Secrets to Avoiding Duplications in Your Product Descriptions

As a savvy ecommerce specialist, you understand the power behind product descriptions on your website. They move customers through the sales funnel, explaining what you offer and the value proposition behind it. Depending on your website layout and style, product descriptions can take on different formats, but chances are all they carry the most common mistake: They simply describe a product’s features.

Why is it wrong to write product descriptions like that?

First, they don’t give any added value to customers. Prospects don’t want to know every spec of a product and read a description as if it was written by a manufacturer; they want to know what’s in it for them.

Second, they don’t address your customer personality and the tone of voice they’d like to hear from your brand.

And third, such descriptions look and sound the same. They don’t help your ecommerce website stand out from the crowd of competitors.

There’s also another catch:

Even if you write product descriptions with the best ecommerce copywriting practices in mind, you still need to craft a countless number of them. It leads to the problem we all know as content duplication, and that’s what Google algorithms hate so much.

To avoid Google penalties for duplications, don’t plagiarize and rewrite product descriptions from competitors. Don’t use the same expressions over and over again because you think they are “words that sell.” Don’t stuff descriptions with the most obvious keywords in the hope of high rankings. Avoid common grammar mistakes and remember to check every text for plagiarism before publishing.

Long story short, consider the tricks of writing original product descriptions that would please both customers and search engines.

Here they are:

1. Watch Your Language

When you write dozens of descriptions, there’s a temptation to use general terms for every description to complete it faster. All those “world-class,” “top-notch,” “innovative approaches” and “the best solution on the market” with “cutting-edge technology” tell nothing about your product.

Forget about them. Use facts, figures, and numbers wherever possible to increase your credibility.

Also, avoid an adjective overdose. It’s okay to use some to boost customer imagination, but too many adjectives confuse readers and slow them down.

What to do?

Use only one adjective before a noun.

Avoid the most obvious adjectives: chances are, your competitors will use them too. Choose emotional words that make readers feel something. Don’t describe the obvious. Why write what your product looks if you can show it in the picture?

2. Use Citations

First, they don’t count as duplications or plagiarism if you publish them with a proper reference. And second, they can serve as social proof for your consumers to buy from you.

Even if you have the best product in the world, people may not trust you. They need referral recommendations to decide if your product is worth their attention, and that’s where positive reviews or real feedback from real customers can help your product descriptions shine.

Add their feedback to descriptions, structure them as citations with a link to their profiles, and include their photos for credibility.

3. Tell Stories But Be Concise

Know that people often scan content online rather than read it thoroughly, so make sure your product descriptions are short, sweet, and easy to read. For that, combine paragraphs with bullet points and “need to know” aspects. It will give you room for creativity and original text writing, and enable you to convey valuable information to consumers.

To develop more ideas for product descriptions, use storytelling.

Our brain retains 70 percent of information through stories; they give us an emotional response and make us remember. Storytelling in descriptions would help you not only avoid duplications but also make your product stand out from the crowd of competitors.

4. Add Value

People don’t want to know about the description of the product as much as they want to know what’s in it for them. How can they benefit from it? What makes it different from others on the market?

Create value in product descriptions. Focus on your buyer persona, write with words they use, and think of your brand tone of voice: how would you speak to them if selling in a traditional store? Answer the five W’s in your text and show people what’s in your product beyond its specifications.

Writing “for everyone,” you risk duplicating tons of other ecommerce websites and making your descriptions vague. Sell emotions, not products. This will help you avoid plagiarism and differentiate your store in the marketplace.

5. Synonymize and Paraphrase

When you’re short on time and need to write 50-plus descriptions for products of the same category, it becomes challenging to stay creative and write an original text for each. The smart use of synonymization will save you.

Deploy ecommerce SEO practices, not merely replacing words with synonyms or changing the word order in original sentences to keep your content original and fresh.

The same goes for paraphrasing. Use rich vocabulary and expand or shorten phrases wherever appropriate. Think of LSI and long-tail keywords, and forget about marketing buzzwords and vague superlatives.


Check product descriptions via plagiarism checkers to see if you duplicate other websites by mistake, and revise them accordingly. Write an original text for every product card; treat your consumers like humans, not numbers.

Map your sales process to see what you can optimize on your ecommerce website to engage potential buyers. Consider split testing your product descriptions to understand what formats perform better. Don’t be afraid of A/B testing, but make sure to optimize for positive customer experience.

And sales won’t take long in coming.

Lesley Vos is a regular contributor to publications on business, marketing, and self-growth. More posts from Lesley are available here.