Some SEO Companies Re-Use Content

A few weeks ago a company contacted us to add content to their website. They were feeling desperate – their website had been online for months, and yet it had not attracted a single conversion.

We checked out their site thoroughly and were a little surprised. The site was actually pretty good. It wasn’t perfect, of course, but they had everything that we advise when starting a website. They had a homepage, several service pages, several location pages, and about 20 to 30 informational pieces about their industry. We would have added a few more location pages and started a blog and a tips page, but other than that their website was definitely off on the right track, and they did far more marketing than most other companies do in their industry.

Why They Were Struggling

It dawned on me that this company’s website was a little bit “too” good. Companies that know how to use content marketing this well generally already have an SEO or content marketing company, so while we would generally encourage anyone to switch to us since we’re obviously amazing, this was a company that seemed to know what they were doing, so it stands to reason that they would have a content marketing company already in place.

So I decided to investigate a little. I cut a sentence out of one of the best pages of their website, put it in quotations, and did a search on Google.

Sure enough, there were 60 or so identical sites that used the exact same content, built their sites the same way, all in the same industry. After asking the client about this they shared that they rented their website from an SEO company. This SEO company was reusing content in each location.

This is a Problem

As far as Google is concerned, re-used content is stolen content. Google doesn’t differentiate between content copied between websites owned by the same people and copied content that has literally been taken from another site. Google only cares about originality, and SEO companies that use copied content between sites are not only doing a disservice to their clients – they’re also ignoring one of the principle rules of SEO.

Keep that in mind as you choose an SEO or content marketing company. If they re-use content between clients, they’re purposely making your website worse.

Author

  • Micah Abraham

    Micah Abraham is the owner and lead content writer at Great Leap Studios (https://GreatLeapStudios.com) and High Volt Digital (https://HighVoltDigital.com).
    Micah has over 15 years of content writing and digital marketing experience, and has owned and operated Great Leap Studios since 2013 and High Volt since 2022.
    He has a degree in Psychology from the University of Washington, and has researched and written content on a wide range of topics in the medical and health fields, home services, tech, and beyond.
    Micah lives with his family in California.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Skip to content