Digital marketing

As you might know, Google Search doesn’t like duplicate content. Even though it will not get you banished, it will harm your ranking in a way that you can’t predict. Plus, your target audience is looking for fresh and original content, not something they have found before. So doing it won’t help you in anyway. But, there are many types of plagiarism, and you might commit it without noticing it. Especially if you are pressured by the time, you might make unconscious mistakes such as “writing blind” – when you quote someone’s words as if they were yours unintentionally. So to avoid it, you should try these seven ways to avoid plagiarism. They will make your website more Google-friendly and boost your SEO results. 1 – Do research one day, write another day Sometimes, it is hard not to copy what you just read. It looks great as it is, so your brain will automatically consider the easy way out as the best one, and you won’t even notice that you are repeating someone else’s words. So best thing here is to do research in one day and leave to write your content a few days later. It will give you time to process what you’ve learned and to come up with your own original ideas, which will lead to brand new content. 2 – When you finish it, re-write it After you get to write your content, then you should re-write it. Yes, it sounds like extra work, but it will pay off. Just consider it as part of your editing process so that you won’t feel as bad. But the point here is that re-organising your ideas and perfecting your sentences will help you to make them even more unique. You will be able, for example, to check a thesaurus and look for better words to say what you meant. You can add some idiomatic expressions or interesting collocations as well. In any case, it will be a reliable way to get your content to look not only more original but also more engaging. 3 – Go back to your phone and books Once upon a time, we didn’t have the Internet. And we would do just fine without it. So you can always time-travel, go back to your phone and books, and still find reliable and original ideas to your website’s content. The trick here is that it will force you to write things down and then re-write them into your CMS system. Especially if it is a long text, you will think is much easier to write it with own words and ideas then type everything again. And by doing it, you are less likely to plagiarise anything unintentionally. 4 – Find primary sources Using primary sources, such as research papers, case studies, and thesis,as a starting point to create new content will help you to have a much broader understanding of what you are writing. Interviews are also a great source of fresh ideas, and they will provide you with unexpected points of view. So you should make the most of theprimary sources as often as you can. Even if you think that they are too dense to your audience, they will be happy to get something well-researched in a format easier to consume. 5 – Use plagiarism-check tools Still, you want to be on the safe side here. And to achieve it, you should use plagiarism-check tools to verify if something passed without being noticed. Thankfully, there are many reliable tools available, some of them ready to stop those that spend hours trickingTurnitin, one of the universities’ and Google’s favourites in this field. But if you are looking exactly for the opposite, you can try some of the online tools available, such as Grammarly, Copyscape, PlagiarismSearch or Unplag. They are all paid services, butthey worth every cent of it, especially because plagiarism-check is just one of the features of most of them. 6 – Write your quotes down (immediately) Another tip to avoid plagiarism is to keep an inventory of everything that you want to use on your website as soon as you come across it. You can create a spreadsheet, for example, and save there every single piece of content that you found valuable along with their author and link to the source. This way, in the future, when you want to use it, it won’t be a vague idea in your mind. You will know for sure that is someone’s else idea and will be able to quote it accordingly. 7 – Create an outline Last but not least, there is something that you should do before anything else. After doing your research, you should step back and create an outline of your content. And this is because it will not only save you time but also give you a chance to organise your ideas in your mind. While you do it, you will automatically activate your critical thinking skills in your brain and come up with your own point of view in the end. And as a consequence, it will help you to discover original ideas and to prevent plagiarism. Originality Ai Unlock the full potential of your writing with Originality.ai – the premier plagiarism detection and originality checking tool. Ensure the integrity and authenticity of your work with our advanced technology and expert analysis. The bottom line Avoiding plagiarism has a lot to do with giving yourself time enough to analyse what you are going to write and to perfect it. It is usually when you are in anautomatic mode that you end up copying someone’s words so you should ensure that it won’t happen. So follow the tips above to prevent plagiarism from damaging your website’s results. As you notice, they are very simple to put into practice. Your SEO strategy will thank you for it. About the Author: Steven Mehler is an experienced writer, SEO specialist and social psychologist that works as an editor at a local newspaper and a freelance writer. Steven also runs his own content agency and is

