Avoid Plagiarism In Blog Writing
Plagiarism in blog writing is the Achilles heel and is the biggest hurdle in better SEO.
Are you standing at the crossroads of blogging?
Do you want to know why plagiarism in blog writing is bad for your website?
Amid conflicting views, you need a sane voice explaining plagiarism logically. If you are still in awe as to the effects of plagiarized content on your blog, then read this article thoroughly.
What is Blog Writing?
Blog writing is all about the indirect promotion of your business and its visibility on the internet.
Nowadays, 3.97 billion people are on the internet, that’s why blogging becomes the best option to tap that great marketing potential. In other words, blog writing is used to increase your product or service’s sales.
For better blogging, you need to optimize your content using the best SEO or search engine optimization techniques and tools like an online plagiarism checker. To know how plagiarism in blog writing hurts your SEO, you have to understand what plagiarism is.
What is the term called Plagiarism in Blog Writing?
I have given a standard definition below to make me familiar with plagiarism in blog writing.
Definition:
According to Oxford, “Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgment”.
In simple words, it is direct or indirect stealing of someone’s thoughts in the form of writing.
Stealing is a crime whether we see it from an ethical lens or through the government’s prescribed rules. You can attach the same connotation with plagiarism but no one will punish you for copying content except in some cases.
Whatever the case appears, try using a recommended plagiarism checker to know whether your content is unique or not. Plagiarism in blog writing can, however, affects your website in unprecedented ways, but I have listed down some of the reasons.
Why is avoiding plagiarism in blog writing necessary?
Plagiarism in blog writing is highly unprofessional.
Why?
Because, first and foremost, we genuinely care about what we do and take pride in the information we deliver to our clients and readers, don’t we? Right. I knew you’d agree with me on that.
Second, we have reputations to uphold and brands to establish. We’re professionals, and we want to be recognized as such! Nobody likes a content spinner, and we don’t want to be one.
Third, Google despises plagiarism in blog writing just as much as the rest of us. Only they term it duplicate content, and they will penalize your site as a result. This is not ideal for organic traffic.
There’s also the issue of copyright infringement, which can sometimes lead to legal problems. With the Internet and blogging sphere being what they are, this does not happen very often, but it is a possibility.
Finally, and most crucially, passing off someone else’s work as your own diminishes the effort that your predecessors put in. I wouldn’t want my blog post to be published in the name of someone else. Not when it cost me countless hours of my life to create! Here are the several reasons for the same –
- Plagiarism in blog writing is bad for SEO:
SEO is what sustains your blog ranking among a stream of blog posts published daily on the internet. It deals with writing your content according to the guidelines of Google. If your content evades google guidelines, it is doomed to fail.
Your content will not rank on Google SERPs if it is not written and optimized. Best practices revolve around keyword research and substitutions, proper headings, and much more:
Some basic guidelines are:
- Start with a unique title.
- Add the best keywords with high search volume in the title.
- Use H1 and H2, H3 format while giving headings.
- Do not stuff keywords.
These glimpses of the guidelines can make your content rankable and ultimately visible to google but it takes time and effort to increase your search volume organically. However, if you simply copy-paste content from an already written article, you will let loose those bounded guidelines.
Because the content already written might not contain the right keyword or it may not be written according to Google’s guidelines. If you doubt your content, you can use a plagiarism checker to know if your content is unique or not.
- You may lose your regular audience:
You write blogs to give valuable information and to promote your brand. It is based on the content marketing strategy that focuses on your buyer’s or audience’s persona.
Buyer’s persona:
It is the hypothetical image of your reader inside your mind explaining their psyche and pain points. You incorporate those pain points in your blog content to get their attention. If you copy your whole blog, you will never know your audience and their needs.
Your regular audience, the people who visit your blog will abhor plagiarized content because it is simply not solving their problem. You will lose their trust over time and ultimately your blog’s traffic will deplete.
- Decreased ranking:
Although Google does not penalize for duplicate content, it can affect your ranking severely.
Most often, the content you copy may be already plagiarized or rephrased so, copying such content does not help you in ranking. Google ranks unique and understandable content and if your content is of low quality, it simply remains in oblivion.
You should curb duplicate content because it can hinder the indexing of your website. If the content is rephrased or plagiarized, google will not index it instead it will index the best-written copy of that content. Consequently, your position in search results will decrease. However, you should use a plagiarism checker to pre-empt this. This is one of the best ways to avoid plagiarism in blog writing.
- Action invoking copyrights:
The original writers who work hard to create the content can easily piss off if they saw your blog have their content.
They can invoke copyright infringement law and can sue you for literary theft. Different websites have different protocols so if you copy a sanctioned content you may get a copyright strike easily. It can moreover, malign your credibility and can throw you in deep waters. Therefore it is necessary to check copied content through a plagiarism checker.
- Avoid penalties from search engines:
If your site has been penalized, your ranked pages in SERPs may have vanished, or your ranking for your targeted keywords may have plummeted substantially. In the event of a Google penalty, your target audience will be unable to locate you.
