With all of Google’s algorithm changes, content on your website has become incredible important and incredible valuable. Content is king is an overused phrase among SEO consultants and online professionals.” Content is gold” is more like it! Google currently punishes sites with duplicate content (Google’s PANDA algorithm update) , unfortunately Google does not recognize (as of yet) who published the content first, so your site could be a victim of being punished because someone has stolen your content and therefore Google believe you have duplicate content.

See here more in depth explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Panda

So how do you protect your content? :

1. Make sure your content is unique ( did you borrow it?)
2. Go to http://www.copyscape.com/ and put each of your pages in and check to see if anyone is copying your work

So you have checked and discover your work is being copied! What do you do? First try the nice approach, contact the website owner and explain that you believe they have some of your copyright material on their site and you would like it removed, make sure and tell them you’re are trying the nice way first.

If that doesn’t work do the following, do a whois and find out who hosts their site. Contact the host, usually an address abuse@thedomain.com fill out a preset form like this:

To Whom It May Concern,

This letter is a Notice of Infringement as authorized in § 512(c) of the U.S. Copyright Law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I wish to report an instance of Copyright Infringement. The infringing material appears on the Service for which you are the designated agent.

1. The copyrighted material, which I contend belongs to me and appears illegally on the Service, is the following:

Content “[your website]” written by [your name], posted on [March 10 2008]

2. The unauthorized material appears at the website address: [http://www.thomasfougere.com/services/ ]

3. My contact information is as follows:

Name
Address
Phone -email

4. I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials as described above is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

5. I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

Type your name here

I also usually attach screen shots so when the person denies the theft ( after they remove it) I have proof. Most web hosts want nothing to do with any copy right problems and will require websites to remove it within24 hours, response is usually pretty good.

If this does not work the next thing you can do is to report the theft to Google to have site delisted, this takes more time but does work.

The last and final step is to threaten with a lawyer, I myself have never had to go this far but would if need be.

Keeping your content safe and unique can be a lot of work but the rewards of having good Google rankings make it all worthwhile. Hopefully in the future Google will devise a way to figure who created the content in order to save us this problem.

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