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
-
Facebook: reaching audience who have liked / shared my content
Hi, I am new to social, so the question might be a bit beginner. If I put a like / share / recommend button on my site, or maybe a comment box, how can I reach audiences at a later time, who have interacted with my plugins (liked/shared/commented)? Paid ads would be one solution, but for now I am interested in organic (free) targeting. So if people who share my content do not become fans at the same time, how can I engage them in new updates about my page? Thanks for thoughts.
Social Media | | Valdo22220 -
Best way to create content in Google Plus to help SEO
Hi, I would like to know what is your experience about how to create content for Google+ in order to improve your SEO. I mean, tips like content length, opitmization, links, hashtags, and so on... What do you think? How would you integrate this strategy with the other ones (facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.) Thank you.
Social Media | | teconsite0 -
Does adding a twitter or facebook feed to a website help rankings in regards of providing fresh content?
I have been asked if this is a sufficient way to provide fresh content to a website, however I am unsure if Google considers this as "fresh content", and I can't seem to come across a clear answer. Any thoughts?
Social Media | | pderas0 -
What do I do about old content on my blog?
I run a blog: www.b2bsocialmediaguide.com. It's been going for 2.5 years and some of the old content is, frankly, dated! What do you recommend I do about it? 1. Update old articles with new, more relevant content and change the date? 2. Write new articles with the relevant content and forward the URLs from old articles to the new ones? 3. Do nothing. 4. Just add links to new content from old posts? I don't want to lose link juice!
Social Media | | HeatherBakerTopLine0 -
How to make good content go viral?
Hi, have a question on the distribution of content which is designed to go viral. Let say you have written awesome content, with great visuals, etc which is designed to go viral. Your site is relatively new - not many social media followers, DA authority, or natural traffic. What would be a good process of distributing that content - getting the content out there so it has the best chance and ability to go viral and generate links. So far i have: Use press releases to distribute that content, using a distribution service like: prnewswire.com. Hope its picked up by a news site or something. Contact Facebook Pages or Twitter Pages who have a large audience of the type of people who would be interested in the content. Ask them if they can share the content. Content sites related to the content, and ask them to share it with their users (Give them a incentive e.g. money, a gift, etc) I think number 1 would yield the best possible results in getting actual sites linking to you. 2 and 3 are more designed for people (who very few would have blogs) to read the content. Any other suggestions, i'm missing out on? Any good articles you guys recommend, i should checkout? Thanks, Matt
Social Media | | Mattcarter080 -
How to best promote this content via social media to gain backlinks
I have created this content http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-music/the-worst-function-bands-and-wedding-bands-ever in order to promote it via social media. Ideally I want it to be shared across the web in order to gain backlinks. My question is how can I best do this? I know I can post it on twitter, facebook, google plus etc... but is that it? I'm new to social media and don't really understand how to use it to good effect. By posting it on social networking sites am I risking people copying the content and duplicate content penalties? Any help would be much appreciated!
Social Media | | SamCUK0 -
How Do I get Content & Pictures into Thoora Results?
Wondering if any one is having success with getting their content and pictures into Thoora.
Social Media | | bozzie3110