If you don’t take action, others will steal your content and profit from it without crediting you. People are stealing content because they know it’s valuable and they have the power to do so without your permission
In today’s digital age, there are billions of websites around the globe and thousands of them are created every day.
There are an increasing number of online apps and websites in today’s world. They are often created every, with about 1 thousand per day.
Every day, there are hundreds of thousands of new domains registered and website created. The problem is where do you draw the line?
How can you protect your content from theft and copycat? We have a solution.
Why it is important to protect your content from copycats
Search Engine Optimization Impact
Many people think that if another site copies their content, then search engines will penalise all sites with duplicate content. It’s not actually that bad for search engine optimization results.
You might be thinking: if search engines find duplicate content, they look at which content is most important and index that version of the content.
This means that if someone copies your text and publishes it on their own website, there is a chance that their text will be indexed instead of yours.
The truth is, this is unlikely to happen because search engine algorithms are very sophisticated and know what signs to look for.
They look at when each version was published to decide which is the final content they should index.
So if you post some text on your site and someone else copies it a few months later, Google will know that your text comes first.
Credibility
As potential customers discover the duplicated content on your site and on another site, they may perceive your site as less trustworthy.
They’re unlikely to notice it, but it happens, especially if someone copied something really important text, like the keywords on your homepage.
So duplicate content isn’t the end of the world, but it’s still worth keeping in mind.
Proven ways to protect your content from copycats
There are methods to protect your content from copycats. With the right tools, you too can place your online content in a stronger, safer place. Here are three ways to implement it on your website.
Disable the copy-paste option
Your web development team can easily protect your website content from copy-paste by adding scripts to your web pages.
This option is especially recommended for photographers, artists, designers, exclusive sellers, etc. who display their work on their website.
While this will block most users, someone who knows the code can get past this layer of security.
If you’re using WordPress and have some understanding of coding, you can disable the copy-paste option by inserting the HTML code into the header, body tag or Additional CSS.
Alternatively, WordPress users can simply install a plugin WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click or No Right Click Images Plugin.
Protect your code
To protect your unique website functionality, you need to put more effort into encrypting code and adding an extra layer of protection.
A team of expert web developers can easily add such layers of security and protect you from design and code theft.
Put a clear copyright notice
Put copyright details on your website – warn people beforehand that your website content is your copyrighted material and that using it without your permission can lead to legal action.
This will fence off the majority of copycats.
Use watermarks on your content
The harsh reality is that it’s quite easy for individuals to disguise your content as their own, especially when it comes to downloadable elements such as images or even documents.
Another thing you can do to prevent this is to add a watermark to your digital media.
Experienced graphic designers can use Adobe Photoshop or similar software to create watermarks.
However, if you are new to such software, there are other ways to do this.For example, there are WordPress plugins that do the heavy lifting for you, like Image Watermark.
Even if someone downloads your content and plans to steal it, your name or logo will prevent them from fully claiming it. Anyone who finds your media on another site will know where it came from.
Summing up
Although you can’t completely protect your content from being copied, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to.
One or even several of the above protection methods could be implemented into your content.
If copycats still succeed in stealing your content, despite all efforts to protect it, contact them as soon as you discover this. Tell the perpetrator that you have evidence of theft.
If the copycats do not respond, contact your search engine support team and provide your evidence.
The last resort is to collect evidence of your authorship and seek to take legal action.
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