Plagiarism-free content is the key to success for your website since both readers and search engines like Google appreciate uniqueness. However, coming up with completely unique content can be challenging, since there is already a lot of content available on the internet about pretty much every topic.
This makes it challenging for writers and bloggers, especially new ones to come up with completely unique content. If you’re one who is also dealing with this challenge, then this article is especially for you.
In this article, we are going to discuss the three most effective tips that will website owners create high-quality yet plagiarism-free content. However, before heading toward the tips, let’s first take a quick at the importance of unique content for a website.
Importance of Plagiarism-Free Content for Website
Writing plagiarism-free content for the website is crucial for several reasons.
First of all, it helps to build trust and credibility for your readers. When you provide readers with content that they will not find anywhere, then this will eventually result in increased trust and credibility.
Secondly, plagiarism-free content also helps websites to rank above in search results. Search engines especially Google likely to crawl, index, and rank content that is 100% unique. However, if someone publishes copied content, then Google Crawlers & Fetchers will immediately mark it as flagged.
Thirdly, writing unique content will prevent legal action. If the plagiarism in question happens to be serious enough, it can elicit legal action from the offended party. In other words, the source whose content you plagiarize can take legal action against you…the outcomes of which are far from pleasant.
Effective Tips to Write Plagiarism-Free Website Content
Now that we’re done looking at the importance of plagiarism-free content, let’s move on to look at how you can write it in the first place.
1.Be Careful When Garnering Information
A lot of people can go wrong when conducting research for their content. This can lead them to commit plagiarism.
But how does wrong research lead to plagiarism? Let us explain.
When someone conducts research, they basically take information (typically in the form of facts and figures) from other sources. Then, they feature this information in their own content. However, during this process, it is necessary for the wording and terminology of the source material to be altered. If not, then there will obviously be plagiarism issues since the utilized material would match the original source.
Similarly, another way in which someone can go wrong with research is by using too few sources for their information. This can lead them to use the same types of words in the same type of patterns, which can ultimately lead to accidental plagiarism.
To compile a couple, here are some tips that can help you do proper research with minimal chances of committing plagiarism.
- Use authoritative sources
- Use a sufficient number of sources
- Take ideas, not content
- Other than quotes, don’t write anything from sources verbatim
- After conducting your research, take some time before writing the content itself. This will help you forget the tone and style of the sources.
2. Utilize Paraphrasing or Quoting
There can be many instances during the content-writing process when you may find yourself having to use the exact same words as another author/source. However, doing this too many times can have a bad effect on your content’s quality since it will appear as if it contains more stuff written by other people than that written by yourself.
So, there are basically two things that you can do to safely import other people’s content into your own without worrying about compromising quality or committing plagiarism.
- Paraphrasing
- Using quotes
Paraphrasing: Paraphrasing is basically the technique that involves changing the words and phrases of existing content to make it look different. However, these changes are made in such a way that the meaning is not altered.
Paraphrasing can be done for different purposes. Some people paraphrase their own words to make them sound clearer. However, in our context, paraphrasing can be a good way to utilize someone else’s words without directly copying them.
For example, if you come across the following sentence in some of your research material:
“It was perhaps not the stock market crash itself, but the resultant panic and turmoil that ostensibly led to the Great Depression.”
…but you can’t use it verbatim for fear of plagiarism, you can paraphrase it like this:
“Rather than the stock market crash, it was the ensuing panic and turbulence that started the Great Depression.”
Now, when the sentence is paraphrased, it takes the form of your own words. You can then utilize it as you want without any issues or worries about plagiarism.
While we’re on the topic, we should also mention that other than the conventional and usual method of paraphrasing, there is a quicker way that you can opt for. And that is to use a paraphrasing tool.
Paraphrasing tools are basically online tools that make changes to the content they’re given in more or less the same way as a human. However, they do the same stuff in a matter of seconds.
Quoting: Quoting here basically means putting the sentence(s) in quotation marks. In other words, when you want to use a statement or sentence of another author in your own content, you can simply wrap it with the good old quotation marks “.
This is basically an automatic relinquishment of ownership. When you add quotation marks, you effectively say that the content in between them is not your own. And consequently, there are no plagiarism issues to worry about since you give credit where credit is due.
3. Cite Sources
If you ever find yourself in a situation where you can’t paraphrase content or put it in quotes (perhaps because you may already have done it a lot), there is another way in which you can keep your content plagiarism-free.
You can simply use citations to cite your sources. The good thing about citations is that you can defer them till the end of the content.
For example, if there is a sentence that you want to use in your content, you can use it as you want and then leave a citation for it at the bottom.
When we say “citations,” we basically refer to the traditional citation-and-reference gimmick that is often utilized in academic writing. You can do the same thing for your website content.
Conclusion
By following the tips that we’ve mentioned above, you will be able to write plagiarism-free content for your website. Other than these tips, you should also constantly take care not to use any content from any source in its original form. You should also take care not to use generic terms since they would probably have been used previously by a lot of other people.
