The $50,000 Product Description Mistake
Last year, I sat down with a business owner in Newstead who was tearing his hair out. He’d spent eighteen months and roughly fifty grand on a 'premium' SEO agency. They’d delivered spreadsheets full of keywords, technical audits that looked like NASA manuals, and thousands of words of blog content.
His organic traffic was up by 40%. His revenue? Flat as a pancake.
When we looked under the hood, the problem was glaringly obvious. The agency had treated his eCommerce store like a library, not a shop. They’d optimised for 'information seekers' rather than 'wallet-heavy buyers.' This is the single biggest mistake I see in Australian eCommerce today: focusing on volume over intent.
If you’re running a Shopify or WooCommerce store in Australia right now, the old rules of 'more content equals more money' are dead. In fact, following them is probably costing you a fortune in lost opportunities. Let’s talk about the common traps that turn your site into a digital ghost town.
1. The 'Manufacturer’s Description' Suicide Note
I’m going to be blunt: if you are copy-pasting the manufacturer’s product description onto your site, you deserve to be on page ten.
I get the temptation. You have 2,000 SKUs, and writing unique copy for every single one feels like a death sentence. But here is what happens: Google sees that exact same block of text on five hundred other sites—including Amazon and Catch. Why on earth would they rank your small-to-medium business over a giant when the content is identical?
I’ve seen this backfire more times than I can count. Google doesn't necessarily 'penalise' you for duplicate content in the way people think, but it does 'filter' you. It simply chooses the most authoritative version of that text to show. Hint: it’s not you.
The Fix: You don't need a novel for every product. You need a soul. Too many founders forget that your D2C brand needs a soul to actually convert the traffic you fight so hard to get. Focus on your top 20% of products—the ones that pay the bills—and write descriptions that actually sound like a human talking to another human. Mention how that raincoat handles a sudden Brisbane thunderstorm, or why those hiking boots are perfect for the Glass House Mountains. Local relevance beats generic specs every day of the week.
2. Optimising for Robots Instead of Margins
This drives me nuts. I see agencies bragging about ranking a client for 'what is a linen shirt?' while the client is struggling to sell their actual stock.
High-volume, top-of-funnel keywords are great for an agency’s monthly report because the numbers go up. They are terrible for your bank account because 'what is' searches don't buy anything. They are looking for a definition, not a checkout button.
You need to stop optimising for bots and start focusing on high-margin intent. This means targeting 'transactional' keywords.
Bad SEO: "Best skincare routines" Good SEO: "Organic serum for sensitive skin Australia" Great SEO: "Where to buy [Brand Name] vitamin C serum Brisbane"
One of our clients in Fortitude Valley was obsessed with ranking for a massive, generic industry term. We pivoted them to focus on long-tail, high-intent phrases that actually described their unique value proposition. Traffic dropped by 20%, but conversions doubled. Which would you rather have?
3. The Category Page 'Wall of Text'
There’s a trend in the SEO world where people think they can 'trick' Google by putting 1,000 words of keyword-stuffed text at the bottom of a category page. You’ve seen it—you scroll past the products and find a massive block of unreadable junk that no human has ever finished reading.
Look, I’ll be honest: back in 2019, this worked. Today? Google’s AI is smarter than your agency’s junior copywriter. They know that text is there for a bot.
More importantly, it ruins the user experience. If a customer is on your 'Men's Leather Boots' page, they want to see boots. They don't want to see a thesis on the history of cobbling in Queensland.
The Solution: Use category headers to provide context, but keep it punchy. Use FAQs that actually answer real customer questions (e.g., "Do these run true to size?" or "Is the leather sustainably sourced?"). This provides 'Helpful Content'—the gold standard for Google in 2026—without looking like a spammy mess.
4. Ignoring the 'After-Click' SEO
Most people think SEO ends when the user clicks the link in the search results. They are wrong.
Google tracks 'pogo-sticking.' If someone clicks your result, realises your site is a mess, and hits the back button within three seconds, Google knows. If this happens repeatedly, your rankings will tank. Your SEO is only as good as your User Experience (UX).
