Search engine optimization (SEO) is of more relevance to online businesses now than ever before. No doubt, there are several known ways of boosting your site's SEO, and one factor that is of big impact is blogging. Creating content that is of relevance to your business niche and site yields great results for your business or brand. However, creating meaningful content is no walk in the park. There are various factors that make content creation tasking and one of such is avoiding the trap of plagiarism. Plagiarism is one of those things that have become almost unavoidable for most bloggers and article writers. But, there is a way out. With the aid of plagiarism-checking software, your article can come out plagiarism-free. Therefore, this article shall discuss extensively one such program that helps rid your article of plagiarism; Copyscape.
What Is Copyscape?
Have you ever inserted a keyword into a search engine and stumbled across two or more sites whose articles contain the same lines of thought and words? If you have, then you might have come across a plagiarized content. Unique content on your site does well to give your traffic a boost, and Copyscape can help you achieve this.
With a 4.8 star rating, Copyscape is an online plagiarism checker which helps writers ensure that their content comes out with 100% authenticity. It provides users with the flexibility to scan the entire web for plagiarized content.
Pricing Plans
The Copyscape pricing plan is as follows:
Premium- 3¢ per first 200 words and an additional 1¢ for the next 100 words
Copysentry standard- $4.95 monthly for the first 10 pages and an additional $0.25 monthly for extra pages.
Copysentry professional- $19.95 monthly for the first 10 pages and an additional $1.00 monthly for extra pages.
Features Of Copyscape
1. Online plagiarism checker - One of the most prominent features of this software is its plagiarism checker. For optimum results, the software offers an easy way to check plagiarism over the entire web. It can also check particular sites using its compare feature on two articles or webpages. With the two-article/webpage plagiarism checker, you have to input the link of your source material and the article you have written and start the check.
NOTE; Using the free version, editing cannot take place on the plagiarism check result page, therefore, you need to make necessary adjustments to your article outside the page.
2. Content scanning - With the premium version, it scans content such as WordPress posts to ascertain their originality before you purchase and use them for your site. It does so with an API that scans content as they come into your device.
3. Copysentry - This feature allows the Copyscape API to search the web daily, spot other sites that contain content duplicated from your site, and alert you via email.
Pros & Cons of Copyscape
Pros
1. Copyscape grants premium users permission to place banners on their sites to warn potential content-copists from stealing your content. You do not have to pay extra fees to enjoy this protection.
2. Sites that contain plagiarized content get reduced SERP ranking. With Copysentry, your site's content cannot be plagiarized, therefore, your SERP ranking remains unaffected.
Cons
Copyscape premium has a pricing pattern that is quite complex. Rather than price per document, Copyscape prices per 200 words for the first 200 words and per 100 words onward. This means the more words you write, the higher the cost.
Copyscape VS Alternatives
Due to the high demand for plagiarism checkers by content creators, there are several other plagiarism checkers that can function as alternatives to Compare. These include –
1. Grammarly
Just like Copyscape, Grammarly has both free and premium versions. Using Grammarly, you do not have to worry about the number of texts you input per day. It runs your article against ProQuest academic database when checks are made. In providing results for the check, Grammarly highlights the duplicated portions of the text and shows the corresponding source material from which the text has been copied. Grammarly is also available for Mac users.
Grammarly, however, does not provide an option to paste the URL of both the content you have created and the source.
2. Plagiarisma
Plagiarisma falls under the category of free plagiarism checkers developed with teachers and students in mind. In making searches, Plagiarisma equally checks non-article materials such as research papers, dissertations, and essays. Its paid version comes with a 3-day money-back guarantee.
The free version of Plagiarisma is, however, limited to only three searches per day.
3. Plagiarism Checker X
This plagiarism-checking software can be described as a competitor to Grammarly. The Checker X software lets you see both your content and source material side to side. It is flexible and compatible with various file formats including PDF, RTF, Doc, Docx, or regular text. Most educational firms, therefore, rely on Checker X.
However, as an alternative to Compare, the free version of Checker X makes it possible for you to carry out only 30 searches per day with word limits included.
4. Plagium
Plagium is a Plagiarism Checker which runs in-depth checks by letting you run either deep searches or quick searches.
As opposed to Copyscape Compare, Plagium has a 1000-word search limit or 2 searches using the free version. Only its paid version has the option to perform checks by uploading the content's URL. And to run deep searches, you have to be a premium user.
5. PlagScan
PlagScan is yet another Plagiarism Checker that can be used for educational purposes. You can upload the document you would like to check from OneDrop, Desktop, or Dropbox. In relating its search result, PlagScan provides the level of plagiarized content as well as where such Plagiarism is from.
Unlike Compare, however, there are no tools available in the free version. Also, this software is not suitable for use by students and teachers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Some questions one might have on Copyscape Compare premium are;
1. How can I obtain a premium account?
You can get a Copyscape premium account by signing up for it. To sign up, you just have to search for Copyscape and click on sign up on the SERP page.
2. Where can I get Credits?
Credits for premium accounts are necessary for WordPress plugins to run on your device. To get credits, you can visit the Copyscape site directly. Without credits, checks for duplicate content will not be carried out. If you originally enabled automatic checks, new posts will be moved to your drafts after which a notification will be sent to you notifying you that you no longer have credits. A link through which you can purchase more credits will be attached to this notification.
3. How can I configure the Plugin's API to check new content automatically?
To start, check for a marked box that says "check for duplicate when new content is published/updated". By ticking this box, whenever you are about to publish content or update previously published content, your work will be checked. WordPress versions above 5.0 provide you with the option to take down the content and save it as a draft once duplicate content is found. However, if your device runs WordPress versions below 5.0, your content will immediately be unpublished and a detailed report will be sent alongside this action.
Wrapping Up
Besides its illegal nature, enhancing your site content for SEO is a vital reason to avoid plagiarism. Also, one cannot ignore the emphasis Google places on creating content of high-quality. Unique content is the benchmark for creating high-quality content that would foster interactions and help you rank on SERPs.
While there are several tools to help check your articles and site pages for plagiarism, the Copyscape tool proves to be efficient in this regard. By considering the features of the software against some of its alternatives outlined in this article, you can take advantage of it to create unique content and level up your SEO.
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