Minimum text per product page

[inhouseseo]

I have an ecommerce site with thousands of product pages. I am using the product details provided by the manufacturer (as with most other sites selling the same products).

I have 3 questions:

1. If I want to set my pages apart with product descriptions, what it s the minimum amount of text I can add to make them unique?

2. The content will be from an offshore company, so it will likely not be of the best quality. Can Google determine the quality of text and evaluate it differently?

3. I have also added product reviews to the site. Are there any other methods to make the product pages more unique or SEO friendly?

[EGOL]

1) If I want to set my pages apart with product descriptions, what it s the minimum amount of text I can add to make them unique?

It is great that you are going after unique content.  The more text you can provide for a product the better.  Sometimes that text can be easily obtained by writing about the product specifications.

As far as a minimum...  I would like to have at least fifty words... but I have taken fifty word descriptions and changed them to 500 word descriptions and the result was... 1) rankings increase... 2) lots more traffic from long-tail keywords.

So, writing the extra words might be a great investment.

2) The content will be from an offshore company, so it will likely not be of the best quality. Can Google determine the quality of text and evaluate it differently?

I work on the assumption that Google can spot misspellings and bad grammar; also that google can determine reading level.

If you are getting offshore writing there is a good chance that you will get content copied from another website or content that is spun from another website.  Be careful.

3) I have also added product reviews to the site. Are there any other methods to make the product pages more unique or SEO friendly?

Hard work!  As mentioned above, get the product manual and there might be lots of easy writing that can be produced after becoming familiar.  Also adding dimensions, weights, speeds, etc. can put lots of words on your pages that will pull traffic.

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One more thing... you use the words "SEO friendly".... those make me smile because "SEO friendly" and "SEO effective" are two very different things.  You want SEO effective.

[inhouseseo]

Thanks for the response. I am going for around 150 words per description.

The content writers are checking the submitted text against copyscape. That should be enough to confirm uniqueness, right?

I would love to have longer better written copy, but with thousands of products, I just can't afford that.

[CaseyKluver]

Just a thought on your content writers. Are there any universities by you?

We have had great success reaching out to local university job boards and even craigslist looking to hire student writers. The quality is great and we can get quality writing (for general content like product descriptions) for as little as $0.03/word. The best part is they are local, american born english speaking, and eager for more work!

[inhouseseo]

I tried job boards for other jobs (other than writing) an didn't have much luck. I should try again!

Thanks for the advice.