Is it too late to make all product descriptions unique?

[Anon]

I've had my online store (beauty products) for close to 10 years .. Years back I was ranked first for all major keywords but over the past couple of years this has dropped a lot and now most orders come from advertising and not organic search.

I've got around 150 products and most product descriptions were just copied from the manufacturers site - Pretty much what all my competitors have done to.

The opportunity has come where I can cheaply have someone basically rewrite and make all our pages/descriptions unique. For SEO is this really a no brainer and should I get onto it ASAP? My only worry is if I have left things too late so it's not worth the time. Because everything has already been indexed for ages, will doing the changes now have any positive impact? All new pages/articles/blog posts etc I do now are 100% unique but would it be worth going back and doing all the old pages still?

Any feedback or advice would be awesome :).

[netmeg]

How unique is unique? It's probably not enough to just rearrange the words. If your new descriptions are going to provide solid and real value to your users, then it's never too late to improve your site. If it's just kind of rewriting the same stuff in a different way - won't help much, wouldn't bother.

[Planet13]

+1 netmeg

Unique + Helpful > Just Unique OR Just Helpful

[htmlbasictutor]

It is never too late to make improvements. I do have concerns that you mentioned that you have an opportunity to get it cheaply. Are they just going to spin what you have? Or is this a new copywriter that is trying to build their portfolio and offering economical work to build their experience and/or portfolio?

[FranticFish]

If it's just kind of rewriting the same stuff in a different way - won't help much, wouldn't bother.

I have to say I disagree - up to a point - based on my experience.

Part of what I do for people is to spin content, and some of my spun articles do OK. I'll qualify that - these are SME sites and my most popular articles pull in 750-950 new visitors a month, on small sites. I'm sure that's not worth a lot for a lot of people on here, but these are just crappy blog articles, with no links or social shares, on sites with localised and not particularly strong link profiles.

I'm no expert. I pick a minimum of two sources per article, and I focus on good grammar and write something that has a conversational tone. I use a lot of headers and pretty short sentences.

I admit I'm probably everything any true originator of content would despise, but my ripped off and re-purposed content does OK to good in Google.

I would advise always having 'original' text and by that I mean literally original text - from a machine's point of view.

Netmeg's post is about going beyond that - and I agree 100% with the sentiment. That's what anyone that runs a website should aim for: to be the best in their niche. But adequate will still bring visitors, in my experience.