You want to put up a website for your business. You want it to look professional. You want to tell a story that makes your business be trusted. You also want it to be easy. You opt for one of those websites that comes complete with stock content, stock photos and a choice of standard templates.
What are the downsides of using stock content? How will it affect the success of your website?
Duplicate content: Most business owners don’t realize that stock content is another term for duplicate content. Search engines will ignore sites that have identical or very similar text used on pages. The Google Panda update of 2011 was designed to remove sites with duplicate content from the search engine results. The first cost of using stock content is search engine traffic.
Branding: Your website should develop your digital brand. You should tell your unique proposition, your unique story. Show how you are different and better than your competition. People make their buying decision based on the differences between businesses. Stock content uses standardized content. The second cost of stock content is loss of branding.
Quality: Most stock content is good to mediocre. It is not great. Great content convinces and describes the uniqueness and benefits that only your business can offer. If you feel that you don’t have the writing skills to tell your story, then hire a copywriter that will. There are a number of marketplaces online where you can hire copywriters such as guru.com. The third cost of stock content is the loss of content quality.
Don’t take the easy route of using stock content. Instead opt for excellence and uniqueness to make your business and your website stand out on the web. Attract interested buyers with original search optimized website copy. Don’t settle for a me-to website.