How to explain to a client that duplicate content is bad...

[PeaSoupDigital]

Afternoon!

An SEO client of ours has copied a load of landing/category page content from other sites. Lots of emails have been sent back and forth asking them to remove it, but they are adamant to keep it up there until we have time to amend it. We have explained to them:

• The Google penalty risks
• The copyright risks
• The short and long-term implications for their brand new business/website
• The money they are spending on our SEO package could be completely wasted if they're caught

I think the above is pretty black and white, but the director of this company will not budge. Does anyone have any different approaches? The director said he's happy for us to amend the content but, in the meantime, the plagiarised content will not be removed.

Cheers,

Lewis

[PeaSoupDigital]

The client will not remove the content until we have new content ready to go. He will not leave these pages blank, despite our advice that no content is much, much better than duplicated/plagiarised content.

We don't have the resource to write all this content within a short space of time, so we're going to have to run the risk of a penalty as the client is not budging on this.

[Chris661]

Thanks!

[EGOL]

You can use a service like CopyScape to crawl the web looking for your content.

Or, you can copy a unique sentence from your work, paste it into a google search box between "quotation marks" and that will reveal where that sentence has been duplicated.

[Chris661]

EGOL- Is there a tool you use to find the stolen content?

[EGOL]

I'd take the approach that you can do a BETTER job with the content,

If you decide to work for this person, then Joey's suggest here is the way to go.  Duplicate content is not very competitive.  You compete with the original source.  If you have unique you get more traffic.  If you have quality unique people will share it for you.

Also, if you have duplicated my content I will submit DMCA to Google, submit complaints to Adsense, submit DMCA to your host.  I do these things as routine a couple times each week.

[gowebsol]

Is it black and white? It seems to me you are still looking at it as a gray area. He may be adamant, but how hard really is it to just write new content vs. "amending" it? I'd take the approach that you can do a BETTER job with the content, but he needs to dump the plagiarized content first. Nothing else you do will overcome the hit from that. If the content owners are emailing him, that means it's been out there more than long enough for Google to see it too. It's probably already too late.

Wasted money if their caught? It's wasted already. I'm totally with @EGOL on this - this guy sounds like a total wildcard and doesn't deserve any of our time.

[ThomasHarvey]

I would personally approach this from a financial point of view, bring up both pages of content and show your customer the two side by side, then ask them "Why would a customer want to buy from you rather than the other store?" This approach has personally worked for me when all technical avenues have failed, as after all this is the same sort of lines that search engines live by showing the customer the most relevant page.

[EGOL]

the director of this company will not budge.... the plagiarised content will not be removed.

He is a weasel.  He steals content, knows it is wrong and is adamant about continuing to steal and benefit from his theft.

He will cheat you too if he gets the chance.   If you amend this content then you have become a participant in his criminal acts.

If he gets caught he is going to blame everything on you.

Does anyone have any different approaches?

Stop working for this criminal.  He is going to run up a big bill with you and then say that he does not know you, never did business with you, call you a liar.