A regular behavior You might have noticed when browsing on the internet that two separate websites might contain the same content. Usually, when we see anything on a website that we like—be it a topic, a section of an article, or the written content—we want to imitate it and wish that on our own.
Having rich content will always be alluring. Plagiarism is defined as the act of copying, pasting, and inserting others content. Although you might receive praise for the specific duplicated information on your website, it is too destructive for it; it is as equivalent as injecting a slow poison into it. Plagiarized content negatively impacts search engine rankings of your website. Let us understand it in detail.
What is plagiarism?
We have all gone online to check content or information to get inspiration on what to write for our publications. Some people cite these content references and give credit to the original owner; most people don’t. Plagiarism is copying content and claiming it as your own without giving credit to the original author. And in some cases, unintentionally you can have written similar content to ideas that have been used before, and this would count as plagiarism. Copyright, which serves to protect people’s creations, is typically violated by plagiarism.
How can plagiarism affect your website?
All websites strive to rank high in the Google index, in order to make this happen they should avoid practices that might harm their rankings. Plagiarism is one example of such negative practices.
A known search engine Google always prioritizes original, relevant and high-quality content, whereas copied work (Plagiarism) can be penalized. No one can fool these search engines; it can easily identify copied content from original content. Plagiarized material inhibits Google from properly indexing and crawling your website. Thus, your website won’t rank if Google isn’t crawling or indexing it. And the sad news is that google can actually penalize your website, if it includes copied content without attributions to the original owner.
If your website is penalized, then it’s ranking on search engine pages will drop dramatically. In the worst cases, it can get removed from the SERP. Additionally, plagiarism can impact in many ways including the traffic to your website.
Another problem you can face with plagiarism is the increase in bounce rate on your website. This happens when your website visitors are on your website and they find something they have read before, they’ll lose interest and leave it immediately because it has no uniqueness or originality.
Search engines will perceive that your website lacks high-quality content which can negatively impact your SEO efforts. Not only does plagiarism impact the quality of content, but it also makes the reader lose interest.
How to avoid plagiarism?
In order to avoid plagiarism and keep your website on the safe side, it’s best to check the content of your website for plagiarism before putting it on the pages. There are several online tools that help you detect instances of plagiarism within your content. It is impossible to do it manually, we suggest creating original content and using plagiarism checker tools available online before putting the same on your website.
Additionally, if you want to use ideas from others, you can give credit to the writer when using their work. For example, if you want to use a phrase from another author it is best to put it in quotes and cite the source used. Another thing you can do is paraphrase the content and take your time to come up with original creative content instead of copy-pasting.
It’s always best to make sure that your website content has high-quality, relevant, and original content. That way, not only you will get favored by the website visitors making them stay on your page for a longer time, but you can also get favored by Google where your website rank may increase and will get more exposure and visibility.
Learning never gets wasted!
In conclusion, plagiarism is an important thing to look out for before publishing your website content. Besides being an unethical practice and damaging your reputation, plagiarism can get you penalized by google. No matter how hard you work on your content, once Google spots this malicious practice (Plagiarism) this can devalue your content and decrease your page’s rank and all your SEO efforts would be in vain. Always make sure to present original and unique content for your website and business’s sake.
If you want to add more value to your website, you must connect with us. Moon Key is appreciated and well known for creating original content. Our content creators have broad experience and are able to create competitive, alluring and best content for your websites or blogs. Get in touch to know more.