners know the products well but like myself lack the ability to put these into good quality content.

Thanks for your help

Craig

[EGOL]

they are the same things with a size, colour or quality change so you end up with the same old description re-written several times over to avoid duplicate content...

I have this situation too.

I always place all color and size variations on the same page.  If I have six colors I will show a photo of each color and place an "add to cart" button below it.

This accomplishes many things.  It makes comparison shopping easy for the customer,  It reduces the amount of work that my webmaster must do.  It reduces the number of pages on the website (and I believe that makes a more competitive site).

Although that does not give me separate pages for "red wooden widgets" and "blue wooden widgets", I will still get a lot of long tail traffic because I have those colors on the page, often in the title tag and the extra long description helps my page pull long tail traffic.

[Towelsrus]

So in a nutshell this is how I list out products at present but I don't group size just colours, we then have related items linking through to there sizes.

Egyptian Bath Towels (15 colours) Alt tags all contain colour as well.
Egyptian Bath Sheets (15 colours)

A lot of food for thought there. For me, the key is to find the one person who can write the content hit that sweet spot. The search continues!

Egol, thanks for all your advice.