SEO Plagiarism: How to Find and Prevent Copycat Content

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to detect and deal with SEO plagiarism. 

We’ll also introduce the best plagiarism checker tools on the market. And give you tips on how to prevent plagiarism in your content.

What Is SEO Plagiarism?

SEO plagiarism is the act of copying content from other sources—without proper attribution or permission—as part of an effort to rank higher in search engines. Plagiarized content can include text, videos, images, and data.

For example, let’s say someone directly copied paragraphs from your highly ranked blog post in order to compete for the same keywords. This could be considered SEO plagiarism.

SEO plagiarism can result in reputational damage, problems with search engines, and even legal action. These consequences can occur even if the work was plagiarized by accident.

You can use SEO plagiarism tools to check your own content. And find out whether others have plagiarized your work.

Types of SEO Plagiarism

There are four main types of SEO plagiarism:

1. Copying and pasting content. This is when someone directly copies and pastes content someone else created and owns onto their website. Without asking permission or giving appropriate credit. This is the most straightforward form of plagiarism. And the one that is easiest to find.
2. Content spinning. This is when someone rewrites third-party content—either manually or using software—to make it appear original. This is usually done to create large volumes of content in a short period of time.
3. Generative AI writing. Not all AI writing is plagiarism. But even the most advanced AI tools can plagiarize existing web content. This is more likely when AI tools are instructed to model their writing on existing web content.
4. Self-plagiarism. This is when you duplicate your own content across multiple domains. This can still cause SEO problems, despite the fact that it’s your content.