Should we create separate product descriptions for our customers' web sites?

[Mandy_Cochrane]

Still got my SEO learner plates on, but I'm trying to help a small e-commerce site which makes and sells baby products . They have upwards of 150 independent retailers also selling their products.

Mindful of the fact that many of these retailers are copying the same product descriptions to use on their own web sites, I wondered if there was any value in creating separate sets of product descriptions, one for our web site and one for all their trade customers, in order to minimise the amount of duplicated content devaluing our site. In theory Google ought to know that ours is the original source of the content, but some testing has shown customers ranking higher for the same product descriptions.

We have a separate area on the site for trade, which contains lots of media information they can use, and we could include a set of product descriptions in this area for trade customers to download, keeping a unique set of product descriptions for ourselves. We won't stop duplicate content entirely, I realise - but do you think it's worth the effort of trying to implement? Our web developer thinks it's a total waste of time and not worth bothering with for the miniscule benefit he thinks we'll gain.

Grateful for any pointers.

[Thos003]

Are you beating the reseller sites for those products? If you are the established authority and are beating the resellers then you have little reason to change. If you are not beating the resellers then yes you should create unique product descriptions and images for your main site. You would also do well to get some customer reviews on your site and to use the schema.org mark up for the reviews.

[Mandy_Cochrane]

Thanks Thomas, that's helped to reinforce our original plans. Whether by "beating the resellers" you mean outselling or outranking them I'm not sure, but it's a "no" in both cases just now. Just got to tell the web site developer that he's outvoted now and to stop procrastinating!

[Thos003]

Glad to hear it.