We can’t stress often enough how important fresh, unique content is to eCommerce SEO. Search engines do not like stale, duplicate content. Google’s algorithm in particular is sensitive to how recently content has been posted as well as whether or not that content can be found in several places across the web. For this reason, it’s important that you generate your own content, or better yet, get customers to generate new content for you. There are quite a few areas of your site where you need to be paying attention to this issue.

To begin with, it’s incredibly helpful to your site’s search rankings if it has its own dedicated blog, and that blog needs to be updated regularly. This will ensure that your site has fresh content on a regular basis that search engine bots can crawl and rank. To get the most benefit from your blog, make sure that your text is keyword rich, but you should also make sure that it’s interesting and/or useful. Not only are people more likely to read the blog if it provides value, but search engines may well rank the page better. Depending on what your business is, it may also be helpful in gaining a reputation as experts in your field and a regular following.

Secondly, you need to write your own product descriptions, or hire someone to write unique ones for you. Not only are manufacturer’s descriptions often unhelpful and boring, but more importantly to you, half the other sites out there selling the same products will be using them. Google doesn’t like that–an SEO no-no. Set yourself apart by writing your own unique descriptions. If your niche appeals to a particular audience who appreciate a particular type of writing, you can also better cater to this by writing your own descriptions. For example, if you sell funny t-shirts, write funny descriptions for those t-shirts. Let your sense of humor run wild. As a side note for this one, adding user reviews to your product pages is a fantastic way to get unique content without having to pay for it or write it yourself.

Finally, when writing meta descriptions and title tags for your site, make sure not to use the same phrases everywhere. Don’t just copy the entire title tag for every page, simply changing one keyword for each new page. Keep titles simple and unique. Title tags can be diluted and lead to poor search results just as your other content can.