Linda Bustos at the Get Elastic ecommerce blog had a great post on using canned product descriptions on your website. “Canned” copy is that which has been pre-written and distributed to a great deal of webmasters, such as affiliates. Everybody uses the same, exact product descriptions. Never a good idea.
Linda does an excellent job of pointing out why this can be harmful to your search engine rankings while also offering a few clever ideas for overcoming the problem. She echos advice I’ve been handing out for years: Read customer testimonials and reviews, and pay particular attention to the negative ones.
Linda gives good sources that are helpful in developing original content so that you can obtain high rankings for your ecommerce site.
If you’re in the ecommerce biz, I’d suggest you subscribe to the Get Elastic blog. I did! From what I’ve read so far, Linda seems to give good solid advice while squelching many of the common rumors about online business.
Maybe a few years ago people could still get away with using canned content on their web sites. Even then though, it was only a matter of time before such tactics would wear thin. In this day and age, web masters should definitely weigh the dwindling and dubious benefits of using canned copy against generating their own unique content.
Welcome KISS!
I agree. Even if you delete SEO from the equation, using canned content leaves you no opportunity to tell visitors why you are different and/or better than all the other resellers out there. You’ve got to give them a reason to choose you.
Hi Karon,
Thank you so much for your kind words about our blog. I’ve been a student of your SEO copywriting advice for a long time so coming from you, this means a lot 🙂
~Linda
You are most welcome, Linda. You have a great blog. Thanks for stopping by and please visit again soon!