backdraft7 - 6:02 pm on Aug 26, 2012 (gmt 0)

It comes down to advertising 101.
I think most people want to lead in with some general information on their products, then focus on specifics as they drill down through the site. Is that considered duplicate content or poor quality? If it is, then they need to rewrite the advertising books.
Since the 1950's sales strategy stages have included several steps:
1. Attention
2. Interest
3. Desire
4. Conviction
5. Action
That process lends itself to some repetition, but people need that to push their buy button.
The old "Tell'em what you are going to tell'em, tell it to them, and then tell'em what you told them" process also involves repetition. Some repetition is REQUIRED in order to connect with the human brain which needs reassurance to pull the proverbial buy trigger. Old fashioned advertising and modern SEO methodologies don't seem to mix well.

Google now wants us to forget all that and think like a machine. They say write for your users, but their rules force you to write to make the algo happy. We've tried to comply. No wonder our sales are in the dumpster.

Up till recently some sites converted great, then, Google decided that any repetition in the sales funnel was a "no no" and was bad intent devised solely to rank higher in the serps, when it was really needed to rank higher in the brains of the buyers. Google fixed that problem by declaring it taboo and de-ranking the content, and in many cases breaking the sales funnel.

Admittedly, many people gamed the system with keyword loading and content duplication in an attempt to rise in the serps, but for many sites that held high rank since day one using original advertising based content, they suffer the same fate as the black hatters.