How to Beat Content Thieves

Have you ever found your own words on someone else’s blog, or a photo you took on another website? Material that you publish online can be easily stolen. Protect your website. Learn how you can beat web content thieves in this article.

Whenever you create content on your website, you are the legal owner of intellectual property. All copyrights of this content belong to you. However, if you do not protect your online content, you may be predisposed to to content theft. Not only does plagiarism give credit to someone else through your hard work, but duplicate content online is penalized by Google and it may be your website that suffers the consequences.

Take the necessary steps to prevent web content theft from happening to you and learn some effective measures on fighting copyright violations if you fall victim.

5 Ways to Stay Protected

1. Copyright your material. The most important step you can make to protect your material is to file a copyright in your country. Without a copyright, your content is practically free for all to take without legal repercussions. Inform yourself about the copyright requirements in your country. In the United States, you can find the copyright office at http://www.copyright.gov/ where you can also read up on the latest copyright laws.

2. Get a license. A simpler and less costly way to get your content protected is to get a Creative Commons license at the website http://creativecommons.org/.

3. Watermark and notify. Prevent image theft by using a watermark and low-resolution pictures. Add a sentence to your image informing viewers that the image is copyrighted and that permission to use is required. You can also use a watermark to protect your text.

4. Use website tools. Avoid identity theft or any misuse of sensitive personal information with available website tools. At Webnode, you can lock your confidential information with password-protected pages.

5. Track your content. There are a number of tools online that can help you track if your content is being misused on other websites. They are very easy to use and effective.

• Google Alerts: Set a special part of your text in Google Alerts and the system will send you an email if it comes up anywhere on the web.
• Trackback: A linkback method implemented in a blog or website, which sends notifications to web owners that their content was added on another website. You’ll be notified when someone else linked to your post on their website!
• Copyscape: Use Copyscape to search for any plagiarized content. Just insert the unique content and the plagiarism checker will detect any duplicate content for you.

How to Fight Against Content Theft

If you find your content copied by someone else on the Internet, react immediately so it’s not your website that gets a lower search engine ranking due to duplicate content. There are a number of effective ways you can reach a solution.

1. Contact the webmaster directly. Many people are not aware that the content was not free to share so the first step is to politely contact the web owner to remove or modify the content in question.

2. If step one doesn’t bring results, contact the website’s hosting company to look into the issue and take the necessary measures. If you discover copyright infringement on any Webnode website, contact us at abuse@webnode.com. Our policies do not allow plagiarized content to be published on any Webnode website.

3. Invite them for a partnership. This is an alternative method for dealing with web content thieves, but it’s actually a great way to turn a bad situation into a good one. Clearly, the copycat considered the content to be so good, they claimed it as their own. Get a deal out of this admiration and cooperate.

4. Contact search engines. Report the content theft to Google through a series of steps that Google DCMA policies require on this page.

Which method have you used to fight content theft? Want to know how to do SEO? We have a detailed guide for you.