As an eCommerce business owner, you will never want your online presence to get in trouble. Right? Your eCommerce store contains a lot of information about your product.
Have you ever checked whether your content contains plagiarism? I’m sure you have thought about it but what have you done about it?
So, today in this topic, I will tell you how plagiarism is harmful; to your eCommerce startup. Stay tuned with us and you might save your eCommerce business.
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What Is Plagiarism and Why Does It Matter?
Plagiarism is duplicating content or writing on multiple websites or their pages. Many business owners copy and paste someone’s content into their e-commerce store.
In more simple words, Plagiarism happens when someone copies words, images, or ideas from someone else and treats them as their own.
From an eCommerce perspective, this can happen in several ways. For instance, an eCommerce website may use images or product descriptions from other sites without crediting the original creator.
Without permission or considering the original source owner, using their content in your eCommerce website can be more harmful than you expect.
So, what if you inadvertently copy someone’s work?
You run the risk of violating copyright laws and may be prosecuted by the owner of those copyrighted materials.
For example, if you copy a product description and image from another site without attributing the source, the owner of the other website may sue you for copyright infringement.
Violating these types of rights not only harms your account but can also damage your online and offline reputation as an eCommerce manager or owner.
How Harmful Is Plagiarism to Your eCommerce Store or Website?
As we’ve told you before, plagiarism can harm your business in different ways. Nevertheless, in this section, we will discuss only some of the most important reasons why it hurts your business.
Before we list the major reasons, we want you to know that duplication of your brand’s text and images is harmful. It is common practice today to copy text descriptions of products or product images.
Plagiarism, both text and visual, is hurting your new or well-reputed brand, and the reasons mentioned below:
Plagiarism Discourages Your Target Audience
You have to understand that people visiting the web are always looking for solutions and answers to their queries from reliable sources. Let’s say you are copying content from other websites.
In that case, there is always the possibility that your target audience may have consumed that content in the past. So when they read the same content in your store again, it will discourage them and generate negative thoughts about your business.
If they find content on your site that they have already viewed on another site, they will leave your site immediately. In short, repetitive content increases the bounce rate of your store and also reduces online visibility.
When a potential buyer sees copied content, the first thought that comes to mind is that your products have been copied as well.
Today, shoppers visiting eCommerce stores always strive for a platform that can provide quality and unique products. If you don’t want to lose potential sales, you need to avoid duplicates.
Plagiarism Damages the Reputation of Your eCommerce Store
You will be surprised to know that today you can find more than 50 million copy contents on the web. It proves that people have no idea what they are doing.
Users visiting the web today are always on the lookout for unique and reliable platforms, or else they would jump. They want fresh and informative solutions.
So you should know that adding plagiarized content will show Google that you and your websites are not credible enough. This will ruin your reputation in the online market plus it will also reduce buyers as well.
Once you lose your reputation, you can’t get the trust back of your audience. They will leave your platform for good and as you know it will be bad for your business growth.
Plagiarism Hinders Links and Investments
When you are working on a big project, you need to bring in some regular investors. You have to look for people who will keep their money with you and help you cover big startups.
There are a lot of people who are looking for such investment opportunities to earn profits. You can earn their trust only when you have everything unique on your platform including your expertise and information.
This will never happen if you stole someone’s content on your
eCommerce store website. Every second, there is a danger that the search engines will notice and ruin your investment.
So, there will not be a single investor who will agree to invest with you in your business. In such a situation, you will have to face a shortage of money or can stop your journey of launching a brand new eCommerce business.
In turn, your eCommerce store could be at the endpoint of falling into the depths of loss.
It Impacts Heavy on Your eCommerce Online Ranking
As I mentioned earlier, your online business ranks in Google’s search results. Now know that Google and all other search engines consider different factors to rank your site.
Unique content is one of the factors that result in a higher ranking position. Similarly, if you are using duplicate content on your eCommerce website, it will result in search engine de-ranking.
The lower your position, the less traffic you will get, hence low sales and stunted growth.
How to Avoid and Detect Plagiarism In Your eCommerce Website?
Plagiarism is not always intentional. There is a huge amount of visual and textual material published on the web, so there is always the possibility that your content may be similar to another source. Below we have discussed the two best ways to avoid plagiarism in your content.
1. Reverse Image Search for Visual Content: Reverse Image Search can compare your visual content across billions of platforms and get you similar results. In addition, you can also find free-usable images for your eCommerce store with the help of the photo lookup tools available on the Internet.
2. Use Online Plagiarism Checker for Text Content: Plagiarism checker tools are also very helpful in checking plagiarism from websites. You can scan your text for duplicates and find out if it has anything in common with any other sources on the web.
Also Read: How to do local SEO keyword research for higher rankings
Conclusion
Plagiarism will never go away, and naturally, it will always be a threat to online business. With an advanced eCommerce approach to content, where commerce and content merge to create a unique experience that customers want, there is no room for plagiarism.
With robust tools that scan the web, checking for duplicate text, your best bet is to always trust them and permanently deny your eCommerce business any chance of entering the world of copyright infringement.