Glossary
Plagiarism
Presenting someone else's work or ideas as your own without attribution.
Definition
Plagiarism is the act of using another person's text, ideas, code, images, or other work and presenting it as your own, without proper attribution or permission. In SEO, duplicate content — whether plagiarized externally or duplicated internally — can significantly harm search rankings.
Why It Matters
Plagiarism has serious professional, legal, and reputational consequences. In SEO, publishing content copied from other sites triggers duplicate content penalties and can result in pages being deindexed by Google.
Examples
Verbatim copyingCopy-pasting paragraphs from another article without quotation marks or attribution
Paraphrasing without creditRewriting someone's unique ideas in your own words without citing them
Self-plagiarismReusing significant portions of your own previously published work without disclosure
SEO duplicate contentPublishing the same product description across multiple pages on your own site
Common Mistakes
Assuming paraphrasing is always plagiarism-free.
Confusing plagiarism with copyright infringement.
Ignoring internal duplicate content.
Not using plagiarism-check tools before publishing.