If you are somewhat acquainted with online content creation, you’ve probably seen and heard a lot of people stressing the importance of creating unique content. But, if you’re a little new to the field, you could be confused as to just why it’s so important.
There is actually a number of reasons for that. And in this post, we’ll be going over some of those.
After discussing the importance of writing unique content, we will also share a detailed guide for freelancers on doing the same.
Why it is Important to Write Unique Content?
Let’s start with this one first.
So, why is it important to write unique content? The simple answer to that is: there are a lot of consequences and repercussions if you don’t.
If you elect to plagiarize a source and take some already-written content from the internet, you’re not going to get anywhere. You’re not going to be able to attract a large readership. You’re not going to be able to rank your website high. And the list goes on.
As a matter of fact, we can actually understand the importance of writing unique content by looking at the consequences that you will have to face if you choose to commit plagiarism.
1. Plagiarized Content Can Damage Your Reputation
To begin with, one major issue of not writing unique content is that your reputation can get damaged. If your readers get wind of the fact that you are taking your content from some source online and are not writing it yourself, they can get driven off.
Plus, if one user finds out about it, it’s only a matter of time before the news gets publicized.
In the online world, getting your reputation damaged can be highly detrimental to the overall popularity and standing of your website. If you happen to run a blog or a website to promote your business, the consequences can be even more severe since they can adversely affect the number your number of customers and sales etc.
So, the first reason that writing unique content is important? It can help safeguard your reputation from getting mauled and tarnished.
2. Plagiarized Content Can Get You Penalties from Search Engines
This is another issue that you have to deal with if you don’t write unique content.
Plagiarized content is detected and plagiarized by the search engine. In other words, if you plagiarize content and publish it on your website, Google (or any other search engine, for that matter) will push your rank down in the SERPs. In more severe cases, the website can be removed from the results altogether.
Now that we are done discussing the importance of unique content, let’s move on to look at a guide on how freelance writers can easily create it.
Detailed Guide for Freelance Writers on Creating Unique Content
Creating unique content is actually not very difficult…especially if you’re not bent on plagiarizing yourself. In cases of accidental and unintentional plagiarism, the percentage is very low and it can easily be remedied.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to even avoid that much plagiarism in your work.
In order to create unique content, here are some steps that you can follow:
1. Diversify and Spread Out Your Research
The danger of committing plagiarism actually starts right from the research phase. In other words, the way you do your research can make a difference in whether you can accidentally commit plagiarism later on or not.
When doing your research, don’t confine yourself to a single source. Open up multiple websites and research papers etc., when collecting information.
The benefit of diversifying your research like this is that you reduce the chances of unknowingly copying the style and method of your source. If you are only taking information from one place, you can start imitating them without realizing it, and this can lead to plagiarism.
2. Don’t Actively Refer to a Source When Writing
After you are done with the research, you have to move on to actually writing the content.
When writing, don’t open up a source (or a number of different ones) and don’t keep constantly referring to it. Rather, you should make points during your research phase. And afterwards, when writing your content, you should elaborate on those points and not actively look at the material written from a source.
Yet again, the benefit of this step is that you won’t accidentally start committing plagiarism. If you simply take some points and elaborate on them, you will be able to use your own words and terms rather than relying on someone else’s.
3. Use a Plagiarism Checker
After you are done writing your content, you have to use a plagiarism checker to see whether or not there is any duplication in it.
If you have been careful during the research and writing phase, then there should not be a lot of plagiarism in your work. However, even if there is a little bit, it should be removed because it will stop your content from being recognized as ‘unique’.
In order to use a plagiarism checker, you just have to select one from the several given on the internet. There are a lot of such tools available online, and quite a few of them are worth using as well.
As far as using a plagiarism checker goes, the method of using most of them is pretty simple. All you have to do is enter the content in the space provided and then click on the button to start the process. Depending on the tool that you’re using and depending on whether you are a free or paid user, you may also have to deal with a captcha beforehand.
4. Use a Paraphraser to Remove Plagiarism
Then, moving on, if there happens to be any plagiarism in your content, you can simply remove it by utilizing a paraphrasing tool. There are a number of other steps that you can take here as well, such as simply citing the source or removing the plagiarized content altogether.
However, both these latter steps can be unsuitable in some situations. Paraphrasing plagiarized content is usually much easier.
Paraphrasing tools essentially work by rewording the given content using different synonyms and by changing the sentence structures. This is typically enough to eliminate any accidental plagiarism that you may have committed.
5. Recheck Your Content and Finalize
And after you have rewritten the plagiarized parts using a paraphraser, you should run a plagiarism check once again just to make sure that your content is free from any sort of duplication. Although it’s not very probable, it is possible that the content given out by the tool could also remotely match some source on the internet.
Once you recheck your content and find that it is totally unique, you can go ahead and finalize it for uploading/publishing.
Conclusion
Writing unique content is pretty much necessary in every field. Whether you’re writing an academic piece, an eBook or a blog, you have to avoid plagiarism at all costs.
In this post, apart from highlighting the importance of writing unique content, we also came up with a guide that can help freelancers do the same. In essence, the main thing that you have to be careful of in order to write unique content is to check it for plagiarism and, if there happens to be any, to remove it using a suitable method.