Writing Unique Web Content: Human vs Software Tools for Landing Pages and Blogs

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV).

This especially applies in the age of Google Search - when you can find a vast knowledge about anything and everything. The simple approach to writing an article, landing page content or blog, is to gather the material, edit it and to rewrite it in your own words. Google and the internet haven't really changed things. We used to go to the library and hand write notes from the research. Then came the photocopier, then came the internet. Now we can copy the information in digital form into a word processor and edit it directly.

However, be aware that Google won't index pages with duplicate content and Hubpages won't publish articles that have been copied.

There are a vast number of software tools which claim to be able to rewrite articles and text for you automatically. However most are very laborious and time consuming. Similarly they produce rubbish in terms of grammar and comprehension, and most won't pass the copy tests (such as duplication ckecks using Copyscape.com or similar tools).

It is hard to be completely original, especially when you are simply trying to re-phrase a snippet of your research material. Similarly it is very easy to duplicate a phrase from memory and not be aware of it. Likewise what you write may have already been published before with the myriad of information on the World Wide Web. (there is nothing new under the sun - well very little anyway!).

Incidentally the phrase "what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun" will be picked up as a Copy by Copyscape.com and other similar tools.

So what can you do:

• ALWAYS use Copyscape.com or some other similar tool to make sure all of your text is 'original'.
• Manually rewrite ALL the material in your own words
• OR Use a Thesaurus or synonym look-up tool to find alternative ways or expressing a phase or sentence. Many word processors have built-in tools for doing this. One of the best one's I've found is WordWeb (which can be added as an option for the Jarte word processor that I use). Is this cheating? No, in my opinion. It is simply a tool to help you rewrite the material 'in your own words'. It helps to provide the suggested alternatives. it inspires you by suggesting various alternative ways of expressing what you want to write.
• OR Use an automatic synonym replacement tool. Once again there are many tools available for this. I personally use GoRewrite.com, as it provides 'sensible' replacements and colours the changed text in the output. You can then work through and rewrite the text using Wordweb or other tools to find better alternatives. This is faster than working through all the suggested synonyms, one by one. It can be more productive as you are working on phrases, sentences and paragraphs rather than the individual words one-by-one. This process helps to inspire you to rewrite slabs of text in the way you want to express it. Is this cheating? Once again - No, in my opinion. It is simply a way of inspiring you with suggestions, about what needs to be rewritten and how to put it in your own words.

The NEXT Step - back to Copyscape or one the many other tools for checking for duplication. You need to rewrite and rewrite again until all the content is clean. These tools highlight the snippets that remain to be rewritten.

Conclusion:

It is the inspired human that produces the best original articles - but some tools can help!

© janderson99-HubPages

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