The words, or written content, on websites are often overlooked and undervalued by business owners in both the services and retail world.

Owners hire a web development firm to design their sites and then think the writing is going to magically appear. Sometimes they rely on their web developer to also write the content.

This is fine if the developer’s primary skill is writing, but that’s rarely the case.

I recently was reviewing a website for a new client. I noticed the writing wasn’t bad; it was pretty good. I was suspicious. I didn’t think the web development firm my client had used had the capability to write content that well.

I took some of the text and “googled” it and, sure enough, the content had been “lifted” from another site. Pages and pages were copied from the other site and put on my client’s site.

Of course it’s possible that the other site lifted the content from my client’s site; that has happened to me. A similar firm in another English-speaking country lifted the content from one of my client’s website’s. But, in the case at hand, I knew that my client’s site was brand new so the content couldn’t have been lifted from him

Besides the ethical problems of using stolen content, there are other issues. Google downgrades duplicate content in its rankings. If it sees that your content is the same as another site’s, it will determine which is the original and promote that page, not yours. Your pages will likely go lower in the search rankings. Worse, your pages may not show up at all.

If you are using stolen or plagiarized content, you also aren’t digging deep to find out what makes your offerings unique and appealing. You are missing out on a huge opportunity to truly differentiate yourself in the market.

Easy Web Tip #208: Resist the temptation to copy and paste content from another website.