October 5, 2015

You Stole My Content…I am Not Content with That Idea

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Michael Jenkins
Michael Jenkins

CEO - Shout Agency
[email protected]

Overview

Do you ever get the feeling that your content is being stolen by your competitors? Maybe they are profiting from your hard work. Perhaps they are stealing your traffic and prospects.
Some copycat sites not only steal the content from websites, but in some cases steal the search traffic from Google as well. They do this by ranking higher on Google for the content then the original content creator.
For business that rely upon content creation for their inbound marketing leads this is a scary prospect.
Fortunately, Shout has some strategies and tools to ensure your competitors are not minimizing your hard work.

You stole my content!

Let start with understanding the problem a bit more in-depth.
Take this example from online marketing firm Pi Diametrics. They were analyzing their clients, Journey By Design, results on Google recently when the agency noticed something strange.
Their clients search rankings were very volatile. After a bit of research on the topic, they discovered other sites were stealing their content.
The theft was playing havoc with their search engine results, because the scraper sites were able to beat out the search engine strategy of the original site.
While the copycat sites were not able to completely displace their clients’ website, they would occasionally rank higher. The other problem was that it was not just one site, but multiple sites that were ranking higher than Journey by Designs.
Based on Google’s current assertion that original content is very important, this should not happen in their algorithm.  However, before the loop gets closed in future updates it is the responsibility of the website admins to advocate their case in front of Google.
While the process can be a bit cumbersome, it beats losing traffic and clients to copycat websites.

How can you protect yourself?

It is not possible currently to completely protect your website traffic from these threats. Nevertheless, you can take steps today to minimize any potential or current traffic losses from websites that steal your content.
#1. Monitor search rankings. The first signal that your rankings dropped is a dip in traffic. That is because traditionally, the higher you are in Google search results the more traffic you receive. In fact, 33% of all organic clicks go to first position.
To verify that your ranking dropped use a third party tool along with a regular Google search to verify this drop.

  • Moz- This is a premium ranking tool that comes with a lot of SEO tools you can use for pretty much anything you need to improve your search traffic.
  • SERPS, on the other hand, is a free tool to help you identify specific keyword placements.

As you can see from the screenshot below. We did a search for the keyword digital agency seo for Shout.

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        As Founder and Director of Shout Web Strategy, Michael Jenkins is at the forefront of digital marketing. Since it’s inception in 2009, Shout has built a strong reputation as one of Australia’s leading strategic SEO agencies, assisting online businesses to formulate, implement and track successful marketing strategies. Michael is a respected thought leader and digital strategist, specialising in online strategy, corporate SEO, Google retargeting, email and conversion rate optimisation, and online reputation management. Follow Michael on Google+, connect with him through LinkedIn or visit the Shout Web Strategy website.

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