Creating unique content can be a challenge for a lot of freelance writers. This can be attributed to the glut of content available online (which makes it difficult to create something completely unique), or it can be just due to a lack of skill and know-how.
In this post, we’ll be looking at some steps and measures that you can take to create unique content for your clients. But before that, let’s actually go over some general stuff about content, its uses, and its importance in today’s age.
Content, its Uses, and Importance
Nowadays, we find ourselves in the ‘era of the internet’; an epoch that is characterized by the overriding adoption of digital means and measures for the attainment of various goals and objectives. Okay, that was needlessly sophisticated. Let’s start over.
Basically, nowadays, all types of people utilize the internet for their needs and requirements. Doing this, as compared to other conventional means, is a lot easier and quicker. Due to this, a vast segment of the world population is now attached to the internet, some way or the other. And the same goes for brands and businesses.
Since the majority of people – almost 62% of the entire world populace – are internet users, it only made sense for businesses to take to the online realm as well.
The purpose of all this long-drawn discussion about the internet and whatnot is to just point at the fact that since it has become a norm for brands and businesses to create and cultivate an online presence, the need for written content and content writers has increased exponentially. How exactly, you may ask? Let’s enumerate a couple of common scenarios and situations where written content is needed.
Suppose a brand creates a website. After creating a website, it needs to publish content on the various service pages, the about page, the contact page, and so on. So, what does it do? It gets in touch with content writers to get written content for its website. Let’s look at another example.
Suppose a business creates a website. After creating the website, it wants to optimize it for the search engines to get more traffic. So, what does a website need for SEO? In both on-page and off-page SEO, written content is a necessary and vital element. Due to this, the business will once again need to get in touch with content writers to get written content.
These were a couple of examples, but I think we’ve made our point. In a nutshell, written content plays a role in a lot of different facets of the online world. Whether it’s for marketing, SEO, or any type of general descriptive purpose, content is an important element.
Importance of Unique Content
When content has to be used by online businesses and brands for their various endeavors, it has to be unique.
If a website utilizes any type of content that has been previously used elsewhere, it can just draw a penalty to itself from the search engine. In other words, if the content used or published by a website lacks uniqueness, it can, far from bringing any sort of benefit, harm it instead.
Plagiarism and Its Disadvantages
When any piece of content has plagiarism in it, it ceases to be unique. Plagiarism is basically the practice of copying existing content and then utilizing it without giving due credit to the source. There are various types of plagiarism, but we won’t go into all of them right now. Suffice it to understand that plagiarism, in whatever form it may be, is very harmful to a website.
It can get them in line for a penalty from the search engines. Search engine penalties can have varying consequences, depending on the severity of the plagiarism committed. A penalty can reduce the ranking of a website for a certain keyword, and if the offense is severe enough, it can remove it from the listing altogether.
But, apart from penalties, plagiarism can also have an adverse effect on the reputation and integrity of the website. If the website of a particular business gets popular for plagiarizing content, it can become a life-long blemish for them.
How to Produce Unique Content?
Now that we’re done looking at some of the basic concepts about content, plagiarism, and whatnot, let’s move on to actually discuss some ways in which you can create unique content.
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Do Thorough Research
The first thing that you have to do in order to create unique content is to do proper research. Here’s the thing, writers. If you don’t have proper knowledge and know-how about a certain topic, you can’t really explain it in your own way. You’ll start using the same type of phrases, terms, and words as other websites dealing with the same topic.
This can lead you to commit some unintentional plagiarism. So, before you start writing, you should open up a whole bunch of different sources related to the topic that you want to write on. Then, you should study each source and try to understand the concept.
Here, you should take care not to only do your research from one or two sources. This can also be a stepping-stone to accidental plagiarism since you can involuntarily use their words and sentences in your own content. Once you’ve studied the subject matter, you’ll be able to write about it in your style and using your own method.
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Create a Unique Title
The title is pretty much a part of the overall content, so it makes sense to focus on a unique title when trying to write unique content. However, there’s a different reason why we’re mentioning it here. Basically, when you try and mooch off a title from an existing source, and then just add or delete a couple of words to make it ‘unique’, it won’t work out well for you.
Since the title will be along the same lines as the existing one, you’ll unintentionally start to talk about the same type of things as the original source. Ehhh…that was a bit confusing. Let’s take an example to understand this.
Suppose an online source had an article or a blog with the title ‘Best Backlit Keyboards for Typing in 2022’. Now, if you were to just copy it and make a few changes (like this: ‘Top Backlit Keyboards for Typists in 2022’), you would just start talking about the same things. Why?
Because both topics are about backlit keyboards and typing. On the other hand, if you were to get a little creative, and make a title like ‘Best Backlit Mechanical Keyboards for Content Writers and Programmers’, you’d be able to talk about a whole lot of different things. You’d be able to talk about why content writers and programmers need good keyboards, how mechanical ones can be useful for them, etc.
This link can help you in finding plagiarism in your content.
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Don’t Copy Content Structure
During your research phase, you’re going to go through a lot of different sources such as blogs, papers, articles, and whatnot. After completing your research, when it comes to writing your own content, you should never copy the structure and layout of any pre-existing material on the same topic as yours.
You could be thinking that “plagiarism is about copying content and using it. The structure is just an abstract element so what’s wrong in mimicking it?” And that is true to some extent. The content structure is an abstract element.
