Why SEO is Hard for Promotional Products, Part II

In a previous post, we tackled the problem of SEO for promotional products and why it’s so difficult. Today, Google’s Matt Cutts released another video that addresses this problem directly. A webmaster asks if they will be penalized for offering the same product on three different domains, and it’s worth watching Cutts’ response in its entirety here.

The problem here, as it relates directly to promotional products, is that the vast majority of web sites selling promotional products contain identical products. There are two reasons for this: First, there are hundreds of thousands of products in the industry and it’s nearly impossible for anyone operating a website to customize and manage all those products, so most sites simply take a “product data feed” from suppliers or data aggregators (like ASI, SAGE, or Distributor Central) and display that product data. Therefore, most promotional products websites display the exact same data, product numbers and pricing information.

Second, even a fraction of that massive selection of products is difficult to manage. We recommend very strongly that our clients only showcase 3000-5000 products on their sites from the top suppliers, but even a selection that small is tough for most small businesses to customize and maintain.

So what should you do? If you use a platform like storeBlox, we offer automated tools for making every product unique, using a variety of techniques such as URL customization and custom SKU creation. These tools are not silver bullets, but they help solve the primary problem of a product on your site looking exactly like a product on your competitor’s. To find out more about the storeBlox e-commerce platform and how it can ease the burden of SEO, please visit eBlox.com.