Barry Ashmore (and Geoff Noake) give the lowdown on what a flooring contractor should avoid doing when they create website copy.

PEOPLE who know me, understand that I started as an apprentice electrician on the tools before becoming a contracts manager and then the boss, followed by moving into professional practice and subsequently starting my own contractual consultancy, before setting up StreetwiseSubbie with Geoff Noake.

I’ve seen lots of changes, from the days you rang to ask if a business had a fax machine, to email, dial-up websites, Google, and today’s online world where anything and everything is available with just a couple of clicks.

And it’s on the subject of the digital world and websites that Geoff wants to tell you what he’s recently discovered:

Geoff says: ‘I’ve worked in advertising and marketing for many years and thought I too had seen it all. Until now. As marketing director for StreetwiseSubbie I’ve worked with our members to help them improve their marketing, find new customers, and to break into new markets. This work often involves website-related matters, which I have also done for other businesses on a consultancy basis.

‘One such project I’m working on presently is to create new copy for a website that’s about to be redesigned. It’s not for a company in the flooring sector. When you work as I do, across many diverse construction, industrial, manufacturing and product supply businesses, I tend to have reasonable knowledge of many sectors, rather than being expert in one.

‘Which is why, when starting to write copy for a service business, I tend to do some web searches to see what competitors are writing about. That way, I get a picture of the market and some direction for the new wording. I can then tailor this background with my own ideas to make the copy as interesting as possible. Sometimes it is easier than others.’

Shocking searches
Geoff continues: ‘For the project in question, I copied an entire paragraph from the website of the company I was working for and pasted it into Google. Expecting to be able to compare copy from a few similar websites, I was amazed to find an absolute copy match on a website in the same business as the one I was about to write for. I then grabbed another phrase from a different page and found it matched an incredible ten websites in the sector.

‘I tried again. This time, copying an entire paragraph from a different page, the search results brought up eight more websites, seven being different to those in the earlier search. On closer inspection almost all carried a ‘Produced by…’ tag on the footer of each. They had all been created by the same web development company using standard templets and some duplicated copy.

‘I did know the client had used a ‘specialist’ in their market sector, but I wasn’t ready to be smashed in the face by such blatant duplication. I could argue that I am a specialist in some areas but building websites the way this ‘specialist’ does would never occur to me. At best it is lazy. At worst, it’s a blatant rip-off of unsuspecting customers: ‘New money for old rope’.

The impact of duplicated copy
Firstly, Google hates duplicated copy. When you submit your website to Google for indexing it will give it a quality score. This will often include relevance to the audience, the number of words on each page, keywords, grammatical content, unique page copy and page headings, and the summarised copy inviting you to click following a search.

Adds Geoff: ‘The quality score is even more important when you’re using Google Ads to promote your website in paid searches. However, the biggest issue is one of trust. If you were to trust me to take on a copywriting project, you would expect it to be my own work. And my interpretation of your brief should ensure that the copy I provide is unique.

‘Yes, I understand that some technical wording is going to be very similar to that of your competitors, but this is no reason to use identical copy on many different websites. Technically, the website ‘specialist’ has done nothing illegal but it is certainly unethical. I also understand from a website development colleague of almost 30 years, text used on multiple sites is not uncommon and can possibly been written with the aid of artificially intelligent software.’

Choose the right web partner
If you choose to use a web development company that claims to be a specialist in the contract flooring industry, then have a good look at the websites they have produced. Meet the people behind the business and look closely at how they take a brief from you. Briefing properly is not easy, takes time, a lot of thought, but is well worth doing.

‘You can always write your own copy, but many find they have neither the time nor skills to do this. Just ensure that if a sector ‘specialist’ provides the copy for you it’s exclusively for your business and not simply generic to flooring.’

A lesson learned
What Geoff has recounted above is both interesting and disturbing and to throw in my own two penn’orth: copying a data policy or the format of a site report is one thing as they all are pretty similar. However, copying text across multiple websites is a marketing disaster!

Your web developer might think it’s clever, and in fairness you might be none-the-wiser (it’s a technical area), but trust me it’s not. And what’s the point of having a website if it isn’t working hard for your business?

As always, if you need help with your website, or any other marketing or business-related issues, then send an email and me or one of our many experts will be able to help you.
01773 712116
info@streetwisesubbie.com
www.streetwisesubbie.com
Barry Ashmore is managing director
and co-founder of StreetwiseSubbie.com