Plagiarism of content on the web, is a fairly common subject and that you’ve probably read about and, above all, you must have seen a lot.
But what about self-plagiarism? What is it?
When analyzing the word, many must imagine what it is about, but perhaps they do not have a broad view of what it is, its consequences and implications and more than that, as the Google handles it when it happens.
What is self-plagiarism?
Self-plagiarism is technically not even a vernacular word, as it is not in the Orthographic Vocabulary of the Portuguese Language, of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, nor of the main dictionaries of our language.
Plagiarism – this word is known and correctly used – constitutes the violation of copyright, when using, publish or reproduce part or all of the respective work, without knowledge, authorization and the attribution of due credits to its author.
Self-plagiarism, in its simplest form, is copying oneself.
And if the copy is of your own authorship, you own the rights to the work, including under constitutional guarantee.
Therefore, it is a contradiction!
be m, then you must be asking yourself: “So, what is the problem?”.
The problem of self-plagiarism emerged and gained strength especially in the academic and scientific world, when some authors started to reuse materials created by themselves in different publications – such as scientific journals – as if they were new and independent content from the originals, that is, without making it clear that it was a quote or a material based on another already existing, even if it was theirs. own authorship.
The practice can happen in different ways, such as the one called “salami”, because the author breaks an article into different parts, making it seem that they are different contents, but that they are essentially one thing, but just like the delicatessen product when it is sliced. Even in the form of slices, they are still part of the salami.
Those who are unfamiliar with the issue may again ask: “But what’s the problem with that?”
Especially in the scientific and academic environment, an author, among other things, can be noted for the quantity and relevance of his publications, which are often associated with his postgraduate theses. Thus, a scientist and researcher with more publications tends to have more prominence in the environment and this counts for their Curriculum Lattes, in Brazil.
We do not go much further in this matter, especially in the environment in which it generates more controversies, because it is not our purpose, but going straight to the point, it is at least unethical.
Is self-plagiarism illegal?
The other most common question people may have is whether self-plagiarism is illegal.
No, it is not and there is no specific legislation about it.
For the third time, the same question should come to most people’s minds…
Let’s get down to business for those who produce content for the Web!
Self-plagiarism in content production of sites
You already know that plagiarizing yourself will not bring you any kind of legal consequences. But if you follow our blog, you should already have in mind that more than not doing something that breaks some law, you should truly care about your visitors and good SEO practices, not necessarily in that order.
We’ve even talked about who you create your content for. For robots or for people?
Copying partially or completely content and publishing it under new titles, as if they were new, as seen in academia, is unethical.
It is a lack of respect and transparency with the people who land on your site, with the subscriber to your blog, with the reader of your content site.
In most of our posts , we always try to make it clear how important it is to know the persona for whom the content you produce is intended and from that, how to produce it to meet as many needs, desires and expectations as possible, of that same persona.
In other words, self-plagiarism in the production of website content is when you publish two or more content that supposedly should be intended for two or more personas or two or more different situations for the same persona, but which are essentially the same.
You are going against all Content Marketing principles and the good practices that should guide this work.
Here is a caveat regarding updating the site, more specifically regarding its content.
When you edit content evergreen, updating with the most current statistics, research and data, including new information or even rewriting it with a new approach and focus and republishing it, it is not self-plagiarism, after all there are not two or more contents, but only an updated version of the original.
Self-plagiarism and Google
Different from what happens in cases where the algorithm detects that the content is being copied from a third party, Google does not deliberately “punish” the plagiarism of its own content, by way of worsening the ranking.
For those who took a breath relieved, it should be noted that despite this, nothing is gained with it either.
Speaking plain Portuguese, duplicate content – partially or completely – does not add anything. It’s as if it were worthless content and, therefore, without relevance in terms of organic positioning.
Moreover, two or more contents that look the same will compete with each other for ranking on the pages of result (SERPs) and will have both – or as many as there are – worse positioning.
How not to do “self-plagiarism”?
The clearest and most obvious way , is not to copy partially and mainly, completely, any content.
Let’s suppose you have a blog about “The universe of the automobile” and among all the posts, there is a specific one about “Function of the clutch” , but in another he had to talk again about its operation, due to a model that comes with a double clutch.
Just share a brief definition of two lines, which appears in the first, in the second, it will not be plagiarism of its own content. However, it is advisable to take some precautions in cases like this:
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- Write something like: “as we said in the article ‘The clutch operation’, this component has the role of …”. That is, it is clear to the reader that the excerpt refers to the post mentioned initially;
It is reinforced that the “definition” used is from another content, placing the link to it and linking through the same anchor text of the post in question;
It is also appropriate to put the identical passage between double quotation marks and in italics, demonstrating that it is an external citation.
Alternatively and when possible, using a different and new definition is always more interesting.
When you search for alternatives of the same content, you have a second chance to be found by different keywords and any synonyms that you have used.
Other precautions that should be taken, even for SEO reasons, are:
Whenever possible, differentiate different content using long tail or long tail keywords a, both in the text, as in the title of the content and in the subtitles. Thus, “automotive differential” and ”
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- ”
- , although they are three contents that deal with differential, they are three different contents and that is characterized by the use of long-tail keywords;
- Follow the guidelines we give in the article “the 10 tips to create 100% original content”;
- Use Google’s own search on your site to find parts that you suspect already have something similar. It is especially useful when you have hundreds of posts and locating a specific subject is difficult and time consuming;
- Keep in mind that simply replacing a few words in a paragraph with their synonyms is still plagiarism, even of itself. Instead, when it is necessary to repeat a definition, an explanation, a concept, look for other reasonings and other ways of expressing ideas through words. This effort helps you develop your web writing skills and even more, it can give you a second chance to reach Google’s position zero (featured snippets);
Use other types of content, such as infographics, illustrations, diagrams, etc;
- Resist CTRL+C and CTRL+V. Even excerpts or paragraphs that seem very good and even deserve to be immortalized in other content, give yourself a chance to create something entirely new and that can respond even better to your persona.
Conclusion
Self-plagiarism of web content is a reprehensible practice, not only because it does not add value in terms of SEO, but because it is not ethical and honest with its visitors.
