In a remote wood lived a most remarkable cobbler. Her patterns were the finest, and the quality of her boots was unsurpassed. She could carry an enthusiastic conversation even while trimming a sole to perfection, and her customers loved her and her idyllic workshop.
But you wouldn’t know any of that from her website, because she used generic content.
Content is the most important component of a modern website, hands-down. With most every site running on the same handful of platforms, using similar responsive templates, and conforming to accepted usability norms, content is the single point of difference you have.
And it’s also the most under-valued. Most organisations grossly under-spend on content, and this leaves a major opportunity on the table.
This is most easily demonstrated in the retail industry, where online stores and drop-shipping have normalised the reuse of manufacturer-issued product descriptions. Search for any readily available product and you will usually see the same copy repeated over and over across multiple websites. It should be evident that this ignores all business advice about points of difference, but what is even more damaging is the search engine penalties that accrue when one product after another is showcased with identical text and images. Compounding the problem, product lines often share a base description across the line, providing the appearance of in-site duplication.
If the text is unchanged from the manufacturer, search engines can’t promote your site over others using the exact same copy (not to mention the manufacturer themselves) and your search ranking becomes guesswork.
More importantly, you’re not serving your customers if you’re not taking this opportunity to give them considered value.
How do I fix this?
You can do this yourself, but it still requires an investment. Pay a copywriter, pay your sales staff, or pay us— but however you do it, pay someone to write copy that is unique and reflects the way you would sell the product to a physical customer.
We often refer to this as “low hanging fruit,” but it’s even more fundamental than that. Without unique copy, you do not have a website that serves your organisation; you have a placeholder.