But, if you end up copying the exact structure of an existing article or post on the same topic as yours, you can accidentally mimic them in the write-up as well. For example, suppose an article has a structure in which it starts with an introduction, then goes on to add a general heading before moving on to discuss the main subject, and then wrapping up with the conclusion.
If you were to only copy the structure, i.e., the way the content is written, you could accidentally commit some plagiarism because you would also start with an introduction, add a general heading before moving on to discuss the main subject and then end with a conclusion. Get the point?
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Use Hyperlinks and Quotes to Your Benefit
Oftentimes, writers are faced with situations where copying a source verbatim becomes inevitable. However, even when faced with such a need, you can still manage to keep your content unique and plagiarism-free.
Here’s how.
Suppose you want to cite a statistic or the results of a study posted on a particular website. In this sort of situation, you can simply hyperlink the particular fact or figure and mention the source as well. You can mention the source either before the hyperlinked fact/figure or you can do it after.
Here’s an example: According to so-and-so website, X% of people eat sugar every day. X% of people eat sugar every day, according to so-and-so website.
In the example above, only a single statistic is mentioned. You can quote a couple of facts or figures at once if you want.
The good thing about hyperlinking sources in this manner is that it actually helps to improve your reputation and integrity as a writer.
However, if you don’t leave a link to the source and if you don’t acknowledge them in the preceding or the following text, it can count as plagiarism. It can damage your reputation and also get you in trouble with search engines.
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Make Use of Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is also a good technique that you can try when you find yourself in a situation that requires you to copy content verbatim from a source. However, unlike using quotes and hyperlinks, paraphrasing does not actually entail accrediting the original author in any way.
While it can be good to quote the source even when you paraphrase some content, there’s no compulsion to do it, nor is there any consequence if you abstain. However, this applies if the paraphrasing is done thoroughly.
Basically, if you copy some content and then just lightly reword it in such a way that it is easily comparable to the original, then in such a case, you will have to cite the source. If you don’t, you will face the consequences of plagiarism.
On the other hand, if you paraphrase properly, i.e., in such a way that the content structure, words, and phrases all get properly rearranged and rewritten, then in such a case, it won’t be recognized as plagiarism even if you don’t cite the source.
Want to paraphrase your content? Check here
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Cultivate and Use Your Own Styles
This point is for you junior and rookie writers reading this.
When you start off as a writer, it’s natural to mimic and copy the style of a particular author or source. That’s pretty much how everyone starts out. However, once you get sufficient know-how about how to write, you have to work on creating and cultivating your own writing style. You can make your writing styles distinct by using signature words and phrases, and also by adhering to a certain method of creating sentences.
When you start using your own style in your write-ups, there will be a lesser chance for you to accidentally mimic someone using their crutch phrases and signature transitions words, etc. This will further mean that there will be a lesser chance for you to commit accidental plagiarism…and that is pretty much what your goal should be when creating unique content.
Role of Plagiarism Checkers in Creating Unique Content
The steps we mentioned above can be helpful in creating unique content, that’s for sure. However, plagiarism checkers also play a vital role in this process. You should get an idea about how important they are judging by the fact that we’re mentioning them here separately at the end.
So, the thing to understand about plagiarism checkers is that while they can help in the process of writing unique content, they don’t actually create it themselves. As the name says, plagiarism ‘checkers’ are only used for checking purposes.
However, that does not detract from their importance one bit. Without using plagiarism checkers, there’s no way for you to know whether your content is matching with an existing source or not. There are literally billions of web pages online. You can’t really manually match and tally them all with your written content every time you finish writing a draft. That is where a plagiarism checker steps in.
Even if you take all the steps that we’ve mentioned above, you will still have to check your content for plagiarism after you are done writing it. You may have, for example, accidentally copied content from a totally unrelated source that you may not even have thought about avoiding.
So, to put it in a nutshell, we can say that plagiarism checkers play a vital role in the process of creating unique content since they enable you to check whether the content is unique or not in the first place.
If, after checking your content using a tool, you find that there are certain portions of it that are being recognized as plagiarism, you can edit them or remove them altogether.
Suffice it to understand that while the steps mentioned in the post above can be helpful for avoiding plagiarism during the writing phase, plagiarism checkers can be helpful in removing plagiarism after it.
How to Choose the Right Plagiarism Checker?
While we are lauding so much praise on plagiarism checkers and how they can be useful, etc., we have to also stress the fact that not all plagiarism checkers are worth using. There are some plagiarism checkers available online that can completely ignore whole sentences that are copied from another source.
On the other hand, there are also some plagiarism checkers available online that go the other way, and start detecting two-word or three-word phrases as plagiarism. So, since there are such tools in existence, you have to be a little careful when picking one for your use. Here are some things that you can do to see whether or not your contemplated tool is worth using:
- Give it a couple of test runs. Try copying content directly from a source and see if the tool detects it.
- See what other users have to say about it on platforms like Capterra, etc.
- See the data usage policy to make sure that your entered content is not used in any way by the tool.
- See if it is available for free or not. Unless you have a regular need to use them, investing in paid plagiarism checkers isn’t a wise choice.
Conclusion
And that’s pretty much it.
Creating unique content used to be simple and easy. But nowadays, extra care has to be taken owing to the fact that there is just so much content available online. It’s like walking in a minefield. You can accidentally copy a bunch of sources, and it can end up hurting your credibility.
However, by following the steps given in the post above, you’ll be able to significantly decrease the chances for that to happen.