Marketers with a high focus on creating engaging content for their visitors often work with a team of writers. These writers can be either an in-house team or service providers from an online database. Because these writers generate numerous amounts of content on various topics, it is important to make sure they are presenting factually accurate information in all content. Aside from that, it is also paramount that all submitted content is original content. This means it should not be copied from another source.
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Plagiarism is an ugly word and one that many of us may not have thought of since our days of writing papers in school, but it is a reality no matter the type of content being created. Because of this it is crucial to ensure you are checking all submitted content for repeated content.
Checking for repeated content can be done in a few different ways; some you may have thought of before and others you may be hearing for the first time.
Online tools exist to check for repeated content. Copyscape is one such tool. It is an online plagiarism detection tool that scans content to see if it matches any other content that has been previously published online. However, these tools are only able to check for repeated phrases. Although Copyscape is a great resource that many marketers rely on to prevent the sort of duplicate content, it is not enough. Other forms of plagiarism can still go undetected which lead to confusion among search engines and can lead to an even bigger problem, decreased search engine ranking.
To prevent repeated content from slipping through the cracks, it is important to do a Google search of the blog title and the topic at hand. Just because the words of the content do not align with other content posted online, does not mean that it is an original work. In fact if a piece of content closely resembles another in this form it is known as “contractive plagiarism.” This is a form of plagiarism where content is trimmed down to the point where online plagiarism programs are unable to pick up on the duplication but which still is, ultimately, just a sneaky summary of material written by someone else.
If you yourself are the writer and you are using a very specific source of technical information, it goes without saying that you should not copy a title nor bullet points and you should certainly not keep the same order of bullet points as the article that you are using as a source for your blog, even if the content does not technically come through as repeated content on plagiarism detection tools.
Of course it is perfectly fine to brainstorm for future content ideas by seeing what others are blogging about and generating similar content, but it should be similar, not identical. Learning from others is a great way to continue to grow your business. This information is meant to provide further insight into your content creation and prevent you from dealing with any legal issues that could impede your success and growth.