Someone on your marketing team, or maybe a vendor pitching you last quarter, used the phrase “non-commodity content” and moved on like it was obvious what that meant. It’s not obvious. It’s industry shorthand straight from Google, but it gets thrown around a lot more than it gets explained.
So let’s actually explain it. Because once you understand the difference between commodity and non-commodity content, you’ll probably look at your own website differently, and not necessarily in a comfortable way.
TL;DR — Key Takeaways
- Commodity content is interchangeable. If a competitor could publish the exact same page with their logo swapped in and nothing would feel off, that’s commodity content.
- Non-commodity content is tied to your firm specifically. It uses your results, your perspective, your process, or your data in a way no other firm could copy-paste, even if they tried.
- This affects more than rankings. Commodity content struggles to differentiate you, convert skeptical readers, or get cited as a unique source in AI-generated answers. Non-commodity content does all three.
- Bonus tip: Pull up three of your practice area pages and three from a competitor in your market. If you could swap the firm names and nobody would notice, that will tell you what type of content it is.
What Commodity Content Actually Looks Like
Commodity content is the stuff that exists because it’s expected to exist, not because your firm has anything distinct to say about it.
Think of a generic “What to Do After a Car Accident” page that lists the same six steps you’ll find on hundreds of other personal injury sites: call the police, seek medical attention, document the scene, don’t admit fault, contact a lawyer, keep your records. All true. All useful, technically. And all completely interchangeable with what your competitor down the street published last year.
That’s the defining trait of commodity content: it could run on any firm’s website with the name changed and nothing would feel wrong. It’s not poorly written, necessarily. It’s just generic by design, built to check a topical box rather than to represent your firm’s actual point of view.
Commodity content isn’t automatically worthless. Every firm needs a baseline of foundational, informational pages that answer the basic questions people search for. The problem is when that’s all your content library is. If every page on your site could belong to any firm in your practice area, you’ve built a library of information, not a library of authority.
How Non-Commodity Content Differs
Non-commodity content is built from something only your firm has: your case outcomes, your data, your process, your specific point of view on a legal issue, or your attorneys’ actual experience with a type of case.
It’s the difference between “What to Do After a Car Accident” and “What We’ve Learned After Handling 400+ Rear-End Collision Claims in Cook County.” One is generic advice. The other is a firm-specific asset that no competitor can legitimately publish, because they don’t have your case history, your data, or your perspective.
A few concrete examples of what pushes a page from commodity into non-commodity territory:
- Original data or trends pulled from your own case files, even in aggregate and de-identified form;
- A genuinely specific point of view on a contested legal or strategic question, credited to a named attorney;
- Process transparency that explains how your firm actually handles a type of case, not a generic overview of “the legal process”;
- Local specificity that reflects real, current knowledge of a court, jurisdiction, or regulatory quirk, not a city name dropped into a national template; and
- Original visual content, like an infographic built from your own data rather than a stock graphic recycled across the industry.
None of this requires reinventing your content strategy from scratch. It requires asking a harder question before you publish: does this page say something only we could say?
Related: Creating Compelling Content for Personal Injury Law
Why This Distinction Actually Matters for Your Firm
Here’s the “so what.” Commodity content doesn’t just sit there being harmless. It quietly costs you in three places.
It doesn’t differentiate you. If your practice area pages read the same as every competitor’s, you’re asking potential clients to choose based on something other than your content, usually price, proximity, or whoever happens to rank first that week. Non-commodity content gives a reader an actual reason to remember your firm specifically.
It converts worse. Generic content answers a question without building trust in the specific firm answering it. A visitor who’s scared and overwhelmed after an accident isn’t just looking for information; they’re looking for a reason to believe you’re the right firm to call. Commodity content rarely gives them one.
It’s harder to get cited. As AI-powered search tools increasingly synthesize answers instead of just linking to pages, they tend to favor sources that offer something specific and well-supported over content that reads like a dozen other pages already in their training data. A page built entirely from commodity information has less to offer an AI system looking for a distinct, authoritative answer. A page built from your firm’s actual data or perspective has a real edge.
None of this means commodity content should disappear from your site. It means it shouldn’t be the whole strategy. The firms that win long-term tend to use commodity content to cover the basics and non-commodity content to actually build authority and trust.
Hear It Straight From Our Team
If you want to hear more about this distinction, our team has actually discussed in more depth. Our Director of Existing Growth, Stephen King, sat down with our Co-Founder and VP of Innovation, Matt Green, on an episode of our podcast, A Non-Billable Hour, to talk through exactly where the line between commodity and non-commodity content falls, and what it actually takes for a firm to build content that can’t just be copy-pasted by a competitor.
How to Audit Your Own Content for This
You don’t need a full content overhaul to start applying this. Here’s a simple way to check where you stand:
- Pull up your ten highest-traffic pages. These are doing the most work for you already, so they’re the best place to start.
- Ask the swap test for each one. Could a competitor publish this exact page with their name on it and nothing would feel off? If yes, it’s commodity content.
- Identify what your firm actually has that’s unique. Case data, a specific attorney’s take, a process nobody else describes clearly, a local nuance most competitors ignore.
- Prioritize converting your highest-traffic commodity pages first. You don’t need to non-commodity-ify your whole site overnight. Start where the traffic already is, and let that content start pulling more weight.
This isn’t about writing more content. In a lot of cases, it’s about rewriting less content, better.
Your Content Should Sound Like You, Because It Should Only Be Able to Come From You
If there’s one thing to take away here, it’s this: content that could belong to anyone doesn’t really belong to you either. It’s occupying space on your website without doing much to build your firm’s authority, differentiate you from the firm across town, or give an AI system a reason to cite you specifically.
Non-commodity content takes more thought to produce. It requires pulling from your actual case history, your attorneys’ real perspective, and the specific knowledge your firm has built over years of practice. But that’s exactly why it works. It can’t be copied, because it isn’t generic in the first place.
If you’re not sure whether your content library is doing this or not, that’s a good sign it’s worth a second look. At Juris Digital, we help firms figure out exactly where their content is commodity, where it has the potential to be non-commodity, and how to close that gap without starting from scratch.
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