Check Your Freelance Writing Content for Plagiarism

As a freelance writer invest in a plagiarism checker. Many writers like the plagiarism checker CopyScape. There is a cost for the premium service that has more benefits that free of charge services. However, if you are not able to afford to pay for a service there are other free of charge plagiarism checkers around the internet that are certainly not as good, but can work to do the job.

Newbie freelance writers don’t usually check their articles for plagiarism. However, if you plan to write for a living this is something that must be done. Plagiarism is taken very seriously and could affect not only your brand, company and earnings, but it could affect your credibility.

Accidental plagiarism

There are hundreds of thousands of different writers creating content all over the internet. These are writers that are covering the same subject matter and other related content that you are. A great example is keywords and keyword phrases.  Keyword and keyword phrases that are great for articles producing the highest earnings can result in similar content being written over and over again. There is a chance that some content will be flagged in a plagiarism checker. However, the chances of this occurring are slim.  Additionally, make certain that the content flagged is actually plagiarized. Is this really duplicate content?

A more likely culprit occurs when you happen to be writing for more specific subject matter. For an example, writing an article on a play and listing the name, characters, plots, scenes, lines or other content that could be the same in one of the thousands of different articles on the same play they could potentially be flagged in a plagiarism checker.

Plagiarism checkers will make mistakes

Believe it or not there are some plagiarism checkers that make errors. These are some of the free checkers that are available around the web. These are false positives. These are showing up as plagiarized material when in fact they are not. The opposite can also occur. Many times the positive results are for something as simple as a similar address or date information. These are results that could be similar for two different articles that outlined the same information. All of the remaining content may not be copied. If you do receive a positive plagiarism result, make certain you read the entire outcome and understand why the positive result was made.

There are several content sites around the web that have a plagiarism checker installed in their publication software. Hubpages is one site in particular that checks their writer’s content for originality before publication can occur.

Writing with the same ideas is not plagiarism

To be a great writer you need to be a great reader. Great readers ingest a lot of content. The web is bulging with different articles with terrific outlooks, ideas, thoughts, notions, opinions and philosophies. Reading all of these different levels on a vast variety of various things means taking in a lot of concepts. There are times when you read content and want to create on this same content. Creating on the same ideas is not plagiarism. 

Take an idea and make it your own. This means you add your skills as a writer to produce a great article.

Blogging is a great example. Bloggers will have a niche or theme for their blogging. A blog about weddings discusses a variety of wedding concepts. There are hundreds of thousands of different wedding bloggers. However, under this niche the same idea is discussed over and over again. Unique wedding cake designs could be a blog post. This is a great idea where you may have seen several different articles about unique wedding cake designs. These are wonderful keywords and you may have seen some great ideas from other writers. Though, when you create content for your blog make certain you are fashioning your own ideas for the post. You can even write two different posts on the same idea for your own blog. Write from your own position, mindset or viewpoint. Make your own creation.

Make certain no one has duplicated your content

Many writers will use CopyScape or plagiarism checkers to make certain they haven’t duplicated content. However, are you checking to make certain no one duplicated your content? There are other writers that have realized an easier less credible way to produce great quality content. They are stealing content from other writers. In order to make certain this is not happening to any of your great content, check your articles for plagiarism.

Search engines don’t like duplicate content on the web. If there is duplicate content the duplicate content will be penalized for page rank. However, there are times when the original is flagged as a duplicate in error. Make certain your content isn’t duplicated on the web to avoid page rank penalties. This is especially true after working hard for search engine optimization and keyword research for your articles.

Don’t plagiarize another writer’s content. Write great innovative and original quality content that you can be proud of.

note: linking to another writers content (great back links) or giving a writer credit for their content should always be done