Plagiarism Vs Copyright Infringement In SEO/SEM

When you’re writing an article, chances are, you’ve got at least one source that you’ll be writing it from. Now this doesn’t mean that you didn’t have these ideas on your own, but it does mean that you’ve found a bit of support elsewhere. You’re free to use their information, it’s on the web after all, but it gets tricky as to how you can use it and how you should cite it.

One of the first things to do is determine whether you really thought it up or not. Give credit. It just makes you look humble. If you’re worried about linkjuice, set the link as nofollow. Credit is credit. Your College papers didn’t require you to put dofollow links in the works cited, did they?

Now, if you find the idea word for word elsewhere, copy and pasting it is straight out copyright infringement. This can get you in a ton of trouble, especially with your hosting service and even legally if the other party wishes to push the issue. So what do you do then?

Well, you can rewrite it and add your own ideas to it. That way, it’s your original work, but not your idea. It is plagiarism if you decide not to give credit to the articles author who you rewrote the work from, but honestly, this is something that is done so often that the only time it bites people in the butt is when they start getting larger.

So what are your options?

Well, if you want to go legit, you can do it a few ways. You can give the person credit for the original work in the text: John Soandso from SearchMySocks.com really nailed these points down in his article. Or you can just throw down the ever popular: Source: John Soandso from SearchMySocks.com at the end.

It’s all up to you. Just remember, the bigger you get, the more eyes on you.

Share This