Templated content is acceptable when each page fills a shared structure with genuinely unique, substantive content, and it becomes a duplication risk when the template is the content and only tokens change. The pivot is unique content in a shared structure versus shared content with swapped tokens. The template itself is neutral, even helpful. What decides the outcome is whether the words that carry meaning are unique per page or repeated across all of them.
A shared structure is often a good thing. Consistency helps readers know where to find the price, the process, the FAQ, and it helps you produce pages efficiently and keep quality even. A product line, a set of service pages, a directory of locations can all share a layout and a set of section headings without any problem at all. Structure is the skeleton, and many distinct pages can wear the same skeleton. Saying “templates are bad” misses this entirely.
The risk appears when the skeleton is all there is, when the body text inside each section is the same boilerplate with a name swapped in. At that point the template has stopped being a frame for unique content and has become the content, and many pages now say the same thing. Saying “templates are fine” misses this just as badly. The deciding condition is simple: does each page contain substantive content true only of it, or would the pages be interchangeable once you remove the swapped tokens?
For your next templated set, separate the two layers deliberately. Standardize the structure as much as you like, the sections, the order, the labels, so production stays consistent. Then treat the content inside each section as a fresh writing job per page, filling it with the real, specific, unique material that page alone can carry. Template the structure, never the content, and you get consistency without the duplication risk.