5 Ways to Rock Your Blog You are probably tired of people telling you that you need to have a business blog. That’s just so easy to say. And then comes the next piece of advice. You have to make it amazing because, if you don’t, it will just sit out there in cyberspace with no readers/followers. No pressure, right? Especially when you have a business to run, adding this big task to your already overloaded schedule is not your idea of leisure time fun. Unfortunately, you do need a business blog, and, yes, you do need to make it amazing. But there is some help out there, including great tools to make it easier. This short guide will help provide the key things to consider as you develop your blog and where to go for help. 1.  Purpose The first thing you need to wrap your head around is that a blog is not your advertising platform. Business owners who use their blogs for advertising will have no followers. Today’s consumer is a different breed. He wants good information; he wants to be educated; he wants to be inspired; and he wants to be entertained. Your purpose for a blog should be to give your target audience what it wants. When you do that, you begin to build followers and relationships. And relationships translate to sales. 2.  Topics – Determined by Your Target Customers To find topics for your blog, you can do some easy research: Go to your competitors’ blog and social media pages. What content topics are getting the most conversation? Can you take those topics and write something better, adding something new? Use topic-generator tools – you can type in keywords that relate to your niche and find blog and article topics that are the most popular right now. Ask your current customers what topics interest them? Use your customer profile to study that demographic and learn what is important to them. For example, millennials (the largest buying group right now) prefer doing business with companies that are environmentally responsible and that support important causes; their family and social lives are as important as their work lives; they enjoy a good joke, and they want to be inspired. All of these things should provide ideas for topics. 3. Turning Topics into Engaging Content – the Delivery Once you have topic ideas, you have to think about delivery. Even the most interesting or exciting topic will fall flat if not presented in an engaging way. Here are tips and tools that will make your content engaging. Titles for your blog posts will be what initially engages the reader. Think about this for a minute. When you come upon a news article, what makes you want to read the article? Of course, it’s the title. Your blog is like a news article in many ways, too. To engage the reader right away – get a great catchy title. And if you are not creative yourself, use some title generation tools to help. Open your post with an engaging sentence or few. Provide a shocking statistic; tell a short story; garner some real interest. Again, sort of like a news article. No matter how great your topic and points may be, you have to present it well – it’s a matter of style. Break your content up into short chunks – headings in bold, bullet points. This is knows as making your post “snackable.” People want to scan a post and settle in on pieces that really interest them. When you make it easy for them to do this, they are happier. You must have visuals – some of the most popular content has photos, charts, infographics and videos. The research has been done – content that has colored visuals is 80% more likely to be read. There are lots of free sources for photographs and plenty of tools to create great visuals, even videos. Be creative with text, and ensure that your style and grammar is perfect. Here’s the point. If your text is boring; if there are grammatical errors; if there is difficult vocabulary or complex sentence structures, you will irritate, frustrate, and lose your readers. Again, if you are unsure about your skills and ability, get some help. Here are some tools to assist you:  Hemingway Editor:  If you need to simplify your writing, and posts should be simple in style and language, this editing tool will help you do just that. It will identify complexities and give suggestions for simplification.  Grammarly: this tool will find all grammar, spelling and punctuation errors and make suggestions for correction.  Read-Able: You can paste in your content and get a reading level. This is important, because blog posts should be at around the 7th grade reading level. Targeting that reading level will make you content easily digestible.  Smart Paper Help: This is a great writing service with an entire department of creative copywriters. They can do most everything from identify topics for your niche to write creative posts and add the visuals to make content compelling. 4. Sharing and Conversations Good, popular blogs get shared by readers, and they stimulate a lot of conversation. You need to make it easy for readers to do this. You should have buttons, so that automatic sharing can be is accomplished with a single click, and have them throughout the post. You should also have a conversation thread at the end of each post, so that readers can comment and converse with one another and so that you can respond. The more conversation, the more likely readers will come back and recommend your blog to their friends. 5.  Get Personal Today’s consumers want to know who they are doing business with. They want to trust business owners; they want to see them as humans who care; they want to see a sense of humor and a concern for larger social issues. When you can show your personal side, people feel they have a relationship with you. Some posts should be humorous and entertain; some