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By Ruchi Pardal
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05 Jan, 2024
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~ 13 minutes to read
05 Jan, 2024
~ 13 minutes to read
Like uninvited guests at a party, duplicate descriptions jeopardize the SEO celebration and ultimately turn off potential buyers. This could hurt SEO, conversion, and page visibility in search results.
Now, the question arises: How do you solve the problem of duplicate product descriptions in SEO?
In this post, we’ll show you how to map out your website so that Google can rank your product pages higher.
But first, let’s define duplicate content and why you should be concerned about it.
Duplicate content is commonly defined as significant portions of content within or across domains that completely match or have significant similarities. Most of the time, the origin is not illusory. Non-malicious duplicate content examples include:
Let us start with the why before we get into the how. Why are duplicate item descriptions, like a moth to a fire, doomed to obscurity?
Google, in general, does not intend for duplicate content to appear on pages.
In actuality, Google claims:
“Google tries hard to index and display web pages that contain unique information.”.
As a result, having pages on your site with no distinguishing information can harm your search engine rankings.
Here are the three main challenges that sites with a lot of duplicate content face in SEO.
This is very self-explanatory. Google does not wish to rank pages that use content taken from other Google-indexed pages.
(This includes pages on your own website.)
Assume you have three pages on your website that contain identical information.
Google is unsure which page is the “original.”. As a result, all three pages will struggle to rank.
According to Google, duplicate content can result in a fine or the complete deindexing of a page.
However, this is quite rare. And that is only done when a website is intentionally crawling or copying content from other websites.
So, if your website has a few duplicate pages, you generally don’t need to worry about a “duplicate content penalty.”
Backlinks are links on third-party websites that direct visitors to your website. It’s a kind of endorsement that you get from other websites.
When links are distributed over numerous versions of the same material, each version receives a lower portion of the link equity.
This reduces the content’s overall ranking potential.
Let’s understand this with an example of how duplicating content dilutes link equity:
Consider a lovely hidden waterfall. You want everyone to be aware of it! So you create two identical internet travel guides titled “Majestic Falls – A Must-See!” Both guides provide the same instructions and illustrations. Tourists are now looking for the falls:
Some people find your tutorial on one website, while others find it on another. This reduces the effectiveness of your promotion.
Some tourists are confused by the two identical descriptions and are unsure which guide to follow, which is annoying.
Some may even arrive at the incorrect waterfall, believing it to be the “real” one based on your instructions.
Finally, the falls do not receive the visitor boom you hoped for since information is dispersed and confusing.
To avoid this problem, condense duplicate information and ensure that each page has a distinct URL and a clear focus. All hyperlinks will now point to the same page, increasing its authority and visibility in search results.
Also Read:5 Types of Quality Backlinks You Need to Know for SEO
Assisting Google with the positioning of comparable products can be critical to the success of your online business. The following are five critical ways of getting around this:
Emphasize new selling points: Recognize what distinguishes each item from its counterparts. Concentrate on unambiguous elements, materials, functionalities, or advantages that provide a distinct user experience.
To avoid identical information in product descriptions, highlight distinguishing features that set your products apart from the competition.
For Instances:
Imagine you sell two sorts of hiking boots: a lightweight pair for day climbs and a tough pair for backpacking.
Highlight the breathability and agility of the day climb boots while incorporating the sturdiness and support of the backpacking boots. You can do this with clear item descriptions, bullet points, and infographics.
Identify Key Phrases: Look for and incorporate relevant catchphrases into your item titles and descriptions. These catchphrases ought to precisely reflect the exceptional highlights and advantages of every item, assisting Google with understanding the distinctions and synchronizing them with the correct search queries.
For Instances:
Rather than a conventional title like “Hiking Boots,” use titles like “Lightweight Hiking Boots for Breathability and Comfort” and “Rough Backpacking Boots for Support and Resilience.” This allows Google to separate them, given the search keyword choice.
Interface comparative products decisively: Utilize internal linking to associate comparable products inside applicable classifications or subcategories. This assists Google with figuring out the connections among them and guarantees users can undoubtedly peruse and think about choices.
For Instances:
Inside a “Hiking Boots” class, we have committed subcategories for day hiking and backpacking boots. Inside each subcategory, connect individual item pages to related frills like socks, knapsacks, or hiking poles.
Gather various points of view: User reviews and feedback provide important experiences to both Google and potential clients. Encourage users to highlight the specific highlights and benefits they value about each item, adding a verifiable setting to its incentive.
