Sites Copying my Content Ranking Higher
-
A number of sites are copying - either 100% word for word, paragraphs, or sentences of my content and are ranking higher.
Some sites are doing this with permission/properly and are linking back to my article Others are not linking back or giving credit.
Some of these sites, in some cases are ranking higher than me in Google results.
What can I do?
-
It will make an impact. I have had authorship set up for months now and it has made a difference to click-throughs. Basically I have more traffic now than before. And I believe this is partly due to the photo in the SERPs.
We put an authorship plugin together for WordPress as we needed to implement authorship on our own sites and client sites. It's free - you can try it if you feel you can't or don't want to do it manually. http://www.authorsure.com.
-
Ben, you can read this thread.
-
Thanks. Is that an automatic thing if I meet the guidelines? Cant see how to sign up for it..
-
Take a look at First Click Free from google.
-
Thanks.
I'm going to try to set up the author profiles and see what happens with that. I gain something from most of the people sharing my content (not as much as I lose from them ranking above me) so I'd rather just find a way to get myself above them 9 times out of 10 and that seems like a great option. Hopefully that will reduce any impact of Panda changes?
-
Hi EGOL,
I am having the same issue also, these websites are not out ranking me for a particular keyword, however if I copy and paste the first few paragraphs of text into Google on one of my product pages lots of other websites are above my listing that has copied my content, even though my page has higher authority and PR.
Should I be worrying about this?
Kind Regards
-
do a search for "wp content protect", you'll have to be cautios because those plugins can harm your seo strategy.
-
Agreed, he needs to evolve a strategy that is based on 2 things:
a) Claiming authorship of his original content
b) Devising ways to prevent content theft
At the same time, if his site was inflicted with a Panda-penalty, he will make a lot of gains using authorship.
-
One of the easiest ways for you to rank higher than those sites would be to setup author profiles and claim yourself as the author of the original content.
I believe that this is a very good idea. However, I am confident that it will not solve the problem. Google is not giving strong weight to claimed authorship at this time.
Your strongest weapon is DMCA actions and to stop giving others permission to use your content.
Your site could be suffering from Panda ranking reductions as a result of your own content being wild on the web.
-
Ok. Thanks... you think this would make a big impact in general with search engine results?
-
That is correct.
-
Headshot and real persons name?
Thx
-
It wont work without a proper headshot.
-
But is there a way to set it so that it wont show my name/picture?
Thanks
-
The author profile is just a way to authenticate yourself to Google. If you have the ability to set profiles for other people of your company, you should be fine.
-
Can I do author profile without using my name? I have stuff written by other people/don't include my name on the site.
-
It must look different where you are. I get the exact match domain, haaretz.com, then a couple of copies of mine, and then mine.
I'll look at the author profile.
-
There is not a simple solution for your particular case. Your site ranks below an exact match domain and another site that is haaretz.com. It would be very difficult to rank above chriscornell.com as it is an exact match domain.
Haaretz.com has a domain authority of 91, while your site's domain authority is 40. Until you tell the search engines that the content posted on haaretz.com is originally yours, it would seem difficult for your site to outrank haaretz.com
As a first step, I will setup an author profile using g+. That should give you more visits since your author profile information should include headshot as well.
Besides this, I don't thin there are many options that are available off the table. You will need to work on improving your site's overall authority.
-
Thanks. I'm using Wordpress, what would you suggest?
-
Thanks for the reply. The site url is www.touristisrael.com and an example is if you Google:
"Chris Cornell in Israel" or
"Chris Cornell in Tel Aviv"
Do you mean author profiles on Google +?
-
Do you mind sharing your site's URL? One of the easiest ways for you to rank higher than those sites would be to setup author profiles and claim yourself as the author of the original content. It would be a way to tell Google that it's your content.
It may take a few weeks time for things to settle down.
-
Try using some plugins to protect your content if you're using any cms, it's not enough but it's a start...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking in other countries.
