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Bigger Sites Stealing My Content & Outranking Me - How To Deal With It

by JamesPenn
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Over the last few months, I've had a number of my articles go viral and as a result bigger websites in my market have been republishing my articles in full and without permission.

In exchange they simply stick a link at the bottom of the article saying...

"H/T: My Site Name"

With "My Site Name" linked back to my original blog post. I can't even work out what H/T stands for - any ideas?

One of these websites has republished my article and from looking at the social shares on the side has had 111,000 Facebook likes, 625 Tweets and over 8000 Pins.

Their Google Page Rank is 4 and they are around about the 4,000th most popular site in the world according to Alexa.

As a result, their article is now outranking mine for all sorts of keywords related to the article.

What is the best way for me to deal with this?

Of course, I could contact them and ask them to remove the article, but that would likely be ignored and may not be the most beneficial thing for me.

I've read recently about canonical links but know very little about it. Could I ask them to give me a more prominent backlink at the top of the article and make it canonical. If I understand correctly, that will basically tell Google to pass all link juice earned back to my blog post?

If both of these fail, I suppose I could email all the people linking to the copied article, tell them what has happened, and ask them to change their links to my article.

Does anyone know the best way to proceed with this so it will give me maximum benefit?

Thanks,
James
#bigger #content #deal #outranking #sites #stealing
  • Profile picture of the author LuckyIMer
    Contact their web hosting providers and send a DMCS notice, also you can report these sites to Google if they do not take down the stolen content or if the web host is not helpful.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Power
    Google sucks at ranking original content. You already have some great ideas to tackle this issue and LuckyIMer has given some great tips as well.

    Contacting the sites linking to the copied article to change the links to yours is a form of negative SEO, but you'd be right in doing that since your article was copied without permission.

    One more thing, don't presume they won't take down the article if you contact them. Do it first. If they don't respond favourably, try the next idea.
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  • Profile picture of the author npoint
    DMCS works very well, they should dissapear from results very fast
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  • Profile picture of the author JamesPenn
    Thanks for your advice.

    I'm wondering though if there is a better way for me to benefit than to get the content removed - particularly in search engine rank.

    How do I approach it so that I request they link to me using a type of link that sends all the link juice back to me. I've read about it before but can't find out more about it now and the technicalities of it.

    James
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      ROTFLMAO! What the frick is a DMCS?

      And some of you even copy that!!!!!!!!!!!

      Blind leading the blind.

      Forget a DMCA. Waste of time for the most part.

      The net is full of copied and stolen content. And you are proof positive
      that google could care less, and ranks a good portion of it.

      Move on.

      And next time you see loonies talking about duplicate content and other such
      rot, you know exactly how to reply.

      Even people in the United States with US based websites can copy some content.
      There are legal ways of doing it. Outside the US, forget it. If you think other countries
      give a rip about US law and treaties, forget it.

      You are also mistaken about link juice and canonical urls.

      Seems to me, you want your stuff shared. If not, take it offline.

      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author Entrecon
    I did a Google search and evidently H/T stands for "Hat Tip". When you tip your hat to someone, it usually means your acknowledging them.

    Not knowing your Niche and what you are trying to achieve, my question is why exactly is this a problem? Granted, you are not picking up the top rank in Google, but are you still getting first page or are you completely gone out of the results? Are you tracking your incoming traffic to see if you are getting any traffic from those H/T links?

    I always look at what the goal is and then look to see how an action impacts that goal. Yea, it sucks that someone is stealing your information, but if the end goal is to get traffic driven to your site or build your authority the end result may be a positive.
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  • Profile picture of the author jitu
    This is a common problem, Google Panda does that to the sites, and more so the latest Google panda 4

    The most effective solution to this is asking the sites which host your content to do a Rel= canonical for that page to your site. Then Google knows that you are the original version, so you get the rankings benefits. You also get the traffic and branding benefits by having your content on other big sites.

    here is a simple tutorial by google as to how rel=canonical is done and more info about it.

    https://support.google.com/webmaster...r/139066?hl=en

    This is win-win for you, you get rankings,traffic, original credit and don't suffer SEO issues. You also get additional traffic and links from those sites.

    Regards
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    It's probably a scraper site that will never answer an email. So basically your option is to have stronger SEO than the scraper site.
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    • Profile picture of the author seekdefo
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      It's probably a scraper site that will never answer an email. So basically your option is to have stronger SEO than the scraper site.
      He said bigger websites in the market are copying his content. Obviously they aren't scraper sites. And they have stronger SEO than him.
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  • Profile picture of the author Melinda123
    DMCS works very well, they should dissapear from results very fast.

    I always look at what the goal is and then look to see how an action impacts that goal. Yea, it sucks that someone is stealing your information, but if the end goal is to get traffic driven to your site or build your authority the end result may be a positive.
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  • Profile picture of the author seekdefo
    Your name sounds familiar. Ok I will not reveal the site but it's in the health niche right, natural and stuff. Been a fan of yours. I don't understand how others are copying you since what you do is publish excerpts of the posts.

    Anyway rel=canonical tag is one thing that you can ask them do. H/t means hat tip okay, it's given in blogposts to express gratitude and sometimes as a feeble way to get away with copying or taking someone else's content.

    Filing DMCA is another but it takes time. But once they get a notice they should wisen up, so I suggest going that way too.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lyanna
    At least they H/T and linked to you! This sort of thing happens to people all the time (including me) and there's nothing much you can do.
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  • Profile picture of the author SirThomas
    The bigger authority sites could post weak article and and it would outrank yours. That's reality. Other sites link to them, because they are authority site...

    If you want to become more known in your field, check who links to the copy of your article and contact everyone directly with your new article. Repeat the process until you become THE authority.

    Want another tip? Spy on ALL the sites that are above yours, check who links to their other articles and then let them know that you've got new article available...
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    • Profile picture of the author nik0
      Banned
      Lately you made a post that your site is hardly ranking for any new content you publish.

      So shouldn't you be happy that they host it so that you at least get some traffic from them? As you won't get it from Google anyway if I have to believe your last post.

      If every single piece of content you publish get's picked up by other sites then that might be a reason of the poor rankings as well, but that seems highly unlikely.
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