Search engine optimization has been around for a long time. It is important to note that there are a lot of factors that come into account when websites are ranked. However, some factors matter more than other factors. What this means is that if you want to promote your search engine rankings, you need to leverage link building. That is one of the biggest ranking factors for search engines. Likewise, your content quality matters a lot. Seriously, ask yourself, what does Google want? Why do people use Google? Well, it is pretty simple. People don’t know about all the websites on the web. They want to learn what website has the best content. This means that if you want to improve your search engine rankings, you need to start leverage user experience. One of the major ranks determining factors today is plagiarism. Normally, it’s the practice of web professionals to must conduct a check for plagiarism test before posting it to the website/ any web portal.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is a concept that exists beyond search engine optimization. What this means is that you have got your academic plagiarism and what not. Essentially, plagiarism is stealing. It is stealing, just like physical theft. The one difference is that you are dealing with intellectual property. If someone has a creative idea and you use that idea without copyrights to it, is it plagiarism. In search engine optimization, plagiarism is generally when people copy content off other websites and share it as their own.

Why do websites plagiarize?

Like mentioned before, search engine optimization comes down to content quality. If your content follows JumpFactor’s content marketing standards, is well researched, well-structured and provides value to the reader, your content is bound to rank number on search engines. What a lot of people do is that they try to copy this top notch quality content that already exists on the web. They assume that since one website is already getting great ranking due to that content, so can their own website. But that is a lie. Search engine optimization is not that easy.

It may be that initially your search engine rankings go high because you used a piece of content that is great quality. But search engines are quick to note when two websites share the same piece of content. Under such circumstances, websites are penalized and the rankings go lower. So it is only a myth that a website can rank on top by copying someone else’s content.

Is plagiarism always intentional?

There is the obvious copying of content that is known as plagiarism. However, plagiarism does not always need to be intentional. Confused? Don’t worry. Let us break it down for you. You see, there are tons of websites that are writing in the same niche as yours. It may happen that your website happens to match the content of some other website. This is a technical search engine limitation that you must take into account.

Likewise, there are a lot of times when you read a blog post and you like the idea for it. What you want to do next is to create content that is similar to that content because you think your readers will enjoy that content. And just unintentionally, since you are using someone else’s blog post as reference, you might end up plagiarizing. So remember that plagiarism is not always intentional.

How to avoid plagiarism?

Plagiarism is really bad for your search engine rankings. However, as scary as it sounds, it can still be avoided. If you follow the following mentioned tips, you should be able to avoid plagiarism in 2019.

Create unique content by spying on your competitors

There is a lot of content that is on the web today. One of the ways you can avoid plagiarism is to create content that does not exist on the web. What you need to do is to see what your competitor blogs are creating content on. Next, see what sort of content they are missing. Then create unique content.

Know the difference between taking inspiration and copying (use a difference checker tool)

Like mentioned before, a lot of times plagiarism is unintentional. To make sure that you don’t end up copying content that you are taking inspiration from, you can use a difference checker tool. What this tool does is that it allows you to take two documents that are in text and then see the similarity rate. If your content and the content that you took inspiration from shares more than 20% similarity rate, remember that it is plagiarism.

Use a plagiarism checking tool

One of the most obvious ways to avoid plagiarism is to use a plagiarism checker tool. There are multiple plagiarism checker tools available online that you can access for free today. What this means is that you just need to copy and paste the content on the tool. Next, the tool will browse the web and then tell if you if there is any content on the web that shares the same information as yours. Make sure to use this tool before publishing every blog post of yours.

Credits are important!

Sometimes you just want to share someone else’s work. It may be that you are using a quote from someone’s blog or using an infographic. Under such circumstances, what you should do is to make sure that you add proper credits to the people you are taking the content reference from. Add a backlink and mention proper credits and you should be good to do.