You ARE Optimizing Your Product Descriptions, Right?

Given the recent Google Panda algorithm change, it’s now more important than ever for businesses to take steps to insure that their content is fresh and original and not just copied verbatim from other sources. Retailers may have unconsciously been publishing unoriginal content by failing to optimize their product descriptions. Instead of taking the time to write their own unique product descriptions, a lot of retailers either copy from their competitors or use the exact same verbiage from the suppliers. While it may be tempting to do that, it can penalize your site for scraping content, so it really is worth the time to go through and start replacing any copied product descriptions you may have with fresh, original copy. Even though it may seem difficult to come up with new and interesting way to describe the products you offer, there are ways to accomplish this rather easily.

Learn All You Can About the Product

This may seem like a no-brainer, but a lot of retailers really don’t take the time to know the ins and outs of the products they’re selling. They will just copy down whatever description supplied by the manufacturer and call it a day. Instead of doing this, take the time to dissect the verbiage that came with it and rewrite it in a way that will be easily understood by your customers. Oftentimes, manufactures use jargon that is vague or unclear to the average person. If you run across copy like this, put yourself in the mind of whom you are marketing to and use terminology that’s easy to understand. You should also take this opportunity to address common questions customers may have had in the past about a particular product and to build the answer into the description.

Establish a Voice and Personality

Most product descriptions are dry and boring, yet they don’t need to be. This is your chance to establish a definite voice and personality for your brand. Weave in a little story about how the customer could use a particular product and describe how it could make them feel. Tapping into someone’s emotional state and mind and showing that by buying your product they can fulfill a certain need or provide a sense of security can be some very powerful stuff. Before writing descriptions, it might be very helpful to first write down information about your typical customers and how they might sound. By taking the time to do this step, you will find it easier to write creative content that will not only inform your customers, but will draw them in emotionally.

Implement SEO into Your Descriptions

Another benefit to rewriting your product descriptions is that it gives you the chance to optimize your content for the search engines in addition to your customers. Make sure you’re using keywords in your product titles and descriptions, but don’t overdo it. As a rule of thumb, use the keyword, or product name, once every 100 words. For each product description, you will want to link the most important keyword to the home page, preferably the first link within the description. Try and make your copy at least 250 words for maximum SEO benefit. It has been documented that search engines value variety, so, if appropriate, consider using a video to demonstrate how to use your product or highlight certain features. This is your chance to get creative so that you can showcase your products in the best light possible in a way that’s unique, exciting and attention getting.

Although the prospect of rewriting thousands of product descriptions is certainly daunting, you need to tackle the project one step at a time. First, identify your most popular, best-selling, highest-margin items and start with them. Then, after taking care of your most important accounts, tackle five products a day and, before you know it, you will have it done in no time and will be increasing your sales AND your search rankings!

Marketing and SEO with Google Squared

Nearly nine months ago, Google Labs released Google Squared. Rather than displaying a list of correlating websites in the usual fashion, Google Squared combs the Web and attempts to display relevant information in tabular form, organizing that information according to item, image, description, and a number of item-specific headings. For example, a search for “roller coasters” returns the following square, with capacity, height, and speed as the additional fields:

Google Squared has particular value for product comparison searches - just search “iPod” or “digital camera” to see what I mean. Prices, capacity, and video playback values are all displayed side by side from across the Web. Due to this exceptional potential for product comparison, product websites should pay special attention to further developments in Google Squared.

Optimizing for Google Squared should be much like optimizing for regular Google queries. Attention to semantic layout would appear to be of paramount importance so Squared can easily discern the relevant information and categories to include for a user query. Content, as always, is king and should be treated with particular care. It is unclear as yet if or how inclusion in Google Base, Google’s structured online database, will impact ranking on Google Squared, though it certainly can’t hurt. Rich Snippets, a type of microformatting technology introduced by Google last May, could also play a role.

Google Squared is by no means perfect, reflecting its status as a Labs project. Included columns and rows are not always relevant, nor are they always populated. The displayed data itself is only as accurate as the source from which it is pulled. Sometimes, the results themselves are downright strange. Searching for “Persian cat” seemed to include intelligent data about every feline breed except Persians -- although “Persian kittens” was included some distance down the page, with descriptive data not about the breed, but about breeders and distributors of Persian kittens.

One important feature of Google Squared is its ability to accept and adapt instantly to user feedback. Rows or columns can be added and deleted dynamically, and a completed square can be saved for future viewing. The “Persian cat” query resulted in only one additional column, “eye color,” besides the three default, so I imagined that I had been searching for a comparative display of cat breeds and added “fur type” and “temperament.” Squared found relevant possible values for the majority of breeds it listed, though it required me to select the best choice for each before displaying it in my square. Despite requiring this further user interaction, Squared provided me with a way to compare cat breed data much more quickly than if I had compiled it myself.

Google is not terribly clear on exactly how Google Squared functions. Still, it is safe to say that Google still reads pages based on their semantics and SEO-friendly content. When adding my columns to the cat search, the values I was presented to choose from were essentially highly specified keyword search results, as though I had typed in something along the lines of “Burmese cat temperament” into a normal Google search. In fact, selecting “search for more values” opens a normal search results page with “Burmese Temperament” as the query.

Google is legendary for its long beta times, but the smart SEO will keep an eye on Google Squared long before it leaves the Labs. While its specialized, comparative nature makes it unlikely to replace traditional search even once perfected, Google Squared provides another window into the increasingly complex, ever growing Web.

Posted via web from findyoursearch's posterous