stolen content

Imagine this: you’re surfing the web one day and you come upon a website with copy that looks surprisingly like yours. The headlines, slogans, content is nearly identical, the layout is a duplicate, and the images are so similar that pretty soon you’re grinding your teeth in anger. Who dared to steal your work in such a disgraceful, copycat way? Well, instead of just fuming, let’s talk about the action steps that you can take to identify and stop content theft from happening in it’s tracks. As expert online copywriters, we know exactly what you can do—and we’re sharing it here! Content Theft: What In The World Do You Do? We’ve had many people pose as us, since a successful writing agency seems to be the perfect candidate for struggling writing agencies to mimic. (In this case, flattery is not the best compliment.) Some have copied our service pages word for word. The good news is, these posers didn’t last. While content theft is a tragic and infuriating scenario, it’s one that affects many writers and marketers every year. From large-scale operations that duplicate entire websites to lazy bloggers who are happy to just copy and paste your text into their content fields, there are dozens of ways for people to steal your content. Luckily, there are also dozens of ways for you to go after them when they do. Let’s talk business. Stolen Content: The Writer’s Worst Fear  While it may seem insufferably audacious for anyone to steal content and use it as their own, it happens literally all of the time. According to a 2013 statement by Google’s Matt Cutts, anywhere from 25-30% of the web is made up of duplicate content. This is a shocking number, I know, but I have something else that’s even more shocking for you: Google doesn’t penalize duplicate content. Because there are many different types of duplicate content (including legitimate, syndicated duplicate content that’s been published or shared on a variety of platforms) Google refrains from punishing duplicate content unless it is obviously spam. While this approach is meant to prevent webmasters who have duplicate content published on multiple URLs from incurring penalties, it also makes it difficult for Google to smack down people who blatantly steal your content. Even though Google doesn’t out rightly penalize people who steal your content, stolen content hurts in a myriad of ways. Most notably, stolen content makes it harder than it already is for your site to rank well in the SERPs and gain the traffic boosts high-quality content typically affords you. When a person steals your content, it’s possible that the blog post you spent hours writing, proofreading, researching, and editing will be doomed to the fifth page of a search result while a stolen copy ranks as #1. Because Google doesn’t always understand who is the original owner of a content, this outcome is not only possible but probable. Luckily, all hope is not lost. While it may be difficult, there are many effective ways to go after people who steal your content. Locating and Addressing Stolen Content: 5 Proactive Steps to Stop Content Theft To discover and address stolen content online, follow these steps: 1. Use a plagiarism checker to find stolen content Plagiarism checkers are some of the most effective tools for locating stolen online content. While these may be simple tools (they work by scanning input content for duplicate words or phrases on the web), they’re reliable and are by far some of the easiest and most reliable sources to begin addressing stolen content. Here are two good plagiarism checkers. Copyscape: Copyscape is a simple, easy-to-use platform that scans the web for duplicate content. One of the most frequently used tools for copywriters and editors, Copyscape offers both a free and paid service. The paid service is more extensive and it’s what we at Express Writers use to check all of our content for plagiarism and theft. To use Copyscape, simply purchase credits (a steal at $0.05 each) and then input your content to find out if it shows up anywhere else on the web. Check out what happens when I put in a snippet of a recent blog post titled “25 Reasons Every Business Needs a Go-To SEO Copywriter:” If you hit Compare Text, you can see exactly how much of the content is “duplicate” and where it’s found–and how much duplicacy is there (they give you a final percentage). Copyscape is effective, simple, and cheap enough that even small businesses can use it to find out if their content has been stolen or not. 2. Grammarly: Grammarly is an online grammar and spelling checker that’s become popular in the online marketing community. What many people don’t know, however, is that Grammarly also has a powerful plagiarism detector that checks over 8 billion webpages. Check out what happens when I input the same blog snippet for “25 Reasons:” Ideal for finding exactly the URL that’s stealing your content, Grammarly is a powerful tool that can help you track down stolen content quickly and easily. 2. Implement electronic alerts to monitor your content Electronic alerts like those offered by Google Alerts are a fantastic way to get a heads-up whenever someone attempts to steal your content. Free, simple, and easy to use, Google Alerts allows you to input your content into the search query and get an alert if Google detects duplicate copies online. Keep in mind that Google issues an alert for every single word you input into the search query, so not all of the alerts you get will be actual duplicate content. While it can be frustrating to sift through the results, this is an effective way to receive notifications about any duplicate content before it gets out of control. With BuzzSumo, you can also set up content monitoring. I love this tool and have a daily email notification set up to come to my inbox anytime someone mentions “express writers” on the web. (On the plus side of brand monitoring, … Read more