As a business person, conquering today’s digital market calls for creating unique and engaging content that will be helpful to your audience and that portrays you as an industry authority.
Creating content that converts is no small feat and having somebody illegally use your hard work is the last thing you want.
Unfortunately, the internet has people that don’t want to put effort into creating original content. Instead, they want to copy the work of others and use it on their websites.
Some people plagiarize other people’s works intentionally. But it is also possible to do it unintentionally. So before publishing your work, it is important to check it for plagiarism using online plagiarism checkers in the market. Common plagiarism checkers include Copyscape, Grammarly, Scribrr, and Turnitin for academic papers.
Content doesn’t have to be 100% plagiarism free. However, keeping it the lowest possible would be best, with anything below 10% acceptable. If you have accidentally posted plagiarized content on your website. You could receive a cease and desist letter from the content copyright owner. This Heer Law’s article on what to do after receiving a cease and desist letter offers tips on handling your case.
You probably know Google as a search engine alone. While its main purpose is to allow users to get the content they wish to get from the internet, Google has many tools that can be useful to website owners, including a plagiarism monitoring system.
You receive notifications when Google detects content with similar keyword combinations as yours. On receiving notification, you may want to check the article for plagiarism. If it is present, you can request the deletion of your work or demand that it be properly attributed.
People that plagiarize intentionally use copy and paste to duplicate content. Copying content from most websites is pretty easy. The plagiarist only needs to highlight the part they want to copy, right-click on the highlighted part and choose the copy option.
After copying, they will only need to paste it on another page, and that’s all. Disabling your website’s copy function can help protect your content from duplication. The best way to disable the copy function is to restrict right clicks and CTRL-C on your content.
Most people use a plagiarism checker to clear plagiarism from their work. Many do not know that some plagiarism checkers do more than check your content for plagiarism.
Some tools, such as Copyscape, have duplicate content detection features that can help you identify websites that have used your content illegally. However, you must be prepared to pay extra fees to have this functionality.
The only way to ensure your work has zero risk of plagiarism is by not publishing it. Unfortunately, this is not an option. So you can expect to face the plagiarism problem once in a while.
If you identify a person using your content illegally, the first thing would be to reach out to them and ask them to pull down the content or give proper attribution. But before you contact them, it would help to contact a lawyer to help you look into your options.
If the plagiarist doesn’t pull down your content after sending the cease and desist letter, you can sue them for damages, but you may need to work with a lawyer.
Content is the fuel that runs today’s business scene. This means you need to go to all lengths to protect it. No strategy can be 100% effective at tackling plagiarism. However, applying the tips highlighted in this post will make your content safer from plagiarists.
