What is the better of 2 evils? Duplicate Product Descriptions or Thin Content?

[bjs2010]

It is quite labour intensive to come up with product descriptions for all of our product range ... +2500 products, in English and Spanish...

When we started, we copy pasted manufacturer descriptions so they are not unique (on the web), plus some of them repeat each other -

We are getting unique content written but its going to be a long process, so, what is the best of 2 evils, lots of duplicate non unique content or remove it and get a very small phrase from the database of unique thin content?

Thanks!

[TomRayner]

With a gun to my head - I'd say thin content is "better" than mass duplicate content.

This is only based on helping to remove penalties from clients' sites - I see more instances of a Panda penalty when duplicate content is present rather than 'thin' content, as it were.

However, it's important to understand how the algorithm works.  It will penalise pages based on content similarity - so if a page has thin content on it - ie not a lot to differentiate it from another page on the domain - technically, Google will see it as a duplicate page, with thin content on it.

Now, my line of thinking is that if there is more content on the page, but the majority of it is duplicate - ie physically more duplicate content on the page - then Google would see this as "worse".  Similarly, taking product descriptions from one domain to another, and having duplicate content from other domains, seems to be penalised more frequently than the Panda algorithm than just thin-content pages (at least in my experience).

Your mileage may vary on this, but if forced into a temporary solution, thin content may be better for SEO - but conversely worse for a user, as there is less about the product on the page.  The best solution of course will be to rewrite the descriptions, but obviously there's a need for a temporary solution.

Hope this helps.

[EGOL]

With a gun to my head....

lol...  Wow.  That is a great way to word this.

So, my response is, yes, put a gun to my head and I will pick between these two bad choices.

Really, if you are paying someone to write all of this content you can hire one writer and have them take a year to do it... or you can hire 12 writers and have the job done in a month.  Same cost either way.

[MikeRoberts]

I'd rather deal with the duplicate content. Personally I'd bounce quicker with Thin or no content than I would with the same content on a different but similar product page. Of course I wouldn't let the duplicate content sit there and hurt me... I'd add canonicals to pages that were similar. Now if it was the exact same content everywhere then that'd drive me nuts. But if I can look at all the products, realize how many are the same with a minor variation and how many truly different product types... then I could write content for fewer pages and consolidate link equity with the canonical without worrying about duplicate content penalizing me. Of course I could always just NoIndex those duplicate pages instead.

[TomRayner]

Nothing like a bit of hyperbole to brighten up a Tuesday, is there?!

[EGOL]

Tom... that is some of the best that I have seen in a long time.

Thanks!  

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

I'd take duplicate content over thin content.  There are tons of eCommerce sites out there with duplicate product descriptions.  I don't think that Google is going to penalize you, per se, they just might not include your pages in the search results in favor of whatever site they think is the originator of the content.

The reason I think duplicate content is better is users.  Either way your search traffic is probably not going to be too great.  With duplicate, the SE's may ignore your pages and with thin content you haven't given them a reason to rank you.  But at least with some real content on the pages you may be be able to convert the visitors you do get.

That said, I like Egol's suggestion.  Don't write new product descriptions yourself.  Hire a bunch of people to do it so they can crank out the new content real quick.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[danatanseo]

I agree with you Kurt. In our space we see duplicate content everywhere, from manufacturer's sites to vendors to resellers. There is no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty." Google doesn't penalize duplicate content. They may choose to ignore it, which may feel like a penalty, but that's not technically what's going on.

I also agree with EGOL. If getting a lot of product descriptions is a daunting task, hire some writers. You can get it done for way less that you think. Need inspiration? Watch Fabio's video from MozCon 2012 where in 15-minutes he describes how he and his team created thousands of unique product descriptions in a very short amount of time without spending a lot of money: http://moz.com/videos/e-commerse-seo-tips-and-tricks

Cheers!

Dana

[bjs2010]

Good idea. Thank you.

[bjs2010]

Very good answer - and yes, 2 bad choices but limited resources means I must choose one. Either that or Meta NOINDEX the dupes for the moment until they are re-written.