Paraphrasing skills are the number one requirement to be a great content writer in today’s competitive online market. Without it, you cannot produce plagiarism-free content which is bad for SEO.
The ability to produce unique and SEO-friendly content is what separates a good content writer from a bad one.
Millions of articles, blogs, and other related content are posted on the internet every month and that makes it hard for a person to think of entirely new ways to describe something about which so many articles have already been written.
However, if you possess good paraphrasing abilities and know all the tips and tricks, you can easily write highly engaging, plagiarism-free, and search engine-friendly content with very little effort.
What is Paraphrasing?
It simply means rewriting someone else’s ideas and words in your own way and using a little different vocabulary. The main goal is to write content that is different from the source but has the same theme and central idea at the same time.
Content writers can use paraphrasing whenever they struggle with finding new ways to explain some old content. This will ensure that their site doesn’t contain any copied material and the search engines find it high-ranking worthy.
Paraphrasing requires practice but if you are consistent and you have all the right tools, you can do it easily.
Paraphrasing Use Cases
Paraphrasing techniques are quite valuable for academic as well as web content creators. These techniques help writers generate unique content, based on existing ideas.
Academic writers often have to take inspiration from already existing research to prove their case. They can use paraphrasing approaches to reword the work to present it in their own style.
Paraphrasing becomes even more important for web and creative content writers. Since most of the topics that you can think of are already covered on the internet, you have no other choice but to use the already available work as inspiration for your piece of writing.
Since using the work as it would cause plagiarism, you need to learn how to paraphrase so that your content becomes unique and plagiarism free. This is what we are going to share with you throughout the rest of this paraphrasing guide.
Here are a few simple steps that you can use to paraphrase content for your website, blog, or social media marketing:
1. Read and Understand the Material
You cannot write about something unless you completely understand it. In order to do that, you will have to read the entire article carefully. Reading allows you to determine the structure of the content which you can use to rewrite properly.
This gives you a better idea about the main theme as well as the goal of the content that you have to keep in mind while rewriting.
Carefully reading the material allows you to rewrite easily since you then have a better idea about where to start and what points to add. While reading, take notes about what to add and what information to skip in your content to keep things relevant.
It is also a good idea to note down the sources in case you need to add the citation later. This step gives you a very good start while paraphrasing and keeps things under your control.
2. Add Quotations
While rewriting the exact words from some other source, make sure to add the quotation marks since it will help you avoid plagiarism. After the quotation mark, you can include the name of the source for future reference and ease for your readers.
Adding quotations shows that you have done proper research while writing the content and that you have given credit to the real author which shows you have dignity. It helps you establish yourself as a trusted source of information in your domain.
3. Use Proper Synonyms and Phrases
Each word has several synonyms, and you cannot replace it with any synonym without considering the context. While rewriting keep things simple and do not use overly complicated or unfamiliar vocabulary.
Just replacing a word or two from each line is never a good idea since readers can easily pick up on that. Instead, you need to take the idea given in a certain line or paragraph and write it in your own words.
Similarly, avoid using common phrases since they can also create plagiarism issues down the line. Knowing the right words to replace the old ones takes practice but it is an important skill that you need to cultivate if you want to stand out as a content writer.
4. Change the Sentence Structure
Along with changing words with their synonyms, you can also paraphrase content by changing the structure of sentences. This includes making big sentences with a lot of words smaller and changing the sentence voice.
For example, you can change active voice sentences to passive voice, and vice versa. The thing that you need to keep in mind is that the sentences should feel completely natural.
The flow of the sentences should be something that you always keep in your mind. If a sentence doesn’t feel natural when you change it, then it is better to stick to the basic paraphrasing techniques such as changing words with their synonyms, to avoid plagiarism.
5. Paraphrase Whole Paragraphs
This is another important tip that you can use while paraphrasing. Most writers make the mistake of rewriting content line-by-line. Though this approach is somewhat effective, it doesn’t produce entirely unique content. Also, you might end up missing out on the core idea of the content.
The final output seems inconsistent and that decreases the value of your content. You can avoid this by paraphrasing each paragraph separately. First, read the paragraph and identify the message that the writer wants to convey. Then you can expand the same concept in your own words.
This makes your content look more organic and natural. Readers, as well as search engines, consider such content highly unique and that is great for SEO.
6. Add Citations
Once you have written your article by borrowing an idea from some other writer or source, it is a good idea to cite that source to be on the safe side. You can use in-text citations, or you can add citations as a reference at the end of your article.
This will help you avoid any plagiarism risks and the consequent penalties such as website bans, legal suits, and fines. Adding citations is a great way to make your content look well-researched and increase its overall quality.
If you use ideas or words from some other source and ignore the citation, it can lead to a lot of issues down the line. You can get caught and that means you will have to face any punishment that comes your way.
7. Proofread
Once you have written the entire thing, you must proofread it. Though this may take some of your time, it will help you avoid grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and other inconsistencies in your text.
This will help you find and remove any typos that might be present in the text. No matter how carefully you write, there is always a chance that some error might have slipped right past you while rewriting.
So, to avoid that we advise you to always reread your content before posting it online on your website or blog. This will help take your content quality to the next level.
Bonus Tip: Use a Paraphrasing Tool for Automatic Paraphrasing
There are times when you just cannot find more ways to rewrite the repetitive content. This may happen due to limited vocabulary, or insufficient research or understanding of the subject matter.
In such a case, to save time and eliminate plagiarism, you can use the paraphrasing tool. These tools use AI to recreate the content that you post word by word. They replace words with suitable synonyms and change sentence structures to produce highly unique material.
Paraphrase tools can save so much of your time and energy while you rewrite content. Whenever you struggle with a certain line or paragraph, just copy it into a paraphrasing tool and it will generate a number of results for you to use.
A rephraser is also quite useful for writing academic content. They can help you avoid grammatical and spelling errors and create content that looks completely unique and authentic.
Final Thoughts
So, these are just a few paraphrasing tips that you can follow to write highly unique content. Most successful content writers follow a similar approach while rewriting and we urge you to do the same.
With these few tips in mind, you can save your time and create content that is highly accurate as well as unique. To write unique content you need to use your own creativity and take help from free online tools when necessary.
We really hope you have found this information helpful, and we wish you all the best for writing unique SEO articles as a content writer.