What Should I Do If My Website Content Is Stolen?
Search engines place great importance on unique content for every website. If identical content is found on another site, it can hurt the search engine rankings for both. This is why many web content writers use tools to look for duplicate content before publishing new site content or blog posts. Unfortunately, someone who doesn’t wish to hire a content writing service and only wants a quick, easy solution could steal your site content. Here are some steps you can take.
How Do You Know Your Content Is Stolen?
Before learning what you should do if your content is stolen, you need to find out whether someone else is using it. There are several ways you can monitor the Internet for duplication of the content created by your web content writers.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts are easy to set up. All you need to do is enter a small portion of your content, set what types of sites to search and select a frequency. You will receive alerts at the chosen interval if the content you entered appears online.
Copyscape
Copyscape is a useful tool to help you see if the content is repeated anywhere online. Simply paste the content into the text box and Copyscape will scour the Internet for any duplication. Results are shown in percentages with the repeated content highlighted.
What Can You Do?
Once you determine your web content has been stolen, talk to your web content writers. In some cases, they may prefer to create fresh content to eliminate the duplication as quickly as possible. However, this should not be the only action you take. Your content writing service can help guide you through the steps you should take to ensure the content is removed from the other site.
Contact the Site Owner
While it is unlikely, the site owner may not have realized the content they are using belongs to someone else. They may not have taken the right precautions before posting a new article or site content. Perhaps their web content writers stole the content. In these situations, asking the site owner to kindly remove the offending content because it belongs to you can be the most effective option. However, if the owner refuses, there are other steps you can take.
Track It to the Source
When a website owner paid money for the content, they may be unwilling to take it down just because someone asked. For these situations, ask your content writing service to help you track down the source of the content. In some cases, you may be able to find out what writing service the other website used. Addressing the problem at the source can sometimes get the content removed.
Send a Cease and Desist Letter
A verbal or informal written request may not be enough to elicit the right response out of the owner of the website that has posted your content. If this request doesn’t work, writing and sending a formal cease and desist letter is often the only step you need to take. Fortunately, you don’t have to hire an attorney to take action. Simply ask your content writing service to help you or search for a template online, customizing it to meet your needs.
Contact Advertisers
If all attempts to reason with the website owner fail, you can take further actions. Note who advertises on the site and contact those businesses directly. Many companies want to avoid working with someone who doesn’t respect the work of others. Duplicate content can hurt their advertising efforts, reducing their return on investment.
Request a Search Engine Ban
When you have enough evidence and you can prove the website ignored your requests to remove the content, you can contact the search engine to request a ban. Search engines don’t want to promote content that is stolen from another source. However, they can’t catch it all themselves. Requesting a ban can help make their job easier.
Stolen content is something many website owners fear. You work with reputable web content writers to avoid these issues. However, even working with the best content writing service doesn’t make your site immune to stolen content. Learning how you can find out if someone has taken your content without your permission and what you can do to remove it will help you protect yourself and your site rankings.
If you are looking for a reputable content writing service to avoid duplicate content, contact us. We use Copyscape to check all content, making sure it is 100 percent unique.
