How to prevent someone from stealing your content?

If someone steal your content and replace your name with his/her name, what should you do?

This is a very common problem. Two days ago, I just discovered that one article that I submitted to an article directory was copied without giving the proper accreditation to me. The ‘thief’ changed my article title, changed the author name to his name and changed the backlink to my website to his affiliate link. The content was left intact. Can you imagine how angry I am? Especially after spending long hours to write this article that contains valuable content? template customisation free website templates Icon Sets.

If you were me, what would you do?

I did the following:

  1. Check out whois for the web host and the website owner details
  2. Sent two polite, but stern emails, one to the owner and the other to the web host, informing them they have infringed the copyright issue and request them to either remove the article from the site or to give proper accreditation to me. We are a seo company.
  3. Wait for 48 hours and check the website again.

Guess what? The article was removed when I checked the website again 48 hours later.

What if the above actions do not work?

In that case, you have to bring the case to a higher authority.

  1. Contact the affiliate master that this particular affiliate is using illegal content to promote their products and request them to remove his affiliate status
  2. Report the website to all major search engines to get the website banned, stating that the website has broken the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

90% of the time, these will solve the issue. If all fail, you may have to consider taking legal action.

Lastly, here are some of the methods that you can use to protect your content.

Include in your article a unique phrase, such as “do it yourself search engine optimization (SEO)”. Enter that exact phrase into Google search box, with quotes around the phrase and examine the result page. If you find the phrase on website other than your own, mostly likely your content was stolen

In addition, use Copyscape to check for copies of your page in the Web regularly.

Hope these tips are helpful to you.

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