Paraphrasing tools help you rewrite and rephrase articles and paragraphs to generate fresh SEO content. Many SEO marketers use these tools to create web content for blog posts and landing pages, but are they effective? Is it worth using a paraphrasing tool for SEO, or should you spend more money and hire a real writer?
The answer is that paraphrasing tools have their place, but they’re not for everyone. There are pros and cons of using a paraphrasing tool for SEO, and it’s essential to consider both sides before deciding to use one.
Read on to learn the benefits and disadvantages of paraphrasing in SEO.
Pros
First, let’s discuss the advantages of using paraphrasing tools. While many people look down on paraphrasing tools, they can be advantageous when you use them correctly.
Paraphrasing Tools Are Easily Accessible
It’s not hard to find paraphrasing tools. There is an abundance of them online, and many of them are entirely free. Many others offer free plans or trial periods, allowing you to test them out and use the content you generate at no cost.
You can simply Google “paraphrasing tool,” and you will find many results.
You also don’t need to be a good writer or even a native English speaker to use a paraphrasing tool. Anyone can use one and generate content for web pages and blog posts.
The ease of access that paraphrasing tools provide allows anyone to become a blogger.
There are generally two types of paraphrasing tools. One type rewrites existing articles, while the other allows you to generate content from scratch. The latter type usually uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to create content that sounds natural and human-written.
If you’re using a rewriting tool, you can either rewrite content you found online or rewrite your own content. The first method is pretty risky, but the second method allows you to generate many versions of the same article, each uniquely written but all targeting the same keyword.
By publishing many of these articles on different websites, you can get more rankings on the first page of Google. You can also use these other versions for your link-building campaigns. For example, you can submit them as guest posts on different websites.
Paraphrasing Saves Money
Paraphrasing also allows you to save money. As I mentioned, many paraphrasing tools are entirely free to use.
Others may have a word limit, though, allowing you to generate only short articles for free.
However, even paid tools allow you to save a lot of money. Consider the costs of hiring a professional writer. Typically, you would have to pay the writer per word or article. A good writer can charge a lot of money – don’t be surprised if you end up paying between 5-10 cents per word. Over time, that all adds up.
On the other hand, a rephrasing tool typically charges a monthly subscription for an unlimited number of articles. If you need to publish a lot of content, and you have a limited budget, it can easily seem like an attractive option.
It Saves Time
If you don’t have the budget to pay writers, you may have thought your only other option is to write your blog posts yourself. The problem is that it can take a lot of time.
Ideally, you want to publish long-form content of at least 1,000 words. Also, ideally, you want to publish at least 1-3 blog posts per week if you want your blog to grow at a reasonable pace. Consider all the effort and time you’ll need to put into writing high-quality articles, including:
- Coming up with blog ideas
- Creating article outlines
- Writing the articles
- Proofreading the articles
- Finding images
- Publishing the articles
You can save a significant amount of time by cutting out the whole writing part, including the part where you have to create article outlines. An AI writing tool can generate content ideas for you, based on popular content online.
It’s not just blog content that takes time to write. If you want to be a successful blogger and create an audience, you must publish social media content, write email newsletters, and more. A paraphrasing tool allows you to write just the blog posts and then generate unique content for your email list by rewriting your blog posts – without any additional effort.
It Produces Consistent Results
Finally, paraphrasing produces consistent results. If you find a reliable tool you can depend on to generate high-level, natural-sounding content, you can use it repeatedly without fail.
Anytime you need content, whether it’s for your blog or email list, simply use the tool and get fresh content within minutes. It will make your workflow that much easier.
Cons
At the same time, paraphrasing tools can be downright harmful to your rankings when you go about them the wrong way. Here are the top cons of using paraphrasing tools.
1. Some Paraphrasing Tools Are Not Dependable
There are many online paraphrasing tools, but only a tiny percentage are really good. Many paraphrasing tools just don’t do a good job rewriting content and making it sound humanly written.
AI is getting more advanced, but only the premium tools can afford to use high-level machine learning to write content that sounds natural.
If you try out many of the free paraphrasing tools online, you’ll find that quite a few of them – even the good ones – sometimes have sentences that sound a bit robotic or strange. Some articles may come out great, while others might have poor wording. Some tools are even worse, writing sentences that make no sense and have poor grammar.
Even if you use the very best tools, poor phrasing can sometimes creep into your articles. While using a paraphrasing tool allows you to avoid needing to write articles, you won’t be able to avoid the need to edit and proofread your articles before publishing them. Likely, you’ll find yourself choosing different synonyms or even rephrasing some sentences yourself.
2. Some Have Very Limited Features
Other paraphrasing tools have very limited features. A good paraphrasing tool might have features such as:
- A headline generator
- An idea generator
- Write full articles from scratch
- Reword text to avoid plagiarism
- Input keywords for optimal SEO value
- Generate multiple unique articles in bulk
You might also be able to choose from several templates, such as:
- Blog posts
- Email newsletters
- Social media posts
- Landing pages
- Ads or banners
Some paraphrasing tools, though, might rewrite your content but not give you any templates to choose from.
3. Some Are Not Free
There are many paraphrasing tools, but not all of them are free. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – it can be hard to find a free paraphrasing tool that’s actually good. If you do find good one, it might have a limited free plan, only allowing you to produce 2,000 words a month or something like that.
Again, paying for a premium paraphrasing tool is still usually cheaper than hiring a writer. However, if you thought that you would be able to find a free paraphrasing tool and generate an unlimited amount of high-quality content, it might be time to lower your expectations.
4. Paraphrasing Can Lead to Plagiarism
There is always the risk of having your articles flagged as plagiarism when using a paraphrasing tool.
Many people think that if they stick to rewriting their own articles, they won’t run the risk of having their blog posts flagged as duplicate content. That’s not true, though, especially if the different articles are published on different websites, as is the case when writing guest posts.
A good paraphrasing tool will ensure that the new article passes a plagiarism check by using a tool like Copyscape to compare it to the original article or even other articles on the web. However, Google is getting better at detecting spun content.
Publishing duplicate content can be disastrous for your SEO. It could lead to a drop in rankings, and Google may even penalize your site entirely and remove it from the search results.
One way to get around that is to use an AI copywriter that writes articles from scratch instead of rephrasing existing content. However, you still need to make sure that the content passes a plagiarism check using Copyscape or a similar tool.
Low-quality AI copywriting tools may generate similar content for different customers, all of wmho end up publishing that content online.
Final Thoughts
Not many people know about paraphrasing tools or understand their usefulness. If you use a high-quality paraphrasing tool, and you use it correctly, it can help you save money and be more productive.
Start by testing out different paraphrasing tools using their free versions. Proofread the generated content to see how natural it sounds and how many corrections you need to make.
Once you find a tool you like, start using it to generate content. Before publishing the content, proofread and edit it, so it sounds more natural. Also, if you generate multiple articles from one original article, compare all the spun articles using Copyscape to ensure there is no duplicate wording.
ClearLine Interactive is passionate about creating an online brand that your business can grow into. Call 603-759-0422.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
