How to handle brand description on product pages?

[_nitman]

Hi Mozzers,

Hope you're doing good. I have a content placement related question.

Assume, I have 1000 products of brand A, 1000 of brand B, and so on. Now, if I want to put brand specific 200-words description on each of these product pages. I'm creating duplicate content across the site by putting absolutely same brand description on these product pages i.e brand A description on first 1000 pages, brand B description on next 1000 products and so on.

Looking for an expert advice around placement of content here i.e how can I add brand description on product pages and avoid duplicate content penalty? Any help?

[donford]

Hi Nitin,

This is a common issue among Ecommerce sites. The solution is to be creative! I gave an example of how I would go about it,  a month ago over on this question. But I also like to analyze how other successful sites overcame the problem.

Take a very similar product like a portable CD player and then head over to Amazon and see how the differentiate them.

Coby Portable CD Player
Memorex Portable CD Player

For all intents and purposes these 2 cd players are pretty much the same, about the same price, includes the same items, and performs the same functions. But each page is unique. Amazon has achieved this by including, what others bought, a small product description, manufacturer description, product shipping details, technical details, questions and answers, similar products, and customer reviews. Many of those features are important for buyers but also lend their selves to self generating content.

I know right out of the gate it maybe difficult to put that much attention to a very inexpensive item, but the key here is to spend the time on the backend creating the features that will have a long term reward. You may not be able to go full Amazon compete mode right away, but taking some steps towards that end will have long term rewards.

When I was dealing with this same issue on our eCommerce site trying to differentiate a Nitrile Size 001 oring and a Neoprene Size 001 oring from each other, I spent about a month and half developing content blocks for material, size, primary uses, material qualities, and measurement cross references. Since then the only thing I have had to do is update prices with the market.

I hope this makes sense and helps,

Don

[_nitman]

Hi Don,

Thank you so much for your well detailed answer, really appreciate that.

My question was a little different here. Yes, we're planning to have unique description for the products and recommended products etc. to make the overall content unique. My question was about a specific section on the page where we're planning to show the brand description, which would be exactly same for all the products of a specific brand.

So, how does google (and other bots) consider duplicate content for a specific section, and not the entire page?

[donford]

HI Nitin,

Doing a follow up here. So you are worried about a particular section of a page is going to be considered duplicate? If so, then that is of no worry, it is normal for many pages to have the same information when it pertains to the overall intent of the page. What is looked at is the page in whole not a section of it.

If that is not what you mean please give me an example so I can help identify options.

Thanks,

Don

[_nitman]

Thanks Don. I meant this only.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Nitin

200 words - what is the point / value of having that repeated on thousands of pages? It's not unique, and regardless of what some people think about it being okay because "lots of sites do it" or because "Major brand that's able to get away with lots of bad SEO because they own a market" can do it.

If there are two hundred words based on non-product specific information, this is not a best practice. Instead, that information should be contained on just one page, and if you believe, from a user experience perspective, providing a link to that from each product page is helpful, that's what I recommend.

[_nitman]

Hi Sir Alan,

Thank you so much for your response. I agree, actually I also recommended the same solution of creating new brand pages and then linking them from the product pages but they (product team) wants to show brand description on product pages itself.

Could you please recommend any other solution here? If there can be another way to implement this. Or else, we might show a few words of description there along with a link to brand page.

[AlanBleiweiss]

If they insist on having brand information, then yes, the alternative is to have a small portion of brand information, with a link to the full brand text on its own page.

[_nitman]

Sure. Thank you so much for confirming the same.

For the first time today, my recommended solution for a problem was supported by you. I'm really happy about it. "Moving in the right direction" feeling