Duplicate Content

From an online marketing standpoint, a key element of success is unique and compelling content. This means that someone who works for your company website took the time to create content that is unique to your website, and no other site on the internet has the right to put your content on theirs. But what happens when someone outside of your website, maybe a competitor, decides to steal your content and put it on theirs? This is an instance of duplicate content, and it can inadvertently affect your website's search rankings. If two websites have exactly the same content, how much trust do you have in a search engine's algorithm that it will automatically know that you were the original creator of that content and not penalize you?

It is better to be safe than sorry, and luckily there are tools out there to see if anyone has duplicated your content. One tool is Copyscape, a simple interface that will show you if any other site has the same content as you. All you have to do is type in your domain and Copyscape will return you any results of other websites that may be using your content.

So now what does one do if they find that other websites are duplicating your content? First, you should send a polite email to any contact that you can find at that website and ask them to remove your unique content from their database. Many times, the offender might not have realized that they took your content and that it can possibly be affecting your presence on the web. If that person does not comply with your request, there are some escalating measures that you can take in order to protect that content that you (or someone at your company) created.

I have seen this happen first-hand when dealing with clients in the SEO world. Clients have cut and pasted content from other websites without taking the proper measures to ensure that they have permission to do so, and it would negatively affect the rankings and traffic of their site. Once we went in and fixed this problem, we began to see an increase and rankings (and traffic) as we were no longer being penalized for duplicate content.

The bottom line is: Create your own content and copyright it. You own what you created and nobody else should be profiting from your work.