What to do When Your Affiliates Copies Your Page?

by Fabian64

Posted: 14 years ago 20 replies

INTERNET MARKETING

Okay, here's my problem. I created a my Web page to sell my Clickbank product five years ago. I worked hard at getting it ranked and indexed. I wrote articles for ezines and worked on SEO. It payed off and I got ranked in the 1st spot on Yahoo and Bing for my main keywords and 2nd on Google. I was a happy camper. Lately, some of my affiliates have been coping and pasting my sales page to THEIR websites. Often times when this happens, Google, Not Yahoo or Bing, de-indexes my page and indexes their page which they got from me. Even though my page is the one with the backlinks, I get the boot and they get the rank. Yes they copied my page with the SEO but they don't got my backlinks, so... Why doesn't Google see this?

What I have done in the past is write a new article for ezine, post something new on my blog and ping it. Generally, Google's spiders my page again and I get back my ranking in a few days.

Has this happened to you? What did you do about it? Is their a faster way to get indexed again? Sometimes I think my next products should be made available only through Paypal and forget Clickbank. Am I wrong about this?

#affiliates #copies #page

radhika 14 years ago

I will ask them to alter the content a bit so both site contents are not similar.

Nothing wrong in tellng your affiliates to change the content.

If you can provide 3 - 4 templates of different content to your affiliates, it would make their life easier to copy and paste the content.

.
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sousen 14 years ago

Just request them to add your site link when they are using yoru content or complain to Google. i think you affiliater must give you back link form their site
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- connorbringas 14 years ago
  
  Yeah you definitely need to talk to them about that! Id be mad if I were you
  
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- Loren Woirhaye 14 years ago
  
  There's always some randomness and unpredictability to SEO stuff.
  Even if you do everything you think you're supposed to, the
  engines do shake things up.
  
  If you piss off your affiliates they might stop promoting your
  product. Worse, they might use your content to promote your
  competitor's product.
  
  You may want to approach them about changing the content,
  but consider that they are likely to be lazy and if you're giving
  them no option but to take it down and create their own
  content you aren't making an attractive offer to them.
  
  If you want somebody to do something for you it helps to
  offer them something in exchange. A bigger commission perhaps,
  for working with you in the search engines, rather than against
  you.
  
  Thanks
  
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  connorbringas 14 years ago
  
  You have a good point there. You should definitely go about this nicely..Dont be to rude about it
  
  Thanks
  
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Fabian64 14 years ago

Yes it is a touchy subject because I value my affiliates and pissing them off is not what I want to do. It's only about 4 or 5 of my affiliates that are doing this so far.
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- 1 reply
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- connorbringas 14 years ago
  
  Its weird because I thought google wouldnt index copied content..interesting
  
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  2 replies
  
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  bigalan6622 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by connorbringas
  
  Its weird because I thought google wouldnt index copied content..interesting
  
  Yeah that's what I thought too. Maybe it's having trouble distinguishing which is the original and which is the copy. But it should know it's obviously the one with the backlinks...
  
  Thanks
  
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  Fabian64 14 years ago
  
  Yes it's weird what Google is doing. Can't they even see that my page is the one with the backlinks and they have none. In fact, their site with my content is still linking to me but I get the shaft. What's up with that Google? I just used Google's Webmaster Tools last night and it saw over 300 backlinks to my site that I have accumulated over the last few years.
  
  Thanks
  
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BobJutsu 14 years ago

So you want your affiliates to sell stuff for you and drive you leads...as long as they don't hurt your ego and outrank you?

Me, be happy my affiliates are doing so well at bringing me traffic and (lets assume) sales. If they are using your content, then you know for a fact they are giving people information that you approve of...because you wrote it.
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- Fabian64 14 years ago
  
  It's not about ego. It has a lot to do with respect for copyrighted material. I have seen some of my former affiliates take my material and pawn it off as their own and attempt to sell it on Ebay. It's only a small amount of my affiliates. My point is that I was unaware of how my material is being used. My fear is that there might be something of a more serious nature going on that I am not aware of.
  
  BTW... More traffic was coming from Google than from my affiliates. I was ranked in the 2nd position. When Google removes my page and ranks theirs with my content, they have never been ranked in the 2nd position but on the bottom of the first page or top of the second. So yes, this affects my sales and it does matter to me. I don't think this concern makes me a bad person concerned with my ego, just someone concerned about their income. Nothing wrong with that.
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  BobJutsu 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Fabian64
  
  I don't think this concern makes me a bad person concerned with my ego, just someone concerned about their income. Nothing wrong with that.
  
  You're right, there is nothing wrong with being concerned.
  
  Didn't mean to sound harsh, so let me rephrase...What I mean is, there are worse things for an affiliate to do, at least you know that the content being pushed is acceptable content, and if they are ranking in place of you, at least you are still making money.
  
  Thanks
  
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Fabian64 14 years ago

Thanks for all the great input, warriors! I do provide some banners for my affiliates but the suggestions of templates was really good, maybe even video too.

Much success to you all!
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Alexa Smith

Banned 14 years ago

[DELETED]

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L41db4ck 14 years ago

Some s/w promoted on here clones pages..

"I am selling ASQ for way over 2 years now and never had a copyright related problem - although i had one case once where a user outranked the original site and the vendor got mad."

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...ate-sites.html
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Fabian64

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

When you say that they copied your page, do you mean that they literally copied the page, or that they've put some/most/all of the text of your page on their site, perhaps along with other stuff? :confused:

Some of them actually copied my entire page (as in clone), probably copied the page source, and created a page on their website with their affiliate link of course.

This coping my sales page and putting it on someone else's causes problems, eventually. I have made changes to my sales page, but the clones of my sales page out there in cyberspace DO NOT REFLECT THOSE CHANGES because they have the older version of my sales page. When I change my sales price on my sales copy, their cloned pages don't reflect that. I just recently Googled a few of my main keywords and some of the sites that appeared have bonus offers on their cloned page that I NO LONGER OFFER because they were holiday related bonus's. When a holiday passes, I remove the bonus.

Can't you see that this can and does affect sales, not to mention confusion and complaints from my customers?

Thanks
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BobJutsu

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Fabian64

Well, that's a different problem alltogether! That isn't a problem with them copying your content, it is a problem with communication with your affiliates.

Chew on this for a second: If they had, at the time, written their own content about your product and offers, would that change anything? I mean, their page still wouldn't reflect bonus offers that have since been removed, and would still contain outdated information.

So address the specific issues; contact your affiliates and inform them that the bonuses/offer is no longer available and they need to update their page, simple as that. I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but perhaps you should have tested your content, offers, etc and nailed all of that down before opening the product up to affiliates...

And don't lose sight of the fact that your affiliates are not competition, they are your partners. You each have a job to do; your job is to provide the infrastructure and product support, and it's their job to provide the traffic.

But all of that aside, at the end of the day it all comes down to money, so which is going to make/lose you more money; spending your time trying to help your affiliates bring as many customers as possible, or spending your time trying to bring as many customers yourself as possible?

Just food for thought

Thanks

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GoogleWarrior 14 years ago

You should be happy that others are coping you. Copying someone is the highest form of flattery...or the saying goes something like that. If others are copying you... then atleast others think that your style is the best and they want to copy the best. And I dont think that their is much you can do... sorry man.
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