This one is for sellers with products on multiple websites, shops, and online marketplaces, but also for those who sell multiple similar products, and might be duplicating their product descriptions on their own website.
As the content producer at Studio Cotton, my SEO content to-do list has occasionally included writing product descriptions, so believe me, I knowwwwww how tough it can be to not be repetitive.
But why is replication so bad? I hear you cry. Hold your horses, my friends, I’m telling you right… now.
Why duplication is bad for SEO
Duplicating the exact same product description across multiple websites is generally a bad thing for SEO (search engine optimisation) because Google doesn’t like to include two copies of the same ‘thing’ in its search results – whether that’s two of the same page, two of the same blog, or two of the same product page.
So, if you use the same product description on your website and Etsy, Not on the High Street (NOTHS), and your stockists’ websites too, you’ll end up competing against yourself.
And to make matters worse, in these situations, it’s usually the website with the hottest SEO that Google picks (which is likely to be one of those big names).
This isn’t the end of the world – you still might make that sale – but I’ll bet you’d rather get the sale without the extra fees from that mega marketplace.
Minimising duplication across descriptions increases the chances of each item ranking, and they could even rank for different search terms too.
It’s not perfect by any means – you might implement all of the changes and still only make headway with one or two platforms – but it’s totally worth the boring ol’ time making these fiddly little edits.
So if you’re an online seller looking for some SEO homework to tackle during a quiet summer season, these edits could be a great place to start.
1. Swap out the marketing-fluff adjectives in your product descriptions
Let’s start with something super easy – you know all those lovely, fluffy descriptive words you use to make your products sound more appealing? Simply swap ’em about to create variation in your product descriptions.
I recommend having your favourite thesaurus website on hand to make this even easier – I like to use the trusty thesaurus.com or the Collins Dictionary thesaurus – or keep a list of your favourite adjectives in a Google Doc, to pick and choose when your brain isn’t feeling inspired.
Then you can quickly turn that wonderful into incredible, delicious into tasty, and mirror shine into highly reflective, and voilà – you are well on your way to creating unique product descriptions.
2. Write a whole new opening sentence for your product descriptions
The first line of a product description is often the marketing sales pitch, showing off the product’s best qualities to try and convince potential customers that they wanna buy it.
Try swapping your current sentence for a different way of highlighting the best qualities or uses, or move the words around enough to add uniqueness to the product description.
3. Give different benefits for your product features
On your website, you might write that it’s “the perfect size for your laptop” in a product description for a classy tote bag, but on Etsy you could maybe go for “roomy enough for an A4 notebook and your favourite pencil case” instead.
There are lots of ways to demonstrate the benefits for your product, and it’s a good idea to write them down in a Google Doc when you’re feeling inspired or think of a new one, so that when you’re in the midst of writing 10 product descriptions and can’t think of a new way to portray how useful your product is, you’ve got a whole bank of ’em.
Let’s call it your “product description snippet archive”, shall we? You can pop your adjectives from point 1 in there, and probably the rest of these points too…
4. Grab another version of about the brand from your product description snippet archive
Here’s another handy thing to have in that Google Doc – write down approximately 5 variations of your brand bio, and then choose one at random for each product listing.
If you’ve already got a wordy About page on your website, it’ll be easy to copy and paste some sentences from there, and then mix them up a bit. If you haven’t already got a wordy About page, you’ll find Aime’s blog post from the archives very helpful: 6 steps to writing a killer About Page.
Your “about the brand” section only needs to be a sentence or two, hitting a few main points about your small business.
If your customers are feeling extra nosy and want to know more about your brand, they can head over to your About page – make sure to pop a link in that’ll open in a new window, so that they can easily go back and buy your product after they read all about how great you are.
As a bonus, these “about the brand” snippets are also useful for your contact page, media page and home page. (Psssst, you might also want to read this other blog post of ours – 8 homepage SEO tips for online shops.)
5. Highlight a different favourite feature of your product
Most products will have a few different features that you can big-up – whether it’s the sustainable production, the aesthetic and eco-friendly packaging, ergonomic design, versatile colour palette, or nostalgic feel.
For example, I know that you really love the beautiful gift-ready illustrated candle boxes that you mentioned on your ecommerce website, but in the product description on NOTHS let’s pretend you actually can’t get enough of the re-usable glass candle jar, which makes a bangin’ pen pot.
If you have any customer reviews, have a read through them to see if they are fans of features you haven’t even thought of – sometimes someone else’s viewpoint is enough to spark a whole bunch of new ideas.
6. Choose different up-sells, cross-sells, and related products
On the product pages of many platforms, you can select which linked products you want to link to in related products sections in order to up-sell or cross-sell items, but if you can’t, you can always link to them in your product description.
A kind of, “if you love this product, we think you’ll also like…” with 3-5 products that you think your customer might wanna buy should do the trick.
Make sure that on each different website that your product is sold on, you swap these links about – whether that’s in a product feed or linked in your product description – in order to pop the product in a slightly different context.
Utterly shameless self-promotion
Thoughtfully crafted ecommerce websites made for shoppers & shopkeepers
Knock the socks off your customers with a show-stopping online shop. Jump on trends in a handful of clicks, attract customers, fill baskets to the brim, cinch those checkouts, and grow your online shop.
7. Give alternative gifting suggestions and ideas
Chances are, your product would make a lovely gift for all kinds of people, so utilise that – people will be searching for gifts for different people and different reasons throughout the year.
That bird feeder you sell in your online shop is a perfect present for nature lovers, but it’s also a great gift for grandads, and maybe even a stocking filler for gardeners – give customers a reason to buy, and a solution to their problem of what the heck to buy for their loved one.
This is something that can be changed seasonally too, so pop a version for Christmas, Valentine’s, Easter, and any other applicable events or seasons into your product description snippet archive, to grab when the time is right.
Aime gives a few more great gifting examples in this Instagram post, like housewarming and graduation gifts. Your product will make a great gift for someone, it’s just figuring out who that someone is.
View this post on Instagram
8. Chop, change, jiggle and re-order your product descriptions
If you have your products on multiple platforms and really have exhausted all the ways to describe your product, try moving around words, sentences and paragraphs to make it different enough.
You could move sentence 2 down to sentence 6, swap over the third and fourth paragraphs, swap a few words around in a couple of sentences – give it a right proper wanglin’ (but make sure it still makes sense!)
9. Save the very best bits for the most important website
There are some other factors at play, but in general, when it comes to SEO, the most thorough product description is likely to rank best, so use that one on your website, rather than on those marketplaces like NOTHS, Etsy, or your stockists’ websites.
After all, you put all your hard work into it, you should reap the rewards, without those marketplaces taking a sneaky cut.
Hopefully our thorough list has got you rearing to go, but if you need a bit more help with writing product descriptions, read Aime’s blog post 9 enticing details of a really, really good product description.
And if you want a bitesize version of this article, head over to this Instagram post to save, like and share to your heart’s content.
And and aaaand, if you’re looking for more tasks for your to-do list during this quiet season, how about these 7 SEO-boosting actions to boff out during a slow summer? They’ll help you prepare for an even better busy season.
