Why Avoiding Plagiarism Is Necessary for SEO

Plagiarism in the online world is nothing uncommon. More than 29% of websites on the internet suffer from duplicate content. The cause of this unoriginality is not too far to comprehend. The internet enables you to access information quickly.

However, it has also pushed many content creaters towards duplicating content instead of coming up with their own ideas. While some percentage of the plagiarized content is unwilling and unintentional, some are very thoughtful, which is why Wikipedia is the top website for sourcing plagiarism.

You could argue that most of those plagiarizing from an encyclopedia are students. However, the amount of blacklisted SEO articles suggests otherwise. That’s why avoiding plagiarism is necessary for SEO, and to understand that, we need to delve deeper.

What is Plagiarism?

Before we dive into the intricacies, let us understand the idea of plagiarism in the online market. For instance, you might think plagiarism is just copying and pasting content from an online source to your work. While that is true, plagiarism in the online world is of many sorts.

The first type of plagiarism is the unwanted or unwilling type. In this case, the writer may not want to duplicate content. Yet, the lack of resources, credits, source citation, or quotations will mark it as duplicate content.

The other and the primary type of plagiarism is copy and pasting. In other words, you are presenting someone else’s work and ideas as your own. This difference doesn’t mean one is better and the other is not, as both are harmful to a site or blog.

This reason is precisely why you should never compromise on the originality of the content. Moreover, you need to understand that besides SEO, plagiarism is something looked down upon by the writing community. So, credibility is one of the many reasons professionals steer clear of plagiarism.

Why Is It Important To Avoid Plagiarism for SEO

The SEO industry does not tolerate duplicity, nor do search engine crawlers. As for why it’s essential to avoid plagiarism in SEO content, we have devised seven critical reasons for it. Therefore, let us get right to it without further ado.

1.   Compromised Website Ranks

Search engine crawlers never knock on its door again when a website is found guilty of plagiarized or duplicated content. In other words, they blacklist the website.

While it won’t only affect a high-ranking website, it would be the last thing they’ll need for a low-ranking website.

2.   Lowered Organic Traffic

Plagiarized content will dramatically cause a high-ranking website to fall off the grace. Meaning you won’t be seeing it anytime soon in the first five names on SERP.

This lack of originality in the content will cause an immense cascade of failing organic traffic.

3.   Devoid Credibility

Even if you get rid of plagiarized content after publishing it, it would have caused enough damage to harm your credibility.

Therefore, your priority should always be to avoid plagiarism beforehand, not after posing it. In case you’re too late, it will ruin your credibility entirely.

4.   Search Engine Crawlers Will Not Index Your Site

As mentioned above, search engine crawlers steer clear of any blacklisted website. Therefore, even if you create original and unique content, it won’t make a difference.

Search engine crawlers may not even index your website, let alone make it one of the top search results.

5.   Ruins Your Reputation

In online marketing, credibility and expertise sell a product or service—plagiarized content ruins both.

So, if your website or blog has an ounce of plagiarized content, then it would ruin your standing in your industry and tarnish your entire business’ reputation.

6.   Affects Your Visibility

Even if the plagiarized content features only on a website or blog, other platforms like social media or a mobile phone app will suffer equally.

This factor means your secondary platforms would suffer from a lack of organic traffic, and their visibility will diminish just as much as your primary platforms.

7.   It Doesn’t Matter If it’s Unintentional

Let’s assume that you or a writer put a quote, statistic, or any other information overlapping with an existing piece of content. However, it won’t matter if you don’t credit the source.

Even if the plagiarism is unintentional, it causes just much harm. Search engine crawlers do not know your intention. They could never, and that’s why you need to avoid it at all costs.

Now that you know why plagiarism is wrong for your search engine presence, let’s dive in and see the steps you can take to avoid it.

·      Think of Unique Topics

Perhaps one of the best ways to avoid plagiarism is writing content from your own ideas. If your topic is something someone hasn’t written before, the chances of plagiarism become drastically low.

Therefore, regardless of your industry or niche, try to come up with as exclusive of a topic as you can.

·      Write Engaging Headlines

When you search for something on Google, you might find eerily similar headlines sometimes. This practice puts blogs and websites under particular scrutiny.

You should try to write unique and engaging headlines to avoid this, even if you’re covering the same topics as a hundred other blogs.

·      Research the Subjects

Perhaps the best way to avoid unintentional or intentional plagiarism is by grasping the topic firmly, which is why many professional writers spend more time on research than they do on writing.

Think about it; if you don’t need to use anyone else’s information, you can write original content without any hassle.

·      Check For Plagiarized Content

Once you’ve finished writing, check for plagiarized content in your work. Sometimes, the percentage of plagiarism can be as little as 2-4%, which isn’t that harmful.

However, you need to make it 100% plagiarism-free just to be sure. That’s precisely why you need to use a plagiarism percentage checker to see the number of changes you need to make.

·      Quote When Necessary

If you’re using information from another blog, a quote or a reference might save your work. If your blog doesn’t feature either, the crawler might think of it as duplicate content.

So, make sure you quote only when necessary.

·      Cite Your Sources

Using facts, stats, and established information will add a lot of credibility to your blog posts. However, it only works when you cite your sources correctly.

·      Paraphrase Content

Last but not least, paraphrase the content, which a plagiarism checker considers duplicate. This practice would save you from a lot of trouble. However, if you have a shortage of time, you can use a paraphrasing tool to save you lots of effort than rewriting it on your own.

Conclusion

Plagiarism is a harmful practice for professional writers, especially in SEO. Therefore, try out the tips above and avoid any plagiarism.

Related Articles

How To Set Up SEO On WordPress

How to Improve Google Rankings

10 Most Popular Content Marketing Platforms

The Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in SEO

What is Core Web Vitals in SEO