duplicated content issue perhaps?

[silvermusic]

Must admit I'm no SEO expert and I'm having a problem getting a particular small range of new products anywhere near a half decent position in Google rankings. A friend of mine has pointed out something that may or may not be my problem, so I though I'd ask the gurus on here.

Normally I write my own product descriptions from scratch so they're all unique. But, on this new range I've cut and pasted those from the manufacturers web site, (with their permission I'll add). The same products on their site normally appear in about the top 20 results, after several months and various keyword tweaks mine are so far down as to be useless although they do appear within Google's search results. Is my problem duplicated content and I'm being peanalised for it, or could it simply be I need to try better or different keywords?

 

[cmcp]

have you registered on google webmaster tools?

 

[silvermusic]

have you registered on google webmaster tools?

Not as far as I'm aware, although I do have Google checkout account if it's just something I need to add to that?

 

[cmcp]

I'm not sure - is that just a normal Google Account?

For my web stuff I have a Google Account that lets me access all my Google services (Adwords MMC, Analytics, and Webmaster Tools)

You register your site with Webmaster Tools and it gives you a wee report on how Google sees your site. Pretty interesting, and I think it advises you of duplicate content (I think on one of my sites I had a couple of pages with the same title tag and it flagged that)

Good luck!

 

[Delicious Webdesign]

I think that you may have been penalised for using duplicated content, although this is easy to fix not many people would bother but those that do use unique and interesting descriptions of their products will reap the rewards.

There is an easy way to check, re-write some product descriptions and watch those rise in the rankings, alternatively just take my word for it and re-write everything you have copied.

Good Luck

 

[clickthrough_seo]

Try submitting your products to Google Base as well. If it is only a small range of products, you can do it manually, but it might be worth spending the time creating an automatic data feed to be submitted once a month.

 

[silvermusic]

You register your site with Webmaster Tools and it gives you a wee report on how Google sees your site. Pretty interesting, and I think it advises you of duplicate content (I think on one of my sites I had a couple of pages with the same title tag and it flagged that)

OK, Thanks for that I'll give it a go in the morning.

There is an easy way to check, re-write some product descriptions and watch those rise in the rankings, alternatively just take my word for it and re-write everything you have copied.

I'm thinking along those lines too. I'll try it with some of the products and see what happens over the next few weeks. They're not expensive and not worth wasting a lot of effort on if it's not the issue I think that's stopping them rising any further up.

Try submitting your products to Google Base as well. If it is only a small range of products, you can do it manually, but it might be worth spending the time creating an automatic data feed to be submitted once a month.

That's all done by my e-commerce host automatically, not sure I should name them, last time a bun fight broke out on here.

 

[fisicx]

Even more important than the duplicate content, make sure your page titles are fully descriptive of the product.

It's also worth checking that your anchor text is working well for you - make sure it tells google where the link is going.

 

[silvermusic]

Even more important than the duplicate content, make sure your page titles are fully descriptive of the product.

It's also worth checking that your anchor text is working well for you - make sure it tells google where the link is going.

No problems with descriptions, I'm good at writing those, though I did take the lazy option on these one's, which in hindsight I shouldn't really have done.

I assume by Anchor text you mean the URL name i.e.

...../big-blue-box-widget.html as apposed to ..../product-12345.html ?

I re-did the descriptions on a few items the other day, and although Google hasn't re-indexed those product pages yet, some have suddenly appeared in the top 3 shopping results Google display on a normal search, can't be bad.

 

[PredatorNutrition]

Does anyone know how much text needs to be rewritten to avoid getting tagged for duplicate content?

For example how would something like this get rewritten? It would take forever! From what I have picked up just adding an intro and some copy at the end won't cut it?

http://www.predatornutrition.com/pd-no-xplode-820g.cfm

For what its worth on this product I added the higlighted bit in Blue myself yesterday as well as the blurb on stacking options at the bottom but the rest is from the manufacturer. Rewriting this stuff for 500+ products would take forever. Does anyone know of an automated program perhaps that can do it faster?

 

[silvermusic]

Doing some web site tweaking while it's nice and quite and thought I'd bring this thread up to date.

I re-wrote the descriptions a few weeks back, not too much just moved a few sentences around, replaced a few words and added some text of my own.

On looking tonight for these same items in Google search on the same search terms all of them apart from one are in the top 10-20 results. So yes it really was worth the effort and I'm pleased.

 

[32cardinalpoints]

It could be down to a number of reasons to why your products are not getting listed or found high in the search engine's listings.

First of all as pointed out by cmcp i would register for a google webmaster and anayltics account as this will tell you about how your visitors are interacting with on the site and what pages they are finding more useful than others plus much more information. The webmaster tools account will tell you if there are any diagnostic problems Google is experiencing with your website and this will allow you to fix them.

Your rankings could be suffering down to duplicate content, one other factor could be down to the fact your suppliers website could have been around for a much longer period therefore has built up a better pagerank, trusted score and gained more credibility in the search engines and as a result there products or SERPs are being listed much higher than yours.

It would do no harm in making sure your page titles, meta description and content is unique on each of your site's pages. There are duplicate content tools out there who you can use to determine the percentage of duplicate content on your site.

I would definately recommend setting up a Google Base feed to submit each month as it is a clever and free way to get your products found on the first page without having to spend hundreds or even thousands of ££££'s on SEO to get your website to the top.

Paul