Plagiarism is something everyone should stay away from. Students, marketers, bloggers, writers, all should try to avoid plagiarism at all costs. This is because plagiarism does not create a positive image and it also affects the reputation of the brand. This is why there are many plagiarism tools used especially in educational institutions to prevent plagiarism. And students who are caught plagiarizing, are subject to penalties and even expulsion.
The thing is, presenting someone else’s ideas and text as your own is not ethical at all. The highly technologized world we are currently living in indeed creates the context to do this. With a simple search on Google, you have access to a wide diversity of information from a lot of sources. You do not have to search for the information in books or magazines, but access it in an instant on your laptop.
However, plagiarism can be unintentional too. Many marketers end up plagiarizing because of a lack of organization or careless behavior. But even though you may miss that phrase you have plagiarized, the search engines will spot it immediately. And this will seriously affect your brand awareness and ranking. So, how could you prevent SEO plagiarism? By using citation. Besides enriching your language, it also helps you stay original.
What Is Source Citation?
Well, before diving into how you can properly cite your sources to prevent SEO plagiarism, we will shed more light on what source citation is. Usually, this is used in the educational sector, when students have lots of written assignments to do. But this is valid if you are a marketer or blogger too. When you prepare your essay, blog article, and content for your website, you do your research.
Seeing what the competition has written on that topic or wanting to present some facts and statistics is completely normal. But if you read many sources and do not keep track of them, you might end up plagiarizing. So, citation allows you to paraphrase or quote another writer, researcher, or so on by avoiding plagiarism.
Related: Plagiarism Free Content: Importance In SEO
In-text source citation is something you should apply to all your texts. You do this by mentioning the name of the author, the year the book or article was published, and the page (this is mostly applicable when you cite books or large articles).
So, how can you prevent SEO plagiarism by citing the sources you use? What should you do to properly cite the sources you read? Well, there are a few things you should keep in mind.
Have Your Notes Organized
The journey from the first draft until the last one might be longer, depending on your topic, research, writing type, and so on. When you want to prepare a nice material to post on a website, you need to carefully write it so that it will rank high in search engines. SEO is essential for this and you should not lose it from sight. But even though your SEO is exceptional, if you have plagiarized, your website will rank lower. Google does not have any tolerance for plagiarism.
Some people plagiarize intentionally, while others are distracted or disorganized and end up doing this unintentionally. It is essential to organize your notes and keep track of your sources as you read them. Keep in mind that every source you inspire from and want to use in your writing needs to be cited. Besides scientific journals and books, you should keep track of articles, blog posts, and other sources as well.
Related: Best Plagiarism Checkers (Free & Paid)
Paraphrasing
There are two major ways you can cite your sources. Paraphrasing is one of them and it helps you avoid SEO plagiarism. If you have read a nice thing someone said or the conclusion of a study you want to reproduce in your writing, you can paraphrase it, and thus it is not plagiarism. You need to explain with your own words the main idea that someone said, and then add the author and the year.
Quoting
Quoting is the second way you can use to cite your sources. It is different from paraphrasing. When you quote an author you copy-paste their phrase and add it to your article between inverted commas. Of course, you need to add the author too. But inverted commas help you avoid SEO plagiarism.
Related: Best SEO Content Optimization Tools
Use Citation Generator
However, if you wrote your article and forgot to cite sources and organize them, you should know that you could use a citation tool. It also has a plagiarism check integrated and it suggests the sources you have used. ACS citation generator is one of the most used ones, as it has a nice interface and can be used easily by anyone. Using a citation generator will help you avoid plagiarism, and thus low SEO rankings.
Related: How to Write the Best SEO Content That Will Rank
Ending Note
Plagiarism is something you should keep away from. In educational institutions, plagiarism is not accepted at all by professors. And they all use plagiarism tools to check the essays of students. If you have plagiarized, you will support the consequences.
The same applies to the online world. All search engines have zero tolerance for duplicate articles and plagiarism. And if you post plagiarized content on your website, you can be sure that it will not rank high at all. It is therefore important to always cite the sources you need in your research appropriately. This will help you prevent SEO plagiarism.
