Text synonymization – is it worth using?

Synonymized texts – what are they?

To clarify the definition, let’s consider a simple example of synonymized text:

{Check|See|Analyze} {necessarily|quickly|immediately} {our services| our offer |our products}!

Each brace contains groups of identical words (synonyms) that allow you to create several sentence variants. In this case, they may sound either: “Check out our offer!” as well as “See our products immediately!

Synonymization of texts – benefits

Mathematically, three braces containing three words each can generate as many as 27 different sentences. An additional brace would increase this number to 81, and another to 243. Therefore, a properly prepared scheme allows you to create millions of different synonymized texts.

This applies wherever you need content with the same meaning but a unique form. An example would be an online store that displays a permanent paragraph for each category that does not concern products but informs about the company’s strengths. Using text synonymization will make the presentation of the company’s advantages look different each time. This will avoid repetitive sentences that would result in duplicate content.

Content synonymization – disadvantages

This practice also carries significant risks for several reasons.

Risk of penalty from Google

There is therefore a risk that the effect will be opposite to that intended. It is worth taking these recommendations seriously – as we wrote in the article about thin content, Google allocates huge budgets to better understand and process natural language. Text put together by a computer, even when crafted skillfully, retains its mechanistic style, which can be detected by algorithms.

Low quality

With this we come to the second shortcoming, namely – the synonymized texts are of very low quality. As specialists, we explain that language is more than just a fixed set of synonyms. It’s an incredibly complex mix of human experiences and concepts. Writing is a reflection of our thoughts, presented using a formalized system of conventional signs. An effective message requires a certain writing style – which is the result of the author’s specific knowledge, individual experiences, thought structure and even character traits.

So we can ask ourselves: does a computer have what we can call “its own writing style”? Well, no. It is only able to “follow the orders of the algorithms”, i.e. in our case – to randomly select words from a set of synonyms. The text it generates will always be artificial and unimaginative. Interestingly, online dictionaries struggle with the same problem and cannot come close to the quality provided by a professional translator.

Little use

Synonymization of texts is very rarely justified. This is a serious caveat when considering the attractiveness of any method. If a company wants to gain visibility for a given key phrase, one expert article is enough instead of countless generated texts. In sales, positioning and image building, it is not only quantity that counts, but also quality – and, as we have already explained, this is not the strongest point of synonymized content.

So why is this method used? For a simple reason, which is a common element of competition (also in positioning). People are looking for tricks that will allow them to outdo the competition with little effort. Synonymization looks promising in this respect, as it can fill an entire page with one template. However, we have shown that SEO is not that simple and all shortcuts are strewn with pitfalls.