Duplicating content from manufacturer for client site and using canonical reference.

[moz1admin]

We manage content for many clients in the same industry, and many of them wish to keep their customers on their individualized websites (understandably).  In order to do this, we have duplicated content in part from the manufacturers' pages for several "models" on the client's sites.  We have put in a Canonical reference at the start of the content directing back to the manufacturer's page where we duplicated some of the content.  We have only done a handful of pages while we figure out the canonical reference potential issue.

So, my questions are:

• Is this necessary?
• Does this hurt, help or not do anything SEO-wise for our ranking of the site?

Thanks!

[LauraSultan]

Adding a cross-domain canonical tag like this is fine assuming you are doing it for customer service (and the manufacturer doesn't mind you copying content from their site). You won't see any SEO benefit from the content on those pages because they are unlikely to be indexed. On the other hand, it wouldn't hurt your site either.

[EGOL]

If I was the manufacturer, I would be jumping for joy.  Every page on your client's sites with rel=canonical on it is passing the SEO value of the page to my website.  This is going to make me buckets of money and make my website really hard to beat.    I might send each of your clients a fruit cake!

Your clients need to know that writing original and substantive content for each product description is the minimum investment needed to be visible in the SERPs.   What you have done will prevent them from getting a Panda problem because of duplicate content or keep the client pages from being filtered out of the SERPs, however, it will not make them any money.

Your options are.....

1. Get a cheap writer to compose minimal content (if they don't cheat and copy/paste or spin the content from another website).  This might bring in a tiny amount of traffic - but if the content is really thin you will have a Panda problem for a low-quality page.

2. Get a better writer to write average-qualilty, better-than-minimal  content.  This will avoid Panda problems and rank better than choice #1.

3. Get a decent writer to write substantive, quality content.  This will avoid Panda problems and rank better than choice #2.

4. Get a good writer and a photographer to prepare superior content with a few generous-size attractive photos with nice captions.  This will rank better than #3 and pull in traffic for more long-tail keywords that appear in the product description and captions.

Even with #4, rankings will be largely determined by the quality of the optimization efforts that you put into your pages, the authority of your domain and the linkage going into each product page.  Doing #4 for a weak website is probably a waste of money, but if your website is of average authority in your niche then #4 could be a good investment.  If you have a strong site in your niche then #4 will be a kickass investment.

We do #4 on almost all of our product pages.  Money maker products get better than #4 often with video.  Best products have articles on separate pages that explain how to use the product, how to fix it, how to select, how to enjoy, etc.

Your reward is usually proportional to your attack, again, as long as your domain has enough authority to take advantage of the content investment.

But... most websites only make money for the hosting company and the developer, because the investments are inadequate to become competitive (or the wrong investments are made).

[donford]

Hello,

Laura and EGOL really nailed it as usually they both do!

By using Canonical you have basically told the search engines hey this content all belongs to X.

What I would suggest is use the manufacturers description in conjunction with the sites or owners own description. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using a manufactures description but you have to own it, which means unique content for every client for every product. Amazon for example uses manufacturers descriptions but they also usually add a slew of other things to a page to make it theirs, Manufacture Description / Amazon Description / Technical Information / User Reviews / User Questions / User Images / Shipping Information.

And here is the crux of the matter, people don't want to buy things from companies who know nothing about what they are selling. If a site can't add some sort of information or opinion about what the product is and why it is worth buying, they honestly have no business trying to sell such a product.

Just my thoughts along with the other 2 great answers,

Don

[moz1admin]

Thank you all for your information.  It is very insightful and will help us move towards the correct decisions.