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8 Best Practices for Web Content Editing

Follow these 8 best practices to ensure your web content is sound, polished, readable, and poised to engage your intended audience with relevant, helpful information.

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Trusted By Industry Leaders

Introduction

Our text compare tool is a fantastic, lightweight tool that provides plagiarism checks between two documents. Whether you are a student, blogger or publisher, this tool offers a great solution to detect and compare similarities between any two pieces of text. In this article, I will discuss the different ways to use the tool, the primary features of the tool and who this tool is for. There is an FAQ at the bottom if you run into any issues when trying to use the tool.

What makes Originality.ai’s text comparison tool stand out?

Keyword density helper – This tool comes with a built-in keyword density helper in some ways similar to the likes of SurferSEO or MarketMuse the difference being, ours is free! This feature shows the user the frequency of single or two word keywords in a document, meaning you can easily compare an article you have written against a competitor to see the major differences in keyword densities. This is especially useful for SEO’s who are looking to optimize their blog content for search engines and improve the blog’s visibility.

Ways to compare

File compare – Text comparison between files is a breeze with our tool. Simply select the files you would like to compare, hit “Upload” and our tool will automatically insert the content into the text area, then simply hit “Compare” and let our tool show you where the differences in the text are. By uploading a file, you can still check the keyword density in your content.

URL compare

Comparing text between URLs is effortless with our tool. Simply paste the URL you would like to get the content from (in our example we use a fantastic blog post by Sherice Jacob found here) hit “Submit URL” and our tool will automatically retrieve the contents of the page and paste it into the text area, then simply click “Compare” and let our tool highlight the difference between the URLs. This feature is especially useful for checking keyword density between pages!

Simple text compare

You can also easily compare text by copying and pasting it into each field, as demonstrated below.

Features of Originality.ai’s Text Compare Tool

Ease of use

Our text compare tool is created with the user in mind, it is designed to be accessible to everyone. Our tool allows users to upload files or enter a URL to extract text, this along with the lightweight design ensures a seamless experience. The interface is simple and straightforward, making it easy for users to compare text and detect the diff.

Multiple text file format support

Our tool provides support for a variety of different text files and microsoft word formats including pdf file, .docx, .odt, .doc, and .txt, giving users the ability to compare text from different sources with ease. This makes it a great solution for students, bloggers, and publishers who are looking for file comparison in different formats.

Protects intellectual property

Our text comparison tool helps you protect your intellectual property and helps prevent plagiarism. This tool provides an accurate comparison of texts, making it easy to ensure that your work is original and not copied from other sources. Our tool is a valuable resource for anyone looking to maintain the originality of their content.

User Data Privacy

Our text compare tool is secure and protects user data privacy. No data is ever saved to the tool, the users’ text is only scanned and pasted into the tool’s text area. This makes certain that users can use our tool with confidence, knowing their data is safe and secure.

Compatibility

Our text comparison tool is designed to work seamlessly across all size devices, ensuring maximum compatibility no matter your screen size. Whether you are using a large desktop monitor, a small laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, this tool adjusts to your screen size. This means that users can compare texts and detect the diff anywhere without the need for specialized hardware or software. This level of accessibility makes it an ideal solution for students or bloggers who value the originality of their work and need to compare text online anywhere at any time.

Once web content is written, a few more steps exist to polish it and prepare it for its target audience. 

Whether your next step is to send an article to an editor or you’re self-editing something you’ve written, these best practices will make your content shine and ensure it’s ready to engage readers. 

Looking for a suite of best-in-class tools to upgrade your web content editing? Check out Originality.ai’s Grammar Checker, Content Optimizer, and AI Checker.

1. Read the Writing Aloud Without Making Edits

If you are reading someone else’s content, the initial read is the first time you are setting eyes on the writing. Rather than try to write and edit at the same time, just read it through and try to experience it as your audience would without making changes. 

Don’t stop reading to take notes or make edits. Read the piece from start to finish and gather your overall impression. To keep yourself from editing, read it aloud. 

When the writing is your own, your eyes are all too familiar with the content. The best way to create some distance for an initial read is by reading it aloud. Speaking the written words slows you down and forces you to read what is there — not what your writer’s mind thinks should be there. 

2. Review the Content Brief

Review the content brief after you read the content and before you edit. Whether you are a self-editing writer or an editor assigned to the piece, studying the content brief acquaints you with the key messaging, target audience, quality standards, and detailed expectations of the content. This will be essential for the content editing step.

3. Separate the Rounds of Edits

Don’t try to edit everything at once. It’s easy to miss big-picture edits when scrutinizing for subject-verb agreement and word choice, just as it’s hard to catch grammatical errors when focused on overall content organization.

Even if you are performing all the duties of writer and editor on your own, break the process down into content edits (big-picture) and copy edits (mechanics). 

