3 compelling reasons NOT to copy your dental website text!

Your web text needs to be unique – here’s why….

One of the key activities for the web team here at Dental Media is updating dentists’ websites, indeed it’s something we do every day in one way or another. This is a separate activity to actually building the websites in the first place, a process where more often than not, we have full control over supplying the content and checking its validity.

When it comes to updating an existing dental website, for example adding a new treatment page; often the dentist or perhaps their practice manager, supplies us with the text to use, along with some images and maybe some example treatment cases too. This is absolutely fine and something we encourage, however it is also an area where problems can often arise. The main issue we encounter is where the text has simply been copied from another website.

We can easily check for this by taking a few extracts of the text and plugging it into a Google search – this very quickly shows up if the text has been used elsewhere.

Copied text is a big “no no” when it comes to publishing on the web and simply must be avoided for the following reasons.

Copyright

This should be obvious but unfortunately dentists sometimes take the view that if they copy another website’s text, they will get away with it. We’ve seen cases where text has been copied from a competitor website in the same location (not too sensible!) to other examples where text has been copied from websites in the USA or Australia. Irrespective of the source, in all cases it was easy to find the copied text – and if we can do it, the person it was copied from can too!

How far you might be pursued if you use someone else’s website text is debatable, but it probably isn’t worth risking it to find out. Aside of the copyright issues, the next issue is also huge and another big reason why you need to write your own unique website content.

Google doesn’t like duplicated content

Google tends to only give credit to content it finds first. So if you copy someone else’s content, Google can easily determine that and won’t give it equal credit in the search results. That’s right; you risk not ranking anywhere near as well as the original source page. With Google ranking and SEO being even more competitive than ever, it’s absolutely essential to give yourself a great start by making sure your content is great, and unique, in the first place.

You may see lots of SEO articles talking about penalties for duplicate content and in most cases these are exaggerated. A few small sections of your site which are very similar to those on another site e.g. a person’s biography, aren’t going to cause you too many problems. However, if larger sections of your website are copied, then you could easily find yourself relegated by Google in the search results. It’s just not worth the risk.

Personalisation and engagement

Your website needs to reflect you and your business and one of the best ways to do this is to put your own “spin” on the text content you use. This, along with engaging, personalised visuals, will be really beneficial when it comes to attracting new dental patient enquiries.

However, if you simply copy someone else’s work, then you lose all of that potential and simply end up with a cloned page which can easily look and feel out-of-step with the rest of your site. Carefully crafted web design and unique text are key tools for user engagement, so please take the time to get them right.

Are you too busy to write your own website text?

It’s understandable why a busy dentist might not have the time to develop excellent website content and hence look for a quick short-cut to find something suitable elsewhere. However, as we’ve seen, it really isn’t worth it and the penalties could include a legal challenge and/or problems with Google search. Those risks are real.

If you need help, the copywriting team here at Dental Media is on hand to help. We generate copy for dentists’ websites, blogs and promotional stationery on a daily basis and know exactly what’s needed for impactful content which will also form an excellent foundation for search engines. If you’d like a quotation, please get in touch on 01332 672548 or send an email via the website contact form.