Duplicate product descriptions and Google

[kenneth moore]

I am planning on selling sport and health supplements and as statutory product information such as ingredients, formulation and usage is statutory so cant be changed. I know google do not look favorable on what is seen as none original content so apart from slightly changing product names is there much I should or can do?

 

[kulture]

Learn to write grammatically correct English. Learn how to spell without a spell checker, thus avoiding using the wrong words. Once you have learnt this, write your own descriptions in addition to the statutory product information.

 

[EcommerceTools]

Google looks out for duplicate content on different sites, it can be a bit ambiguous at times. But as long as you are writing your content, it's well written, and you approach each page slightly differently you have no need to worry.

Your customers aren't going to go from page to page checking if your content is identical, if each page is written slightly differently (not just copy and paste and substitute product names) this can also be more engaging for customers that are going between different brands and comparing - this is what I've found most first time customers in the health and supplement industry tend to do.

 

[S Isaac]

Can the info be shown in image format?

I know Google is looking to be able to 'read' images, but not sure that they can at the moment. Therefore, the duplication won't get picked up.

 

[EcommerceTools]

Google doesn't read images it reads the ALT tag attached to the image. So thats where some people choose to put their main key word and others put a key word relating to the image.

The ALT tag is basically just telling Google what the image is. This also allows people to find your product page or article through a Google image search.

 

[S Isaac]

Yes, that's what I mean. Have the duplicate text as an image so that Google doesn't pick it up.

 

[EcommerceTools]

I wouldn't set out trying to 'trick' Google, to even attempt to trick it properly you would have to fully understand every aspect of all the variables their algorithms measure, and its safe to say no one in the SEO industry does.

If you are setting out to trick them, you're just setting off down a weird dark road.

 

[bluedreamer]

is worth watching