Let’s imagine a hypothetical case: you are surfing the Internet and you come across a that sounds familiar to you. When you pay more attention, you realize that he is the same as one that you have written! You would probably be outraged by the situation, since it is very difficult to avoid plagiarism of this type.
Now, think what it would be like if it were the other way around, that is, if you were accused of plagiarism. Your business and you could have great prejudices!
But don’t worry, so that this doesn’t happen to you, we have prepared a complete article that will help you when it comes to producing content more safely.
What is online plagiarism?
Plagiarism is basically copying a work. Contrary to what many people think, this copy does not have to be identical to the original content to be considered a crime.
There are different types of plagiarism: direct plagiarism; indirect plagiarism; and conceptual plagiarism. Therefore, “writing the same, but with different words” is not a good idea either.
According to the , “(…) plagiarism refers to the action of copying someone else’s work. This occurs when, when transcribing the phrases of third parties, their authors are not mentioned, which constitutes a crime against intellectual property.”
Indirectly, the crime occurs in the use of paraphrases (writing the same idea with synonyms and different words). And, beware, plagiarism is not restricted to text, but this criterion also applies to infographics, tables and images.
And we can’t forget the . Many people think that there is no problem in using the excerpt from a translated material, but there is! This sets up plagiarism in the same way.
As you can see, it is very important to avoid plagiarism on the Internet. Luckily, every day it is easier to identify this crime thanks to new intelligent tools.
Now, let’s get to know the impacts of online plagiarism better.
How plagiarism can harm content
Did you know that if a person or a business commits plagiarism, they can be penalized on and off the Internet? These are some of the causes:
1. It affects the credibility and authority of the brand
One of the worst scenarios in which your brand can be involved is being discovered replicating third-party content as if it were original. After all, the public may think: “how can this brand be good if it copies its competitors?”.
your strategy of will be harmed, your business will be frowned upon in the market and your audience will stop trusting what you offer.
2. Penalty in search engines
In case you still don’t know, Google penalizes pages that have plagiarized information. There is even a specific algorithm for this: Panda Update, which, among other things, is responsible for identifying copies of online content.
If the tool identifies plagiarism on a given page, it becomes less relevant and trustworthy for the search engine and loses places in the Google ranking.
This generates a very negative impact on your website because it reduces the results in organic search, visits and conversions. Nobody wants to create an online page and not achieve growth, right? But that is what happens when content is plagiarized.
3. It can cause legal problems
Plagiarism can also put you in legal trouble. The person who originally produced the content can go to court and make a claim.
In many countries plagiarism is a crime that can be punished with imprisonment and fines, or both.
How to avoid content plagiarism?
We know that with so many references and searches carried out in the stage of copying some fragment or idea ends up becoming a risk.
However, we will mention some tips to avoid plagiarism and to make your material even more original.
1. Research well on the subject
Before producing, you must do a good research on the topic you are going to address. This will prevent not only improper copies, but also incorrect information.
With good study sources and time to process what you have learned, you will have more original ideas for your texts and images, and greater autonomy to express yourself.
2. Cite sources when reproducing full snippets
Do you want to use a speech or a piece of other content (website article, academic material, study result)? The good news is that you can, as long as you cite their authors and sources.
If we analyze it, the contents that present citations are still relevant, on the contrary, they verify affirmations and ideas with reliable sources, increasing the credibility of the brand.
Avoiding plagiarism is possible and easy, so there is no reason to hijack an idea. Rather, take the opportunity to use that content as a reinforcement of your arguments.
3. Use tools to detect plagiarism
Currently, it is not difficult to detect materials that contain plagiarism. There are online tools that analyze the content and verify if there are already others with the same or similar fragments.
These plagiarism avoidance pages are great for doing a search through your posts and checking if everything is authentic. One point that deserves attention is that quoted phrases will also appear in the results of these tools, so don’t worry!
3 tools to check plagiarism online
After receiving tips to avoid copying problems in your content, how about knowing 3 tools to avoid online plagiarism?
copyscape
is a tool for verifying web pages that use parts of other content verbatim.
The website is very simple and intuitive. By entering the URL of your page, the platform presents up to 10 results (in the free mode) of websites that contain sections equal to those used in your material.
Of course, only the pages indexed by Google will appear.
Plagiarism Checker
has a field available for you to write the phrase you want to verify. The tool will do a direct search on Google or Yahoo!.
Without many secrets, this is a very simple option for those who want to investigate these two search engines quickly.
plagiarism
is an excellent tool for detecting text transcripts. Its intuitive design has the option of quick search by content fragment and returns results with websites that contain the same or similar parts.
The interesting thing is the option to verify the publications by a timeline and to be able to compare the similarities between the phrases through a percentage that is shown in each search result.
And the novelty is that it is possible to install a Plagium extension in Google Docs to verify the originality of your content directly in the file.
Everything is created, nothing is copied!
Now you know that the saying “everything that can be invented, has already been invented” doesn’t exactly work like that!
It is very important to have original content, and that goes far beyond avoiding plagiarism and legal problems. Credibility, authority and search engine ranking are more than enough reasons not to copy material and that creativity is respected.
If you want to know a little more about copyright on the Internet, .
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