Yesterday, I was working on a new website. I say new, but there actually was quite a bit of content already at the site. It read sort of like this:

“Maximize your bottom line and catapult revenues with proven revenue generating strategies that propel your business to the next level!”

I could go on, but you probably recognize the genre. There was a lot of this stuff. it makes me think of footprints on the beach: clearly, there was someone there at some point, it’s evidence of human effort, but in minutes it’s gone from your memory. It has no substance.

I rewrote it as nicely as I could and sent it off. The client wasn’t happy.

What a relief.

So often, people are really fond of their horrible content. I explained that I always try to preserve people’s existing content, unless I hear otherwise.

“For all I knew,” I explained, “you wrote it yourself and you love it.”

Fortunately, that was not the case. This was a work for hire, and a good example of a complete waste of money. I’ll be throwing it out and starting over.

Have a look at your website. Have you just strung buzzwords together in a faint semblance of meaning? Or is there some substance there?

I have to admit that working on this client’s site, when I thought it was his idea of how his business should be described, had given me a poor impression of the client. My sending it back to him as better-written yet still meaningless drivel probably gave him a poor impression of me, too. I think our phone conversation dispelled both those negative impressions.

But visitors to your site won’t call you to see whether they’ve misjudged you. They’ll read a little bit of your substance-free content and click right back to the search results — no matter how high on the page your website may be.

Make sure you have something to say, and that you get it onto the web page.