Schema.org mark up to avoid duplicate issue?

[madcow78]

Hey there,

I was wondering, does product's mark-up help to avoid penalization due to duplicate content?

Here is the example: one of my client doesn't supply unique content. Because the major part of the content is technical description of products made by a couple of manufactures, do you think it will help me to link the official manufacturer webpage in a schena.org product mark-up?

I know this is the right procedure to add mark-ups, but as on the pages of my client an outbound-link will show up, so I want to tell him this will be the only way to have that duplicate content without incurring in penalisation.

I'd like to give him more than one solution, as I'm pretty sure it will never supply us with unique content.

Thanks

Pierpaolo

[SEO-Buzz]

If you want to avoid the duplicate content issue, you must use original content on the page. Each product needs a unique description. Any duplicate content caused by a product having slight variations like size or color should be resolved by placing rel-canonical statements on the duplicate pages to tell the search engines which is the official product page. There is no way around writing original and unique product descriptions. If your client does not provide them or pay you to write them, then you must have a firm conversation about the problems and likely results...or lack of results.

[webmethod]

I bumped SEO-Buzz's answer

In practice, sometimes it's impossible to write unique product descriptions. I've worked with websites that have over 15K products, with around 5K changing every quarter. To keep on top of that you'd need an army of copywriters.

In that situation I would recommend doing the following:

1. Make sure your category / hub page content is awesome / unique / relevant. These will then be your main landing pages.

2. Pick key product sections - based on high margin / good stock availability / competitive pricing and update the product descriptions for them. If you client sees improved sales as a result, they will probably roll out this strategy to the rest of the site.

Hope that helps

George

[madcow78]

I got your point of having a firm conversation about this issue, but the agency is not mine and my concern is to see the client sacking us off. That's why I'm trying to find a way to cope with this lack of content.

I'm agreed we need unique product descriptions, but how could we write original content for products such as windows, doors, furnitures, or some products for B2B like spare parts of industrial machines?

I mean writing some original piece of content for common products such as food, clothes or gadget is pretty easy, but for example, when you look for windows and doors you need to read technical specifications - in other words numbers, measurements - and benefits. We can't change numbers, we can write original content to describe benefits instead, but writing benefits won't mean mocking up facts and things. You can write about benefits of a product only when you know that specific product and the industry. IMHO when you are THE random guy who writes anything you will only produce thin content.

So far, in my career I found very hard to face clients - too many - who expect results by a touch of magic, like they have hired Harry Potter!

I got it may be even worse having every page linked to the official manufacturer page in a schema.org product mark-up, so my last move is to put down original description for the category page and forward to the client to get the approval. In this way I hope to start seeing some benefit while I am pushing them to write original content.

Thanks for the response

P