Confused about Woo Commerce Product Descriptions & SEO

[Karen Wardle]

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Hi Al
I currently have a service-based website, built with WordPress. I’m pretty comfortable with the process of posting, SEO optimization, etc

I have a new site which is for a bricks and mortar business. This site is also WordPress with Woo Commerce. This one I’m not so comfortable with. My confusion lies with the setting up of the product categories and product descriptions. I realize that I need a product description for each product. Most of my research tells me that the longer the product description the better and I understand that. But how do I make each product description unique if the products are similar? Also, will I be penalized if they are too similar?

The other question that I have is do I need to have a detailed description for each product category?

Any help would be appreciated. I’m not sure if it’s allowed here but even a link to some resources would help. I’ve tried looking online and on youtube but I can’t find anything that covers this specifically.

Thanks in advance for any tips that you can give me.

Cheers

[Dave Gillen – Former FS Concierge]

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Hi Karen,

Instead of “How do I please Google” start with “How do I serve the customer?”.

• What kind of category description will help the customer (will vary from store to store) (different website themes display them differently too).
• Similar products will probably have a similar description, naturally.
• Long descriptions will often make sense online because the customer can’t see/touch/try the product. But extra waffle won’t always be a positive.

As Google matures, I believe it tries to reward sites that serve the customer well.

Hopefully we have an SEO expert or two who can go into specifics with you, or point you to a good resource

Dave

Dave Gillen | LinkedIn

[Karen Wardle]

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Thanks Dave, I’m not sure if I’ve explained myself all that well. I know how to write the descriptions. I understand the customers needs very well it’s the WooCommerce bit that I’m finding confusing. I’ll wait and see if there is an expert here somewhere and then I can ask specifics. Thanks again.

[businesstrade]

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Karen Wardle, post: 267007, member: 3453 wrote:

The other question that I have is do I need to have a detailed description for each product category?

Any help would be appreciated. I’m not sure if it’s allowed here but even a link to some resources would help. I’ve tried looking online and on youtube but I can’t find anything that covers this specifically.

You are referring to on-site SEO for your ecommerce website for product categories. I’m not your level 10 SEO expert but it is generally a great idea to optimise your website’s on-site SEO as it is a low hanging fruit. See below for a good guide on how to do so.

https://www.monsterinsights.com/woocommerce-category-seo-best-practices-for-product-category-pages/

businesstrade.com.au - buy or sell a business

[Tom ISW]

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Karen Wardle, post: 267009, member: 3453 wrote:

Thanks Dave, I’m not sure if I’ve explained myself all that well. I know how to write the descriptions. I understand the customers needs very well it’s the WooCommerce bit that I’m finding confusing. I’ll wait and see if there is an expert here somewhere and then I can ask specifics. Thanks again.

Hi Karen,

If you’re selling 10mm rivets and 20mm rivets that are both iron wrought and high quality, it’s almost impossible to write completely new content about both rivets.

Yes, Google penalises duplicate content. However, what you are selling are essentially duplicates – except one is 10mm longer than the other. So what do you do?

You have to use a bulk of the content describing one for the other. Making something up will either look weird or misleading. Perhaps someone stumbled on to your 10mm rivets but needs the 20mm rivets and needs to be assured they are basically the same product.

However you can modify the copy slightly to suggest 10mm rivets are to secure lighter loads while 20mm rivets are for heavier ones. Or mention their specific applications. You’re only changing a few words or numbers here or there.

Google is smart enough to figure out they are two similar, though distinct, products. Most digital marketing experts I’ve worked with have told me to work within these specifications when writing product description copy.

I hope this helps!

[Zava Design]

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Dave – FS Concierge, post: 267008, member: 49676 wrote:

Instead of “How do I please Google” start with “How do I serve the customer?”
This.

Google have started numerous times that they are looking for the content that best matches what the user is searching for, so you should focus on that and really forget about Google itself. So long as the site structure and code is optimised for SEO, so that apart from the description also the images have alt tags, the content of headings highlights key info …etc, then you’re doing about as much as you can for onsite SEO.

[dessyangelova]

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Having Internal duplicate content is not going to bring you a penalty. Its just not an optimal set-up as your pages as search engines will be confused which page to rank as they are all similar.

Same goes for copying product description. I have seen a lot of business owners just copy the manufacturer description and go with it. Its not the way to rank your pages higher. Its not the duplication itself but the lack of additional value for the user.

If its a woocomerce website why dont you use attributes ?

You may consider adding reviews for those pages. User generated content will dilute the duplicate content.

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