I had a business client just ask me the other day “when will my SEO kick in from my newly designed website so I can wean myself off Google AdWords?” First, we did not design the site just to clarify. Second, we had not been performing any type of web visibility services for this client. My first question to him was “where did the content come for all of your 2,000 store products?” To that he stated that he had copied and pasted the content into his own store shopping cart from his manufacturers’ information.
To dig deeper, he and I selected one page on his site and ran the product content through Copyscape Premium. This online tool showed us that 46 other websites had this same exact content or very, very close variations of it. Sadly, I told him that until his content was unique he would never be able to move his business off Google AdWords.
In today’s business climate on Google.com, unique content and a unique position in your marketplace is key to being a candidate for work to improve organic search placement. If your content on your store is not unique, there is absolutely no reason to pay a blog writer or an SEO firm to improve position without first correcting the issue that is the biggest obstacle to success – duplicate content.
It sounds so easy just write your own content for each product, but from experience I know that wordsmithing a page to have it pass as unique and using a tool like Copyscape Premium to verify its uniqueness is a time consuming process, but the rewards are huge. This particular client was spending $50,000 per year on AdWords to drive business to his website. An investment in quality unique content may be an investment in the future.
If you are in a similar situation, it’s time to take a hard look at your own website and KNOW where your content came from before you purchase any website visibility improvement services.