How to provide good quality content if competition is stealing
-
Hi everyone,
I have a customer that is very successful in a worlds niche market in the aviation industry. Following Rand Fishkin and Wil Reynolds I tell them to provide the best content they have for their customers and want them to blog. Now the issue is that their competition is playing unfair and already stole texts from them to present those at aviation fairs.
What do you think?
How can one follow Rands and Wils suggestions without losing in the end?
Cheers
Marc
-
Go to an attorney who practices intellectual property law. You need to play your cards properly in these types of situations. What you learn from this situation can be helpful for future situations and what you establish with your attorney will streamline actions in future situations.
Discuss the following and other topics with the attorney: adequate terms of use for the website, warnings on your website for potential infringers, how others might be able to use your property under fair use, proper copyright registration, informal notices of infringement, formal notices of infringement, DMCA complaints, potential liability and costs that can be incurred if you step into this, other topics that apply to your specific situation..
An informal notice often stops infringement, a formal notice often works when informal notice does not, a DMCA can get their copy of your content out of search or off of a server. DMCA can also get you in trouble.
Legal advice in these situations often costs less than most people fear. Not taking action or taking the wrong action often costs more than most people realize.
Sometimes you can learn a lot from a preliminary discussion with an attorney by phone without incurring any costs. Depending upon your situation and who you consult, you might spend $X000 and come away with knowledge and resources that will significantly reduce your infringement problem. I've done it with more than one attorney just to get diverse perspective and an education. I've gotten my money's worth and my wallet ain't smokin'.
That's about what I can say about this. I am not qualified to give legal advice.
-
I think the hardest thing for you is to prove that the content is originally yours. I would suggest that when creating content make sure that you log the original date created and before making live inform any parties involved on the policing of your industry that the content is yours.
If the other party is simply copy and pasting for offline use it can be a bit harder to prove, but should you be able to get your hands on any hard copies that were created after your publication date you could possibly prove breach of copyrighted material, that is providing they have not simply rewrote the content to make it completely bespoke to them which again make it harder to prove they did not come up with the content.
If they are copying and pasting to their website make sure you add in a few links back to you as a source but also include any details/image with your own meta, watermarks and exif image data etc again tying it back to you. Eventually they will slip up and you will be able to prove they have been plagiarising your work.
If it is online you could also file a spam report with Google to try and get their copied content removed the serps etc. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport This may also help about copyright infrigement in the US - http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-infringement.html / http://www.copyright.gov/
Failing all that I would imagine a court ruling would be the final steps to stop them using your content.
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
-
How can i get good Backlinks for my domain?
Hi there I have a year old domain and still have 1PA and 1DA how can i get moztrust on my domain and how to get backlinks. please advice. http://www.bassilimousine.com/ thanks.
Social Media | | GarySahota0 -
Offshore SEO Providers - Recommendation?
Hi Folks Has anyone had a very good experience with an offshore SEO provider who they would be happy to share? I am looking for a professional offshore firm to manage a 100 Long Tail key word campaign. Social Media, facebook campaign experience a bonus. Kind Thanks, Justin
Social Media | | jchapman50 -
I'd like some thoughts on content I'm considering producing for my discount drug card business...
I'm fairly new to SEO, but I'm trying to learn. I have a discount prescription drug card business and while it's quite new (the website was created in January) I'm not very satisfied with the traffic I'm receiving...that's putting it mildly. I'm contemplating different methods I might be able to exercise in order for my website to show value....to my potential visitors and search engines. First, while I do have a blog I find it extremely difficult to offer well-written material on prescription drugs and what not....while it is my intention to offer a good product and service it's a subject that I don't have enough experience on to write intelligent posts. I'm just not in a position to hire a writer. Essentially I have two thoughts....one, trying to find a doctor, a pharmacist or a pharmacy school whereby I could professionally videotape a presenter talking about various prescription drugs, kind of like a glossary. Which prescriptions are used to treat various ailments, etc... The 2nd idea is a little disconnected to the business of prescription drugs, but along the lines of saving money and being financially sound. In this example I would tape 30 second pieces where a financial consultant might give different lessons about ways to save money or be financially prudent. For someone looking to save money on prescription drugs...this could be very useful information. My reasoning with both of these is providing original material that could make my site more authoritative and provide rich content. Videotaping these would be a good option for me because that's my primary business. I appreciate your patience and feedback. Any other ideas or input would be most welcome! Thank you.
Social Media | | MyMeds0 -
Would great contents alone, be enough for ranking high?
Hi and thank you everyone for reading this post. Recently I had purchased a business including the domain. The website has been around for over 10 years with some links pointing back to it including couple of links from dmoz. I am in the process of up dating the website but most of the pages are not relevant anymore and thus will not be in the new website. I have couple of questions: 1. Since some of those old pages are getting some backlinks, would it be prudent to keep the url and 301 it to say homepage or another page? I want to work out the best way of utilising the current backlinks. Is this the best way? 2. The website is in a highly competitive industry and I want to add a lot of informative contents. The contents will be well written (professionally) and not for the sake of SEO but for providing valuable information for users. Whilst I'm adding the contents, what would be best way of drawing attention of the potential users to it? If I release the same content as a way of notes in its FB page, would that be considered as duplicate content in the eyes of Google? Or should I just share the link on FB? What are the other mediums available that considered to be effective for sharing contents. I'm also thinking about guest blogging for selected blogs. Would this be an effective way of increasing the authority of my website? I should say that at the moment the site has a PA of 44 for the homepage and DA of 35. Are these numbers OK? Thanks again.
Social Media | | nojan0 -
Publishing Content Through a Single Persona
Hi, I have a client who's made some changes to their content strategy. They want to use a single author for all content produced and publish, to maintain a consistent identity across the web. This single author is a persona e.g. "Joe Bloggs" but this is not a real person. This works fine for creating and publish content (for their blog and outside blog posts). It allows many people to work on creating and publishing content under the same name, which for a number of reasons makes good logistical sense. The problem arises when it comes to social marketing. They have set up a Facebook and Google + profile and Facebook and Google business pages. The main issue is that they are finding it difficult to friend other people because nobody knows this "Joe Bloggs" persona. Can anybody offer advise on how to approach this kind of strategy. Thanks,
Social Media | | Leighm0 -
Ways to get the most out of your content/blog posts?
I've been working on posting more content on my blog and now I need a workflow to help me get more exposure on my posts. Currently this is what I'm doing: 1- Write Post 2- Add it to my favorites in Stumbled Upon 3- Post it to Facebook 4- Pin it in Pinterest I would love some more ideas. My goal at this point is to gain greater web exposure. I would love to be they type of blog others actively follow.
Social Media | | continuumphoto0 -
Viral Marketing Question: If you build a truly great piece of content, what are the best ways to seed it?
Say the site is a 2 year old eCommerce company that has this awesome clever infographic but not many blogger connections. What would be the best ways to get that content syndicated? What agencies are still left that do actual viral marketing now that Rand and Todd Malicoat have moved on the greener pastures?
Social Media | | zachc_coffeeforless.com0