I don’t want my content to be a commodity. You shouldn’t, either.

For as long as I can remember, my mom had a very specific directive for me: be unique. Despite me spending my childhood looking and behaving like everyone else my age, my mom wanted me to march to the beat of my own drum. What she really wanted was for me to have the confidence to not feel the need to be like everyone else — to live life on my terms, not anyone else’s. 

Here I am at 50, with a life that looks nothing like most of the people around me. I think it’s safe to say I achieved the goal. 

You might be wondering why I’m waxing poetic about being unique on a site meant for marketers. It all comes down to a term making the rounds in the SEO space right now: commodity content. 

What is commodity content?  

If you haven’t heard the term before, that’s understandable. It really had its moment in April, when Google’s Danny Sullivan brought it up during a Google Search Central event in Toronto. 

So what is it?  

Commodity Content is content that is easily replicated.  

Think about how many articles you’ve seen titled “10 Tips to Do X” or “How to Choose Your Perfect Y.” If you’re like me, you’ve seen dozens, maybe hundreds. It gets difficult to tell who actually knows what they’re talking about. 

I’ve never scaled Mount Everest, but I suspect I could put together a list of five tips a mountaineer might consider for their first summit push if I did enough Googling. Would you trust me? Would I sound credible if my experience was based solely on search results or conversations with my favorite chatbot? Probably not. 

If you’re publishing content on your site or social channels that’s generated purely from Google searches and AI chatbot prompts, you’re likely producing commodity content, too. 

What’s the opposite of commodity content? 

I’m sad to report that the opposite of commodity content doesn’t have a super-cool name. It’s simply called non-commodity content. Don’t let the lackluster label fool you; this is the kind of content that separates you from your competitors. This is what makes you stand out. 

My boss and I are about to speak at a conference on newsroom training. The easy route for our session would have been “10 Things to Know About Newsroom Training.” We could have Googled what other newsrooms have experienced and built 10 slides filled with tips. 

That would have been easy. And it would have been fine. 

But conference attendees don’t want easy and fine. They want firsthand experience. What did we learn? How did we do it? Did we stumble? Did we recover? Only we can tell that story in a way that’s real and useful. 

Our experience helps inform others considering the same path. 

That’s what takes content from commoditized to rich, well-optimized, non-commodity content — for people and for the engines. 

The challenge — and the opportunity — for marketers 

I know a lot of marketers, and many wish they had more time to pursue case studies, testimonials and stronger marketing collateral. The marketers I know are busy. They're chasing down materials, running ideas up flagpoles and juggling requests from stakeholders. 

Sometimes they publish commodity content because it's the only option. 

And I get it. 

Commodity content is often the result of not having the time or bandwidth to create more thoughtful, experience-driven work. 

But here's the thing: This column didn't start with a Google search. It started with my mom. 

That's the whole point. The most compelling content you'll ever publish won't come from a prompt or a listicle template; it'll come from something only you, your team or your customers actually lived.