For Instance:
carry out a user review framework on your item pages. Encourage users to specify what makes a specific item ideal for their needs, whether it is the lightweight design of the day climb boots or the comfortable attack of the backpacking boots.
Display products visually: Invest in high-quality product images and videos that highlight the unique features and functions of everything. This allows users to thoroughly compare products, assisting Google in visualizing their differences.
For Instance:
Incorporate various images and videos for every item, displaying various points, subtleties, and functionalities. Consider 360-degree item perspectives and activity shots to give an in-depth visual experience.
By following these steps, you can help Google recognize and rank your competing products, resulting in better user experiences and increased Internet business conversions. Keep in mind that clarity, differentiation, and user-driven content are critical to getting to the bottom of SEO for comparable products!
Avoiding duplicating material at all costs is essential for excellent SEO.
In general, writing similar descriptions for all of your online store’s products can cause issues for search engines trying to index your pages.
When you have product descriptions that appear to be near-duplicates, search engines are baffled. This can reduce the visibility of all of your pages.
If you can’t immediately generate a unique product description for specific pages (due to volume, for example), add a “no index” meta tag to those pages.
Source – Shopify
Remove the “no index” tag once you’ve added unique content to those pages.
Also Read: Implementing Product Schema for SEO Impact
Readability is a key consideration while creating high-quality content. It has an impact on Google’s ranking as well as accessibility, usability, and user experience. Furthermore, it instils trust in your reader, improving your brand.
Readability is an important aspect of SEO. Time on the page is directly related to sentence length and readability. Google, in general, prefers material that is:
High quality, concise, and simple to grasp
You can’t create an insightful, accurate description of a product unless you know it inside and out. Unambiguous knowledge of a product will result in an equally ambiguous description, which will be useless to both your online buyers and search engines.
This is an example of an excellent, benefit-driven description.
Your persuasive power and SEO approach will be equally powerful if you keep to the benefits of your products in your descriptions.
Every landing page, and especially product pages, should have a clear call to action.
It clarifies what you want visitors to do next and encourages them to convert on the spot rather than clicking away to “think it over” for a while.
Consider carefully where you place your CTA on your product page, the language you use, and whether any additional visual components you offer (such as colored buttons) complement the conclusion you want the reader to make.
Related: 7 Powerful Call to Actions to Capture Leads on Your Website
An incorrect URL structure can lead to material being duplicated. To avoid making the same page available via several URLs—an error readily made by adding a trailing slash at the end of a URL where none should be—ensure that a consistent approach is maintained whenever content is added or edited.
For example, if the canonical version of a landing page is /example (no following slash), make sure that only this version of the page is linked to throughout the website, not /example/ or any other version.
Provide shoppers with all of the information they may require to make a purchasing decision.
Features, benefits, and technical specs should all be included in product descriptions. The finest descriptions, however, may also include usage and maintenance directions, packaging and environmental information, FAQs, comparison tables, testimonials, and other information.
Other components to include on your product pages are:
Before adding new material or pages to your website, make sure that pages with the same or very similar content and purpose have not yet been created.
Check that the robots.txt file is blocking suitable content.
An infinite number of URLs can be generated from internal searches. Although, in most cases, this simply means that web spiders will waste their crawl budget on these pages, it also implies that attention is being focused on those irrelevant pages rather than on your more useful content.
As a result, preventing search engines from indexing URLs from an internal search is logical. You can accomplish this by including a rule in your robots.txt file.
Duplicate content is commonplace. You have to keep an eye on it all the time, but it’s fixable, and the rewards can be numerous. By simply removing duplicate content from your site, your quality content might skyrocket in the ranks!
Sidestep duplicate product description issues and elevate your e-commerce game. Our guide on avoiding duplicates underscores the importance of unique and optimized content for heightened online visibility.
Our expert team specializes in crafting distinctive product descriptions tailored to your brand, ensuring you stand out.
By choosing the best eCommerce SEO services, not only do you prevent duplication headaches, but you also unlock the potential for improved rankings, increased traffic, and a competitive edge in the digital marketplace. Choose us to enhance your online store’s success.
In many circumstances, the best strategy to resolve duplicate content is to construct 301 redirects from non-preferred URL versions to recommended URL versions. When URLs must be available to users, you cannot use redirect; instead, you must use a canonical URL or a robot’s no index redirected. While the robot’s index directive does not allow you to aggregate some signals, the canonical URL does.
Duplicate content can be detrimental to SEO. It can reduce your ranking potential and harm the crawlability of your website.
However, there are techniques to avoid duplicate content problems. And address issues before they influence the performance of your website.
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