Hi everyone and thank you in advance for your helpful comments.

We have a client who is concerned about copying of content from their site because it has happened a few times in the last few years. We have explained that the content is essentially publicly available and that using the CSS selector user-select to prevent selection of text will really only prevent the technically limited users from working out how to get the text. He is happy that it will at least stop some people. So the question is would there be any way that this would have an affect on SEO? We would make an assumption that it doesnt but putting it out there for some feedback.

Cheers

Eddie

Hi Jon, Just filled in the request form and you say we will be added in the next batch. Will we receive an email when we are added or will we need to keep checking. If you could let me know that would be appreciated.....save me checking all the time.

Certainly seems like the wrong thing to do. A good test is that if you think it may be dodgy it probably is. I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a tactic. There are potentially multiple issues with this....duplicate content as you mentioned but also dilution of real links. Good quality legitimate links could link to the Ghost site and therefore not count for the real site.

I have seen issues where it is a legitimate attempt to have a .com and .co.uk on the same shop and ended up with both versions online due to incompetent development but I didn't have to deal with cleaning it up.

Un-picking that could be messy. A good example of quick fix SEO for a fast buck I suspect.

Thanks for the responses. It was my opinion that technically it should not affect anything but with the current direction of SEO and the potential affects of Engagement as ranking factors I thought it might be interesting to discuss.

Appreciate your comments....thanks

Hi Jeff

I would rather not identify the specific business.

The reason for removing the phone number is because it is a mobile number and the nature of the business means that they may get calls from other countries. This means the phone is ringing at any time of the day.

I agree it is not ideal but they do not have a landline number and a business phone cannot be manned all of the time. It is a strange set up but they are quite a small business and certainly not a typical client.

thanks for you comments

We have had an interesting question from a client. They have asked if removing their phone number from their website would have an affect on their rankings. Our immediate answer was 'No' but it may affect the Brand, Usability and Customer experience by restricting the methods of contact. This then made us think that perhaps then it could have an effect in the long term. This situation is also complicated by the fact that they do not have a Google Local Plus account for operational, sensitivity reasons (they don't want to openly publicise their address)

We believe that there shouldn't be any negative affect but thought we would open a discussion. Thanks in advance for any comments/ideas.

Certainly seems like the wrong thing to do. A good test is that if you think it may be dodgy it probably is. I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a tactic. There are potentially multiple issues with this....duplicate content as you mentioned but also dilution of real links. Good quality legitimate links could link to the Ghost site and therefore not count for the real site.

I have seen issues where it is a legitimate attempt to have a .com and .co.uk on the same shop and ended up with both versions online due to incompetent development but I didn't have to deal with cleaning it up.

Un-picking that could be messy. A good example of quick fix SEO for a fast buck I suspect.