Splitting the work into separate rounds allows you to review different things each time to catch something you might otherwise miss if you overload yourself by cramming the whole process into one step.

Learn more about copy editing vs. content editing.

4. Perform Content Editing First

The first round of editing web content is called content editing. This high-level review addresses how well the content is hitting the mark. 

Content edits examine the substance of the content itself. Start looking at the following aspects of the web content and evaluating whether edits might make the piece more successful.

If you were given a comprehensive content brief, that can be your guide to help judge where the content is hitting the target and where edits might help. 

Specific areas might include:

  • Readability: Check for readability. Is it easy to understand? Is the reading level on target?
  • Clarity: Does the key messaging come through clearly?
  • Logic: Does the content make sense and is it factually correct?
  • Structure and organization: How easy is the content to follow? Can it be better?
  • Flow: Is it a smooth read?
  • Voice and tone: Are the voice and tone of the piece consistent with the brand identity or brand voice guidelines
  • Key messaging: Is it there and is it clear?
  • AI tools: Have they been used, and are they allowable for the particular piece you’re editing? For instance, you may incorporate an AI Checker at this step.
  • Target audience: Is the writing consistently speaking to your audience?
  • SEO: Are the target keywords present and used naturally? 
  • Strategy: Is the content hitting the strategic goals assigned?

These aspects of writing relate to the soundness of the content and how well it delivers the messaging to the intended audience. 

Create a content editing checklist to ensure you check for all the important quality standards. Make comments along the way to note recommendations and suggestions for the writer (even if the writer is you).

5. Make the Content Edits and Prepare a New Draft

Before shifting over to the next phase of editing, the content edits should be made. If you are the editor, this is when you turn the web content back to the writer for revision. If you are self-editing, this is the phase where you take off your editor’s hat and go back to writing. 

For example, if it has been noted that the voice and tone aren’t on brand or the organization doesn’t follow a logical flow, these adjustments must be made before the content is reviewed for copy edits. 

6. Read the Content Aloud Again

After the content edits have been made, read the piece aloud with the target audience in mind. If further edits are needed, work on them until the piece's substance is sound. 

7. Perform Copy Edits on a Fresh Draft

Copy editing is a phase of web content review focusing on technical aspects of the writing, like checking for grammar such as punctuation, spelling, and word choice. It should only be performed once the content edits are done. 

Otherwise, you may spend too much time correcting grammar and punctuation when the substance of the content isn’t finalized yet, and you’ll need to start copy editing all over again. 

In addition to looking for grammar and syntax, the copy-editing phase concentrates on:

  • Consistency
  • Adherence to style
  • Tone
  • Word choice
  • Call to action
  • Working links
  • Formatting elements
  • Fluidity of language

This is a more detailed web content review of typos, inaccuracies, and other mistakes. A copy editor may also act as a fact-checker and content optimizer

Where a content edit looks for the logical flow of the information, a copy edit will ensure the language flows well as written and the diction and word choice are polished. 

8. Enlist Someone as a Final Proofreader

Getting an outside perspective on your freshly edited web content is essential to learning how a reader will experience it. As a final quality-control step, have someone read it through. Mistakes are more easily caught by someone not involved in the other editing rounds.

If you are self-editing, step away from the writing before this final step. Read something else or do something completely unrelated to the content so you can return to it with a little distance.

Then, read it aloud again with your audience in mind and see if anything jumps out at you that you may not have noticed before. 

Final Thoughts

Applying best practices for web content editing is essential to preparing an article or landing page for publication. It can help you catch spelling errors and check for grammar during the copy editing step, optimize content for SEO so it ranks better, and improve the overall readability of the piece.

Streamline your web content editing with Originality.ai’s suite of best-in-class tools including a Grammar Checker, AI Checker, and Readability Checker.

Then, get more tips on how to improve your content marketing:

Melissa Fanella

Melissa Fanella is a writer, editor, and marketing professional with over 15 years of experience in content and messaging for businesses and nonprofits. Her expertise is in crafting authentic, people-first content that is compelling and engaging for audiences and positioned for business goals.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fill out the entire form?

No, that’s one of the benefits, only fill out the areas which you think will be relevant to the prompts you require.

Why is the English so poor for some prompts?

When making the tool we had to make each prompt as general as possible to be able to include every kind of input. Not to worry though ChatGPT is smart and will still understand the prompt.

In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

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Featured by Leading Publications

Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

Vahan Petrosyan

searchenginejournal.com

I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

Tom Demers

searchengineland.com

After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

Rock Content Team

rockcontent.com

Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

ranktracker.com

ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

forbes.com

Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

Sri Krishna

venturebeat.com

For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

Industry Trends

analyticsinsight.net

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

Will My Data Be Shared?

There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

Software License Agreement

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Will My Data Be Shared?

This table below shows a heat map of features on other sites compared to ours as you can see we almost have greens across the board!

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