4 replies to this topic

[bobmeetin]

I am converting an existing website into an eCommerce site for a client. My job is to make it work functionally, then write up eCommerce admin type documentation and do in house training as necessary. Oh and I almost forgot, advise them....

With the tech stuff in hand I am sort of monitoring them as they add content to the merchandise. They will be acting as a retailer for product they obtain from a wide assortment of distributors and/or manufacturers. I have suggested that they should have permission to grab content and images - so here I won't speak to that as a concern. However, it's pretty clear that in adding the content they use that stone-age technique of COPY/PASTE.

Although the shopping cart and presentation will be unique many of the products will have content that pretty similar as what is on other websites. Prices will be different, but you get the picture.

They're not techy types in general and getting them to master the likes of copy/paste has come with its share of bumps and bruises. A couple questions come to mind.

1) How important will be unique product descriptions in as much as there will be some unique-ish website info encompassing (or surrounding) the product pages? Are search engines cabable of sorting through a page to a product description and determining that it is a dupe?

2) Knowing in advance that I'm already running short of hair, what other recommendations might you make regarding content that I will be able to convey and they, understand?

-Bob

[Jill]

Yes, it's duplicate content since it's content that will also be appearing on other sites.

If you want yours to show up in search results for relevant keyword phrases, you'll need to write your own unique product descriptions. Not really sure what more can be said but that.

[bobmeetin]

That's fine.

Meaning that search engines are ingenious enough to fend through the generalities of a website, the uniqueness of the menu system, perhaps footer, etc and once they drill down to the product description - they "will" be able to associate a specific product description, perhaps a paragraph or two, with a similar, maybe even, subset, product description on another website...

That is one whale of a lot of quality number crunching.

[Randy]

It's not really as difficult as it sounds with the way you laid it out.

Instead they approach it from the other end of the spectrum by simply look at the content on a unique URI and then conducting a search of content they've indexed from other unique URI's to see if it's the same or substantially the same.

So they don't really have to follow some winding trail, other than what they normally would to discover the content in the first place. All they have to do is find it, index it and then compare it.

[Jill]

Meaning that search engines are ingenious enough to fend through the generalities of a website, the uniqueness of the menu system, perhaps footer

Yeah, they nearly ignore all that stuff anyway.