Commodity vs. Non-Commodity Content: What It Means for Your Small Business SEO

If you've been following the recent changes with SEO and AI search lately, reading my blog or listening to my podcast, you've probably heard the term non-commodity content, and you might be wondering what in the world that actually means for your small business website. I get it. It's a new phrase, it sounds a little technical, and nobody wants to find out they've spent months creating the wrong kind of content for SEO. I want to break down commodity and non-commodity content so you understand what to create for your small-business website going forward.

 

  

What Is Non-Commodity Content?

Non-commodity content is something only your business can create, because it's built on your own experience, data, or perspective, rather than information already available on other sites across the internet.

 

Commodity content, on the other hand, is generic. It's content anyone could write, and often it's nothing more than what's in an AI overview. Commodity content is essentially just restating information that's already well known and already available in a hundred other places. There's nothing new, no depth, and honestly, no value beyond what everyone else has already said on the subject.

 

Google created the labels commodity and non-commodity content in its AI optimization guidelines in May 2026, and I think it makes it pretty easy for small business owners to understand what type of content they need to create if they want to rank on Google or show up in AI searches. Google said that if your content is what they determine to be commodity content, that information is already covered by the AI overview and there's no reason for them to share your website or information with anyone. You need to create content that provides more insight, anecdotes, stories, research, etc. It has to be able to stand out from the information AI provides and be more valuable.

 

 

How Do You Create Non-Commodity Content for Your Small Business?

Creating non-commodity content really isn't that hard. It's about adding insights to what you're sharing and writing about on your blog or website. Let's say you're a bookkeeper and you write a post titled What Is a Balance Sheet? That's commodity content. It's a simple, straightforward blog post; however, it's pretty basic, and in today's world, an AI answer can sufficiently tell someone what a balance sheet is. A few years ago, a blog post on a balance sheet definition might have been OK, but today it's not unique enough to really work well for search because the content in your post is already covered on 100 other bookkeeper websites and the AI summary can answer the question well.

 

What you have to do to turn that blog post idea into a non-commodity piece is to add additional insight, depth, personal experience, anecdotes, etc. to your piece. Rather than stopping at What's a Balance Sheet you want to write about a common balance sheet mistake you see small business owners make and how to avoid it. You're still talking to the same audience, and it's still on the same subject of balance sheets, but now you're including the mistake you see most often when new business owners come to you for help, using a real (anonymized) example from your own clients, explaining what it cost them and how you fixed it, and that's providing a lot of information, help, and value that AI can't and that's how you turn your content into non-commodity content. You want to be sure that what you're writing can't be replicated by others or easily answered by AI.

 

I teach this to my students and clients. It's not enough to answer a question correctly. You have to answer it in a way only you can, using your own stories, data, or take on the topic to stand out in today's search. If you want your business to remain visible online moving forward, this is the type of content you need to create.

 

 

How to Tell If Your Content Is Commodity or Non-Commodity

To help my students and clients determine whether they've created the right type of content, I have them read back through the page or post they've written and ask themselves: Could ChatGPT have written this exact post without me? If the honest answer is yes, you've created commodity content, and you need to edit it, or it won't work for SEO. You don't necessarily have to start over; you just need to add more insights, data, stories, examples, things that make it better, more helpful, and more unique.

 

To help you improve the quality of your content, ask yourself: are you including your own experience, a real example, or a story that's actually yours? Are you sharing an opinion or a recommendation based on what you've seen work, not just a summary? Is there anything in the post that couldn't have been assembled by pulling together the top five articles already ranking for that topic? Edit your piece until you know that it's unique, helpful, valuable, and not simply a summary of other content that's already available.

 

 

Commodity vs. Non-Commodity Content: A Quick Comparison

Commodity content restates what's already known. Non-commodity content adds something new. Commodity content could have been written by anyone, including AI. Non-commodity content could only have been written by you, because it's built on your own experience or original perspective. Commodity content gets summarized by an AI Overview, and the searcher there's no reason for someone to visit your website to learn more because your content says nothing more. Non-commodity content is different, more valuable, and worth sharing with searchers either in the results or in the AI resource data because there's value there and people might want to learn more. You have to provide value to be visible.

 

 

How This Connects to E-E-A-T and Helpful Content

Does non-commodity content sound similar to E-E-A-T and Helpful Content? It sure does to me. Honestly, the way I teach my students and clients to create content today isn't very different from how we did it 10 years ago, because Google has been asking us to focus on creating great, helpful content for years now. Sure, a decade ago, there were a lot of Listicles and things like that, but there were also great blog posts that went in-depth, provided value, and helped readers.

 

Google began removing what they call Thin Content back in 2011 with the original Panda Update. If Google decided your content wasn't helpful enough, didn't provide value, or was low-quality, it was removed.

