Content Stolen? Immediate Steps That You Can Take
4 minutes | Word Count: 789Internet marketing has become one of the most successful tools for business. Internet marketing has broken down into SEO, which controls the visibility of a website on search engines, when prospective customers search using specific keywords.
One of the most important factors of SEO is website content. Your website content shows that your information is valuable, which increases your rankings. However, when these major search engines do website sweeps and find that multiple websites have the same content, these impressive ratings drop significantly and your business could even be penalized.
If you think that someone is stealing your content, you need to take immediate action to get the problem fixed, so you don’t lose business and profit.
Check For Duplicates
Even if you don’t suspect that your content has been stolen, then you are going to want to always check for duplicate content. The best way to catch duplicate content is to catch it before it is too late. There are multiple websites and resources that you can use to check for duplicate content on the Internet.
Copyscape is one of the most popular resources, but if you do a simple Google search for a plagiarism checker, you will find hundreds of results. Simply copy your content into the box and press the send button. These websites will not only show you how much of your content has been stolen, but also the source that has stolen your content.
Once you have found this information, you want to make sure you are documenting the stolen content. Some of these sites will give you a percentage and already highlight the information that is copied word for word. You want to copy this information and document it. You can document this with screen shots or an excel spreadsheet, but you want to be able to show that your content has been stolen and how much of it has been duplicated.
Address The Site Owner
The next step to handling your duplicate content is to address the problem head on. Most websites have a contact me section that offers a direct link to the website owner. You want to start by addressing the problem with the problem. Most people will send an email to confront the website about the duplicate content. Now when you are sending the email, you are going to want to remain professional and kind.
If there is no response or the owner refuses to take down the content, there are other measures you can take, but if you want to win your case, then you want to make sure you handled the matter in a respectable way from the beginning.
If you aren’t sure what to write in the email, these tips should help get you started
1. Don’t use a foul language or name calling
If your case is reviewed later on, you don’t want anything that could be used against you. Besides, you are a professional and you are better than using foul language.
2. Don’t point fingers
You don’t want to come right out of the gate making accusations. For all you know, the website owner could have hired an outside writer or company to write their content and may not even be at fault.
3. Provide proof
You want to make sure, when you send the email; you send an attachment of the proof of copied content. This way, there is no denying that there is a problem to begin with.
Taking Your Claim To The Next Step
If you find that you don’t get an answer from the website owner or that they refuse to remove the content that has been stolen, then it is time to move on to the next step. Google and Bing both offer forms that you can fill out as a complaint against a website that has stolen the content to your website.
You don’t want to jump to this stage because you want to help save your rankings by trying to solve your problem on your own. This step will open an investigation, but it could also affect your SEO rankings as well.
The best way to handle duplicate content is to catch it as soon as possible. You should have your content changed every so often and you should always run your content through Copyscape to make sure that your content is original. Your content is going to play an important role to your site and you can’t afford to have it stolen out from underneath you.
About Author: Cally Greene is an online consultant for JoeyGilbertLaw – www.joeygilbertlaw.com. A Law firm in Reno Nevada. She likes blogging about Legal issues, Business law, Family Law and Social Media.
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Nice article. Great works.Thank you very much.