How unique do product descriptions need to be?

[ewanr]

I'm rewriting approximately 10,000 product descriptions, but for feasability it's useful to sometimes reuse some of the phrases that are there (and on other websites as they come straight from the manufacturer -eg. key features), how unique does the content have to be - are we talking 100%, 75%, 50% for it to be effective in google?

Same question goes for the product title!

Many thanks.

[PanuKuuluvainen]

That really depends on how much authority your website has. I have noticed that websites with a lot of authority can stand to have a lot less unique content than new websites with few incoming links. However, since you are not scraping content from another website, I think it's safe to say that having product descriptions that are just about 50% unique should be fine just as long as you have unique titles, headings and some useful unique content.

Then again, since the Panda update has made it significantly more difficult to rank with thousands of pages of feeble content, I wonder how much effort should be placed into these product descriptions. Are they something that searchers will love to see in the SERPs? Is it really necessary to rank with all of these product pages or should you perhaps consider doing a few (say a hundred) high quality landing pages which link these product pages?

[reilly3000]

The best thing you can possibly do for getting more unique content is to encourage user-generated content which is typically in the form of reviews, but can be anything (photos, video reviews, FAQ's, etc).

Product descriptions are inherently and necessarily non-unique. I really believe that simply spinning phrases or rewriting a paragraph here and there is a low value activity. A much more sustainable activity is to pick a handful of interesting, current, high margin products and create the absolute best page about them on the web. A personal story, a groupon-style humorous reference, some unique research... whatever, and just dominate that product with content. You'll rank for that and also probably earn some love from customers for being so cool. Keep doing that one by one and carve out a niche. I bet if you do that 10 times really well you'll get a much better ROI for your time and/or cash than 10,000 pages of slightly varied copy.

Unique content only goes so far. A strong domain with piflered copy will outrank others with the same content all day long. They sometimes even beat sites with totally unique content. As unfair as this is, building domain authority takes of time and investment, and is rewarded with traffic for having trusted content.

Finally, my dablings in the dark side have taught me that Google is getting much smarter about spun content, aka content that is thinly unique. 30-40% unique is definitely not unique enough. Varying synonyms is not enough. Significantly unique content varies in theme, length, and style - all of which are algorithmically detectible. Hope that helps.

[ewanr]

Hi Panu

Great response, thanks for taking the time to answer.  It's not just about google (although we were hit by the panda update big time due to selling similar products to other websites using the same feed of descriptions - mainly manufacturer driven).  The benefit of rewriting was two-fold;

1. Making the descriptions clearer and easier to read for our customers.

2. Providing unique & better content to differentiate ourselves in both the customer's eyes and therefore hopefully google's.

We're writing some great and indepth guides (1-2k words) in our blog, and have a very strong customer service ethos.  However, in order to stay competitive we need a presence in google obviously, and at the moment there is little or none.

It's really tricky to know what to focus on.  We are writing some really great and in-depth descriptions that our customers do love for some key products which are also highly competitive but don't feel that'll be enough... maybe time will tell!

50% is a good starting point, thank you.

Ewan

[ewanr]

Hi Chris

Great insight, and you've confirmed some of my initial thoughts and feelings on the matter.  I don't want to rewrite purely for google's sake (although that was the tone of the question due to this being an SEO website!).  Many of the descriptions we have (from the feed) are rather poorly written, or block text which is hard to scan and read as a customer.  I want to make that clearer.

I'm glad you've confirmed that picking a handful of products and doing those really well is a good idea... we're on the case!

As for user generated content, yup, we're asking for reviews but probably need to encourage more in-depth ones.

Thanks for taking the time to answer, it's much appreciated.