Google can readily detect plagiarism in blog writing, and the impact is the same as a penalty: your website’s ranks will suffer.
Plagiarism will harm your SEO ranking for a variety of reasons. As a result of Google penalties, your website will not rank.
- Increase traffic
Publishing high-quality, distinctive, and new material generates an increasing amount of organic visitors. Plagiarism in blog writing results in a low SEO ranking score since plagiarized content lacks relevance, readability, and coherence throughout the text.
To be successful, websites must prevent plagiarism difficulties. Learn what plagiarism is and what you can do if your website is scraped via the Internet. If you use the words of others without permission, you are putting your SEO in danger.
Methods to avoid plagiarism
Fortunately, it isn’t all bad. Avoiding plagiarism in blog writing is actually quite simple given that you have a basic understanding of what it is. Here’s how to avoid plagiarism in your writing to assist you to avoid this taboo.
- Please cite your sources.
When referring to someone else’s concept or phrasing, include a citation in your writing that includes the complete name of the source, the date it was published, and any other citation elements required by the style guide you’re using.
- Include citations.
If you use a source’s words verbatim in your writing, one of the simplest yet most obvious strategies to avoid plagiarism is to include quotation marks around the text to indicate that the words aren’t your own. A straight quote should also provide the source so that readers know who said it.
- Paraphrase
The act of rewriting a source’s ideas or facts into your own words without affecting its meaning is known as paraphrasing. But be careful—if done incorrectly, paraphrasing might turn into plagiarism.
- Present your own concept.
Rather than just repeating the source’s thoughts or phrases, consider what you have to say about it. Consider what unique perspective or point of view you can provide to your work that is wholly your own. Remember that whether you use a source’s ideas or words to create your own thesis, you must still follow the principles above to prevent plagiarism in blog writing.
- Make use of a plagiarism detector.
While researching a topic, some phrases or sentences may remain with you so strongly that you unwittingly integrate them into your work without citing them. When in doubt, an online plagiarism checking tool can assist you in detecting these flaws before submitting your paper.
These recommendations can help you avoid plagiarism in blog writing and are well worth the effort. Learning how to avoid plagiarism ultimately requires regular practice, in addition to becoming more conscious of what constitutes plagiarism.
Conclusion:
Blog writing is one of the best techniques to increase your brand’s awareness. Most people are blogging to augment their businesses. In addition, some are writing a blog to earn passive income. Whatever your intent is, you can set up a blog to generate leads.
But, you need to muster all the SEO techniques to kick start your blogging career. An SEO-optimized blog is not less than a rewarding source of income.
The only thing that hinders your blog growth and curbs your blogging career to flourish is plagiarism. It has crept into present-day content writing much more than before.
So, the first thing you should do is find plagiarism in blog writing through a plagiarism checker. Therefore, you must be wary of its presence and nip this evil in the bud before it tries to harm your career. It not only depreciates your Google ranking but also destroys your honesty and authority.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How can I tell whether I’m plagiarising?
As you write your work, go over the portions where you have explicitly quoted, summarised, or paraphrased information from another source. You are plagiarising if you know you used other sources or searched somewhere for clarification or ideas but did not identify where the material came from. Similarly, if you copy and paste content from the Internet without acknowledging where it came from, you are plagiarising.
- Why is everyone making such a huge deal about plagiarism these days?
Because it is significant. Plagiarism in blog writing is a serious ethical and moral issue. When someone plagiarises, she or he deceives by passing off someone else’s work as his or her own whether she or he meant to do so or not. Plagiarism occurs at all levels of society, which is unfortunate. Several well-known authors have been accused of plagiarism and found guilty.
- Is it permissible for me to plagiarise myself?
This is a difficult question. Of course, if you wrote the paper, you cannot plagiarise yourself. The issue comes when you wish to turn in a paper you wrote for Course A for an assignment in Course B, which you can only do if both courses’ teachers give you permission. Because one of the goals of a college education is to widen your horizons, you should write and submit a unique paper for each subject. You may have classes that overlap subject areas on occasion, but you should view these possibilities as methods to build on what you’ve already learned.
- Can I still be punished for plagiarism if I didn’t understand I was doing it?
Yes. Students are held accountable if they are detected plagiarising, whether it was done purposefully or inadvertently. As a result, you must know how to correctly cite outside sources in your profession. Your course teachers or the University Writing Center can assist you in working with sources.
- Is it plagiarism if I change the words from a source?
Yes, if your paraphrase is not accompanied by a citation. When summarizing or paraphrasing a source, you must use your own words, but you must also cite where the information came from. Citations aren’t simply for straight quotations. You must add a citation if you use material or ideas from a specific secondary source.
(Also, simply changing a few words does not constitute putting knowledge into your own words or creating a proper summary or paraphrase.) You would still be plagiarising in this instance since you would be taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own.
