Plagiarism checkers are one of the most important tools that writers have to use when creating content for pretty much every purpose.
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Whether the content is for academic purposes or for blogs, etc., using plagiarism checkers is a necessary step that writers have to take before finalization. In this post, we are going to look at the importance of using plagiarism checkers particularly when writing SEO content.
What exactly are plagiarism checkers?
While the name of these tools pretty much describes what they are, we think we’ll clear it up before we move on. Plagiarism checkers are basically made to check a piece of content to see if it contains plagiarism.
Plagiarism itself (as a noun) is defined as any content (textual or otherwise) that is unethically used from any existing source without any credit being given to the said source. If there is any text in a piece of content that already exists on an online source, that text will get highlighted by the tool.
There are some concomitant features and perks that usually accompany the basic functionality of these tools. For example, a good, high-quality plagiarism checker will usually provide the exact source of the matched content. A lot of these tools also give an option to create citations for the sources. And so on.
Why is using plagiarism checkers important during SEO content writing?
The answer to that is simple. By using plagiarism checkers on your content, you can basically see if it is completely unique or not. Anyone deliberately plagiarizing content will not obviously use these tools.
Plagiarism checkers are for people who want to ensure that their content doesn’t contain even any accidental plagiarism i.e., such content that they may have coincidentally written in the same way as another source, or content generated using AI.
That is the short answer, of course. To understand the importance of using these tools in detail, we just have to understand the consequences that one can face by not using them. So, let’s take a look into that.
Plagiarism can directly hurt your SERP rankings
Back in the day, when the Internet was new and green, there wasn’t much regulation about plagiarism and plagiarized content on websites, etc. But as time went by, search engines made things stricter.
Google, for example, introduced plagiarism penalties in one of the updates. After the updates, any site getting caught plagiarizing content would either get their ranking lowered, or they would get delisted completely.
This was, to be precise, the Panda update released back in 2011. It targeted a number of different SEO bad practices such as plagiarism, keyword stuffing, and “thin” content. So, this is one of the main reasons that you have to avoid plagiarism in your content. This is the reason that you have to use plagiarism checkers on your content before you finalize it.
If you publish your content without first checking it, it’s possible that it may go live with accidental plagiarism. That way, you may get hit by the consequent penalties and your site’s ranking could be negatively affected.
Plagiarism can make your site’s traffic dwindle
When we say that plagiarism can make your site’s traffic dwindle, we mean that in a way other than what would be the concomitant result of a de-ranking or de-listing.
That was confusing… While plagiarism can cause de-ranking and de-listing (which automatically cause a decrease in traffic), it can also hurt the traffic in a different indirect way.
More like it. Let’s explain it a bit now. When websites plagiarize content – especially if they are well-known and popular – it doesn’t stay hidden for long. The regular readership can easily find it out, and when they do, they don’t stay as fond of the website.
Then cue the drop in clicks and visits – which brings about a steep decline in the performance metrics of the site. The search engine sees this, and down goes the SERP ranking.
Plagiarism can drastically hurt your brand’s image
This is also one of the major consequences that plagiarism brings about in its wake. Avoiding this consequence is why using plagiarism checkers is important when writing SEO content.
Reduction in SERP ranking is bad on its own and everything. When a site’s ranking drops, it doesn’t perform well in terms of user engagement and revenue generation (if it is monetized).
But the repercussions go beyond that. Due to the antics that a company may do on their website, their reputation in the real world can also be negatively affected. This can bring about a whole lot of other concomitant ramifications on the company’s popularity and profitability, etc.
This applies even to situations where the plagiarism in question happens to be accidental. Of course, a mere 2% or 3% won’t hurt anybody but if it goes beyond the, say, 12% mark, it could mean trouble.
Conclusion
Using plagiarism checkers on your SEO content writing is very important. This helps in making sure that the content you publish on your site is unique and plagiarism-free. As for why you should do that exactly, we have discussed the main reasons in the post above.
