Scapers and Other Sites Outranking

[Troyville]

Post panda, there is definitely more talk about scrapers or other (more authoritative) sites outranking the original content creators in the SERPS.

The most common way this problem is addressed (from what I've seen) is by rewriting the content and try your hardest to be the first one to be indexed or just ignoring it from an on page standpoint and do more link dev.

Does anyone have any advice on the best way to address?  Should site owners be looking deeper into their analytics and diagnostics before doing the rewrites?

[EGOL]

I would not rewrite.

If your competitors are grabbing lots of your original content and using it you could contact an attormey to take copyright action against them or file DMCA complaints.

You need to be really serious about this to take these steps and have the ability to prove the the content is your own.

[Troyville]

Thank you EGOL.  Would you suggest a rewrite as well as link development or just the link development as a stand alone.  These are for product descriptions.

[EGOL]

I think there are two issues here....

1. Google can not identify the original author of a document.  They can tell who got indexed first but that is not necessarily the author.  The author might have distributed in print or by email or on unindexed webpages before publishing in the open online.   If you want to declare public ownership of a document you should prepare an author page and link to it from each of your works using the rel="author" attribute on the links.  More information.  This could help your original content to outrank verbatim duplicates on the web - maybe.

2. Scrapers are usually pretty easy to beat in the SERPs if you have a genuine site with lots of links from other sites in your topic niche.  If they are beating you then the best way to fight it in the SERPs is to get more links.  The answer is the same when genuine, more authoritative sites beating you with copies of your own content.

In my opinion, people who syndicate their content are at greatest risk for this problem.  Don't syndicate your content.  It feeds your existing competitors and creates new ones.  Then your site gets lost in a sea of duplicate content.