I recently audited a Gold Coast eCommerce brand that had great rankings but a bounce rate of 85%. Why? Their mobile site took six seconds to load, and the 'Add to Cart' button was hidden behind a giant 'Sign up for our newsletter' pop-up.
Side note: this is where most agencies completely miss the mark. They think their job ends with the click. But if your thank you page is killing repeat sales, your SEO investment is essentially a leaky bucket. You’re paying to acquire a customer once and then letting them walk out the door forever because the post-purchase experience was an afterthought.
5. Technical SEO Over-Complication
I’m going to say something that might get me kicked out of the next marketing conference: for 90% of small-to-medium eCommerce stores on Shopify or BigCommerce, you don't need a 'Technical SEO Specialist' for fifty hours a month.
Modern platforms handle the heavy lifting. They manage your sitemaps, your robots.txt, and basic canonicalisation.
Instead of paying someone to fiddle with code that isn't broken, focus on the technical things that actually matter for eCommerce:
1. Site Speed: Especially on mobile. Queenslanders are often browsing on 4G while sitting on the train from Ipswich. If your high-res lifestyle images take forever to load, you've lost them. 2. Internal Linking: Stop orphan pages. Every product should be reachable within three clicks of the homepage. 3. Schema Markup: This is the 'secret sauce.' It tells Google exactly what price your product is, if it’s in stock, and what the star rating is. This makes your search result look 'rich' and increases click-through rates significantly.
6. The 'Set and Forget' Blog Fallacy
"We need a blog!" says every business owner after their first SEO meeting.
So they hire a cheap freelancer to write four posts a month about '5 Tips for Summer Fashion.' These posts are generic, boring, and usually AI-generated without any actual strategy.
AI content without strategy is junk. It’s filler. It’s the digital equivalent of those junk mail flyers that go straight from your mailbox to the recycling bin in Chermside.
If you’re going to blog, it has to serve a purpose. It should either: Answer a specific question a customer asks before buying. Compare two products you sell. Showcase your expertise in a way that builds trust.
If you can't do one of those three things, don't bother. You’re just creating noise.
The Real Secret: It's About Authority, Not Just Keywords
In 2026, Google is looking for E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
You can't fake this with keywords. You build it by being a real brand that real people talk about. This means getting reviews (real ones, not the ones your cousin wrote), being mentioned on other reputable Australian sites, and having a social media presence that isn't just a graveyard of automated posts.
I’ve seen too many businesses get caught in the 'SEO loop'—constantly tweaking titles and tags while their actual business fundamentals are crumbling. SEO should support a great business, not try to hide a mediocre one.
Summary Checklist for Brisbane eCommerce Owners
If you want to stop wasting money and start seeing your SEO actually move the needle, do these things this week:
1. Audit your top 10 products: Are the descriptions unique and persuasive, or are they copied from a spreadsheet? 2. Check your mobile speed: Open your site on your phone while you're away from your office Wi-Fi. Is it painful to use? 3. Kill the pop-ups: If your SEO traffic is bouncing because of a '10% off' pop-up that covers the whole screen, get rid of it. 4. Review your keywords: Are you ranking for things people search for when they want to buy, or just when they are bored? 5. Look at your Schema: Use Google’s Rich Results Test. If your price and stock status aren't showing up in search results, you’re leaving money on the table.
Look, I get it. SEO feels like a dark art. Agencies love it that way because it allows them to hide behind jargon and 'long-term' promises. But at its core, eCommerce SEO is about making it as easy as possible for Google to understand what you sell and as easy as possible for a human to buy it.
Don't overcomplicate it. Don't chase bots. Chase customers.
Ready to stop the SEO guesswork and start scaling your store the right way? At Local Marketing Group, we don't do 'fluff' reports. We focus on the metrics that actually show up in your bank account. Contact us today and let’s look at what’s actually holding your Brisbane business back.