Have clients mentioned they find misspellings or grammatical errors in your work? Do you ever get complaints about clarity or duplicate content? Prevent all of those and more with these 3 freelance writing tools.
I’m not getting paid to promote them and I know there are many more (I will make a comprehensive post down the road). But for now, here are three you should know. I honestly use them almost every day.
1. Copyscape
You can use Copyscape to see if any part of your content appears elsewhere on the web. Duplicate content is a big deal that can lead to SEO penalties and lawsuits. While most of us don’t intend to plagiarize, there is a ton of content online so it can happen by accident.
To use Copyscape, you log in, paste your content or a URL into the field, and perform a quick search. It will then list any other websites that have the same phrases, sentences, and/or paragraphs.
I’m not sure how much the fee is per search exactly. Copyscape says it starts at $0.03 per search. However, I do know I spend about $10 per month and check every piece I write, so that’s about 2,000 words per day.
If you are hiring writers, it can also help to ensure they are writing original content and not copying it from somewhere. Overall, it’s fast, it’s cheap, and it’s effective.
2. Hemingway App
The Hemingway App is another must-have for me and it’s free! You simply open it, paste your text, and it goes to work.
It will highlight parts of the text it suggests you should reconsider like long sentences and overly complicated phrases.
It also tells you the readability grade level of your content.
I’ve had many clients ask for a certain grade level so this is helpful for that.
While you should be the ultimate judge of what stays and what goes, this is a helpful tool.
3. Grammarly
Lastly, good ol’ Grammarly.
Grammary has a free and paid version.
I use the free version and it helps to point out misspellings, punctuation errors, and more.
It also rates your clarity.
The paid version gives you more insights, but I haven’t seen a need to upgrade.
You can paste your content into the Grammarly app or you can download the plugin so Grammarly works directly where you are writing.
For example, I’m writing this in Google Chrome and I have the plugin turned on, so Grammarly is keeping an eye on my writing here to make sure I’m not making mistakes.
Now I don’t always accept all the suggestions and I wouldn’t suggest doing so blindly.
But definitely take them into consideration as they often help me with little typos.
Keep your clients happy
There you have 3 quick, cheap, and easy freelance writing tools to write better content.
The more flawless your writing, the happier your clients will be.
Happy clients mean long-lasting work relationships and referrals!
Woot woot!
Also, if you hire writers and have trouble with typos or duplicate content, ask them to use these tools.
Do you use these or have another writing tool you like? Share in the comments.
Want to learn about more writing-related tools? Check out the top 7 SEO tools for 2023!
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I have used Grammerly Free for sometime and recently upgraded to the paid version. Free highlights the errors and it is pretty easy to re-write the error by just looking at the underlined words. I will continue with the paid version for now so I can then determine which version to use.
Great, Terry! Would love to hear what you end up deciding and why.
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