Hi, To rank in Dubai and UK is it just a matter of mentioning it in a blog post or more technical things need to be setup? we have two sites one empty which i have 301 to the main site would you use the other site for dubia? Regards
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve0 -
Is putting a manufacturer's product manual on my site in PDF duplicate content
I add the product manuals to our product pages to provide additional product information to our customers. Is this considered duplicate content? Is there a best way to do this so that I can offer the information to my customers without getting penalized for it? Should they be indexable? If not how do I control?
Technical SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Duplicate Content
Hello guys, After fixing the rel tag on similar pages on the site I thought that duplicate content issue were resolved. I checked HTML Improvements on GWT and instead of going down as I expected, it went up. The duplicate issues affect identical product pages which differ from each other just for one detail, let's say length or colour. I could write different meta tags as the duplicate is the meta description, and I did it for some products but still didn't have any effects and they are still showing as duplicates. What would the problem be? Cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Merged old wordpress site to new theme and have crazy amount of 4xx and duplicate content that wasn't there before?
URL is awardrealty.com We have a new website that we merged into a new wordpress theme. I just crawled the site with my seomoz crawl tool and it is showing a ridiculous amount of 4xx pages (200+) and we cant find the 4xx pages in the sitemap or within wordpress. Need some help? Am i missing something easy?
Technical SEO | | Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.0 -
Will rankings for my micro site rank better if I 301 redirect it to my main site?
This is my first time asking so I will try to be as clear as possible. Ok, I have a micro site that is an (exact match domain) and the domain is a couple 3-4 years old and ranks very well for several search terms. The main two terms it ranks for are like this. houses for rent in XXXXX XXXXX homes for rent (XXXXX equals a city name) The issue is this site has no backlinks, zero advanced SEO, I only did basic optimization to it when i set the site up. Even site structure, url structure all are not good.
Technical SEO | | Robbie8299
The only page I have ever even seen rank is the main root url. But with all that the site does really good in the top 1-2 results for key search terms. Now, I have a main site that is a very big site that has steadily been climbing in search terms every month with great backlinks, optimized for the city and all.
It currently ranks on second page for the listed search terms listed above. What I want to do is 301 redirect this microsite to my city page on my main site that is much better optimized for the key city terms.
The 301 redirect would point this "root domain" (mymicrosite.com) to my city page that looks like this. www.mymaindomain.com/city/XXXXXXX If I do this will Google rank my main URL city page as well as it ranks this microsite with zero links, seo, etc, etc. What happens if it does not? Will I be able to turn off the 301 redirect and keep the microsite rankings? My main reason for wanting this is I want this city page to rank well and I only want to optimize one site instead of both. Any help would be great!0 -
Duplicate content domains ranking successfully
I have a project with 8 domains and each domain is showing the same content (including site structure) and still all sites do rank. When I search for a specific word-string in google it lists me all 8 domains. Do you have an explanation, why Google doesn't filter those URLs to just one URL instead of 8 with the same content?
Technical SEO | | kenbrother0 -
.CA site same as .com site - are both necessary?
Dear Friend, We representa a major national brand in the auto care industry, and they have locations in both US and Canada. There is a primary content site at .com that we have duplicated at .ca. We are hosting the .ca site on a separate IP on a server in Canada - but by in large it is the same site. (there are some minor changes we made to change US English to Canadian English - though minor. When we search Google.ca we generally see strong search results for the .com site, but rarely, if ever any evidence of rankings for the .ca site. The .com site was launched several years ago about 18 months before the .ca site. Why doesn't Google.ca show the .ca site? Is this an issue of duplicate content, and Google.ca simply shows the .com version which it knew about first? Are we wasting our time, money and efforts having both? Thanks, Tim ps. this isn't about location. We use a separate site to locate local shops, and have coordinated that well with Google Places, and when looking for local auto care - we do well in both US and Canada. The sites described above are largetl content sites.
Technical SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
Moving Site with #1 Ranking to New Domain
I want to move a site of mine that ranks #1 for many keywords to a new domain name. I have already redirected many smaller less important sites to the new domain, but have held off on my most popular site. If I redirect the entire site with a 301 redirect, what can I expect with my number one ranking, particular for coveted search terms..thanks for the input.
Technical SEO | | insync0