Plagiarism can hurt Your eCommerce Startup

Today, we live in the digital era. It only makes sense that if you plan on starting a new business, you should get it started on digital platforms. Today the trend of eCommerce stores is getting very common. This is just because these digital stores can get you more conversions and sales. Starting an online business is quite beneficial. It opens new opportunities for you that you cannot imagine getting in the traditional market. Online businesses can help you easily reach your target audience; moreover, you can generate ten times more profit than traditional businesses.

Today every one of us wants to get maximum return on our investments and efforts. To get the best ROI, you should focus on the factors that would help you optimize your e-commerce startup and, at the same time, avoid the things that would damage your growth.

In this article, we will discuss one factor in detail that can damage your eCommerce store so that it would be impossible for you to recover from it. We are talking about plagiarism, and in this post, you will find out how it is harmful to your digital business and how you can avoid it.

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What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the term used to define the duplication of content. Duplication of text, images, videos, infographics, and other kinds of content is considered plagiarism in the digital world. In simple words, using content created by another person without providing them credits is known as plagiarism. An important thing you need to know is that today plagiarized content is getting common in the digital world, especially among marketers. This is only because people are not aware of the consequences of plagiarism. Many eCommerce startup owners would copy content from the web and use it in their stores to save the cost of content creation.

We would not talk about the intentions of business owners in this post, as there is always a chance that one duplicates content just because one doesn’t know what plagiarism is. Just know that plagiarism can be the most harmful act for your business/store. It would negatively affect your growth, integrity, and revenue. If you have unintentionally committed plagiarism, you need to stop using that particular content right away and remove it. It would be best to get in touch with professionals who can create unique text and images for you.

How does plagiarism hurt your eCommerce store?

As we have told you before, plagiarism can hurt your different business in different ways. Still, in this section, we will only discuss some of the most important reasons why it hurts your business.

Before we list the reasons, we would like you to know that your brand’s duplication of text and images is hurtful. Copying textual descriptions of products or product images is common today. Both textual and visual plagiarism is damaging your new or mature brand, and the reasons for that are discussed here:

Plagiarism discourages your target audience

You must understand that the audience coming on the web is always looking for solutions and answers to their questions from credible sources. Suppose you are duplicating content from other websites. In that case, there is always a chance that your target audience would have consumed that content in the past. So when they would read the same content again in your store, it would discourage them. If they find duplicate content on your site, they will leave your site immediately. In short, duplication increases the bounce rate of your store.

When a potential buyer views copied content, the first thought that would come to mind is that your products are also copied. Buyers coming to eCommerce stores today always strive for platforms that can provide quality and unique products. If you don’t want to lose a potential sale, you need to avoid duplicates.

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Plagiarism harms the reputation of your store

You would be surprised to know that today you can find more than 50 million copies of content on the web. This proves that people are not aware of what they are doing. Today users coming on the web are always searching for unique and trustworthy platforms, or else they would bounce off. Your eCommerce store will be ranked in the search results of Google or other search engines. So you must know that adding plagiarized content will show that you are not credible. It is going to ruin your reputation in the market. Once you lose your reputation, you cannot get the trust back.

Plagiarism puts a barrier on links and investments

An important thing that you need to know is that today investors from across the globe are interested in putting their money in businesses with unique identities and doing well in the market. If your site or store has plagiarism, it will result in a lack of investments. Moreover, the success of your online business also depends on the quality of backlinks pointing toward your store. High authority sites would only provide you links if each inch of your content is original.

Plagiarism results in demotion in the search results.

As we have mentioned earlier, your online business gets ranked in the search results of Google. Now know that Google and all other search engines consider different factors for ranking your site. Unique content is one of the factors which results in high-ranking positions. Similarly, if you are using copied content on your store, it will result in search engine de-ranking. The lower your position, the lesser traffic you would get hence low sales and stunt growth.

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How to avoid and find out plagiarism in your eCommerce store?

Plagiarism, as we have told you before, is not always intentional. There is a huge amount of visual and textual content published on the web, so there is always a chance that your content can be similar to another source. Below we have discussed the two best ways to find plagiarism in your content to avoid it.

Reverse Image Search for Visual Content.

In eCommerce stores, visuals are an important part of your content. Suppose you want to check that your images are original or not, then you need to search by image. Today you have access to free online photo search platforms. You need to enter your images or image URL in the tool and find similar images on the web. The reverse image search can compare your visual content with billions of platforms and get you similar results. Moreover, you can also find royalty-free images for your store with the help of a reverse photo lookup

Use Online Plagiarism Checkers for Textual Content

Plagiarism checkers are also quite helpful in checking textual plagiarism. You can scan your text for duplication and find out if it has similarities with any other source on the web. By using a plagiarism tool, you can check both intentional and unintentional cases of duplication. And after knowing you can remove that plagiarism so that unique and original content can be published.

These are the top two solutions that can help you avoid duplicate content!