Duplicate Content is Bad

Duplicate content is a term related to writing on the web that already exists somewhere else on the web. It’s a familiar thing to plagiarism, if you’ve ever taken college classes.

If the professor finds out that you plagiarized the work you will get an F and fail the class. Similarly with Google, if they find out that you copied somebody else’s website content you will get penalized and will not rank as well in Google search.

This is why it’s so important to have unique content on your website!

Often times business owners are too busy to write their own content, so they hire writers to do so. This is a good idea to get content done, however, how do you know that these writers are not just copying and pasting from other websites rather than actually writing the content?

Well it’s a good question to ask and in this article today I’m going to show you some ways to figure out whether the content is original or not. The first method is to copy a piece of the article or the whole article and paste it in Google search and see if any results come out.

This is the very first step I would recommend doing, however it’s not always the most accurate way to go. The next step I would recommend is going to a website called CopyScape and putting the URL of the page for the article in that and running the search query.

It will pull up any results of websites that match that exact same content. It’s a free tool, but they do offer a premium service if you are inclined to be doing a lot of writing for the web and need to use the tool often.

I find the free version works pretty well. Between using Google search and CopyScape, I can usually within 90% accuracy find out whether something is duplicate content or not.

Have a question about how to determine whether content on your website is duplicate or plagiarized? I’d be glad to assist with this! Fill out the form located on our contact page and I will get a hold of you as soon as possible!

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Written by: Jophiel Silvestrone

Jophiel Silvestrone has written 326 posts in the Tech Blog.

Jophiel grew up on a ranch in Paradise Valley, Montana near Chico Hot Springs. Working on the ranch instilled work ethic and self motivation. Filled with this drive, Jophiel started mowing the local school's yards twice a month throughout the summers, at the age of 12. He moved to Billings in 2004, where he has been deeply involved in the local business community ever since. A serial entrepreneur, Jophiel has ran multiple businesses in our local community. The first business, a janitorial and carpet cleaning company, founded in 2005, has employed over 50 locals. Moving on to the media industry, Jophiel and several partners founded Green Directory Montana in the spring of 2007. Green Directory's sustainability ranking software awarded points based on sustainable or "green" actions. These points counted towards a business's total "Green Score," which in turn ranked them against other businesses in their category and throughout the entire site. It also featured a limited edition print version distributed annually. A business acquisition allowed Jophiel to focus on new projects, and a few close business colleagues and Jophiel started Rocky Mountain Mr. & Ms. Magazine, a lifestyle publication for men and women in the Magic City. After a year and a half at the helm of RM3 Magazine, the business was purchased. He now runs a web development company SkyPoint Studios and fathers his son Jaoquin, who plays football, basketball, soccer, and is learning snowboarding from his dad. Recently, has expanded to locations in Havasu, Arizona & Vegas. SkyPoint Studios is a market leader in both Billings & Havasu and Jophiel is working on building that same level of market dominance in Vegas. Specialties: Extensive experience in online and offline business. Especially savvy at WordPress, and operate several sites, one example is the blog: skypointwebdesignbillingsmontana.com/tech-blog. Check out skypointwebdesignbillingsmontana.com for the latest projects from SkyPoint Studios.