 

In 2016, Google added Panda directly to the Core Algorithm. Over the years, Google has created Panda, Helpful Content, and Spam Updates to remove low-quality, thin, or AI-generated content from search results.

 

This isn't really new. I've been in SEO since before Panda was released in 2011, and the focus on high-quality content has always been at the core of my SEO Content strategies, whether they were for an enterprise client at the agency, my own website, or a small business website owned by a student or client.

 

Non-commodity content is really just another way of describing E-E-A-T and helpful content. E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust, and it's the framework Google uses to judge whether the person creating a piece of content knows what they're talking about and should be a trusted resource on this topic.

 

Helpful content is the standard Google has asked website owners to meet for years now, content that's genuinely useful to the person reading it, not just written to rank. While the Helpful Content Update was first released in 2022, it's been at the core of what Google's asked for since at least 2011.

 

I remember being at SMX East in New York City in 2012, shortly after the Panda Update, and the advice at the conference was to hire a journalism major to run your content program because they would understand what needed to be done. They said to stop outsourcing SEO content or having the tech team write it, and to bring in people with a journalism background so you could create the right type of content. I also remember feeling like my degree in broadcast journalism had just become a hot commodity in the corporate world for the first time since I'd earned it over a decade earlier. Today, we know that content has to be high quality to work, but pre-2011, there was a lot of pretty low-quality content floating around online.

 

I'll mention AI-generated content quickly because when ChatGPT and other AI systems first emerged a few years ago, there were a lot of people rushing to create tons of content at scale using these tools to game the system and rank high on Google quickly. It worked temporarily, but I never taught students to do it and cautioned against it because I'd been in SEO for long enough to know that it wasn't the level of quality that Google would rank for long (read more here if you're curious) and sure enough, with a short period of time, Google caught up and the AI Spam Update came out and they removed the majority of AI generated content. I know it's appealing to think about using AI to create your content for you, but you can't do that if you want to be visible online. If you don't care about people finding you through search, create all the AI-generated content that you want, but if you want people to find it, you need to make sure it's non-commodity content.

 

Plus, AI-generated content isn't usually great – you can pretty quickly tell that it's not written by a human and it's not just the em dash that quietly gives it away (yeah, I wrote that myself to illustrate the point and poke a little fun at AI-generated content because it's never this, it's always that and something is always quietly happening – have you noticed that too? (In between the em dashes?). Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I had to do it.

 

 

What to Do for Your Small Business Website This Week

You don't need to rewrite your entire blog overnight. Start by picking three posts that are helpful to your ideal customer and target keywords your website has a good chance of ranking for, and read through them and ask yourself: could AI have written this without me? If the answer is yes, add real examples, a story, an opinion, or a result that only you can share. Doing that should make your content more valuable in Google's eyes and more likely to be shared rather than skipped entirely or summarized. You have to help your content have a reason to stand out so it can be found by the right people.

 

This is exactly the kind of thing I walk my students through inside Simple SEO Content. I teach you how to find the right keywords and questions to build your content around, and then how to make sure what you create is the kind of non-commodity, helpful, E-E-A-T-rich content that Google and AI search actually want to share. If you're ready to learn more, join me for the next cohort.

 

 

Non-Commodity Content FAQ

What is non-commodity content?

Non-commodity content is material that only your business can create because it's based on your own experience, original data, or personal perspective, rather than information already available elsewhere online. It's specific, evidence-based, and hard for competitors or AI tools to copy. It's more valuable than commodity content, which could easily be summarized by AI tools.

 

What does non-commodity mean in SEO?

In an SEO context, non-commodity simply describes content that offers something beyond what an AI summary or a quick search could already give someone. It's the opposite of generic, easily replicated content, and it's what Google's May 2026 AI optimization guidelines specifically said they want to prioritize. It's what you need to create for your small business website if you care about being found on Google or in AI-based searches.

 

What's the difference between commodity and non-commodity content?

Commodity content is generic. It's information anyone could write, and often information AI already knows how to summarize without needing your website at all. Non-commodity content is unique to you, built on your own experience, research, or opinions, which makes it valuable enough that Google and AI search tools have a reason to send people to it or share it with people.

 

How do I know if my content is commodity content?

Ask yourself if ChatGPT could have written your post without you. If your content is just a summary of information that's already well known, with no personal experience, opinion, or original example included, it's likely commodity content. Adding your own story, a real client example, or your specific take on the topic is usually enough to shift it into non-commodity territory.

 

If you're ready to start creating the kind of non-commodity content that actually gets you found on Google and in AI search, come join me inside Simple SEO Content. I'll teach you exactly how to do it.

 

If you want to learn more about how to do SEO for your small business, read the Ultimate Guide to Small Business SEO here, and I'll walk you through how this all works for your website.