Ever see your website content on someone else's website or your blog copied word for word on another company blog?

Content marketing takes work, unfortunately, the unscrupulous just take work. Protect your hard earned search engine optimization from plagiarism.

You've built a great business, you have a beautiful website, and the content on your website is perfectly suited to the tone-of-voice that you want your customers to love you for, right? Unfortunately, there are dishonest people in the world, and if one of those shady people takes a liking to your content, a quick copy and paste can have a dramatic impact on your brand.

Plagiarism and stealing blog and website copy

Your brand is the world's perception of your company. It's found in all aspects of your products, services, website, the way you answer the phone and anywhere else that your customers somehow touch your business.  Anything by which your customers recognize you contributes to your company's brand.  So when dishonest people plagiarize, your business's brand can ultimately be threatened.

Plagiarism comes in many different forms.  While some of it is much more blatant than others, any thievery of otherwise protected content is ultimately plagiarism.  Those inexperienced thieves (or those that just don't think they'll get caught) may copy another company's design, images, and verbiage verbatim.  Others will get creative enough to change a word here and there and call it "original".

The truth is, creating original content from the source material is be a pretty difficult task. Imagine spending hours researching, writing, and editing work every single day to make sure you're writing something that has never, ever been written before.  It's a big job.  That's also a big reason plagiarism should not be tolerated.

Thankfully, there are companies that have created technology to help you protect your branding.  Copyscape is a great way to help fight plagiarism.  Copyscape makes it incredibly easy to find content that looks like yours that may be floating around the web.  All you need to do is enter the URL for which you want content researched, and at the click of a button, Copyscape's free service will start crawling the Web and returning instances of content theft as they relate to the URL that was given.  You click the button, and you hold your breath, and wait impatiently as you hope no results are returned.

Alas, you aren't so lucky, and Copyscape returns examples of your content that lives on other company's sites.  Now what do you do?  Don't throw your hands up, and walk away (or do so, then make sure you come back when you've cooled down).  Once you've found thievery, it's up to you to take action to protect your branding.  

Steps to help you get started if you've identified content theft:

Call Them.  

If you're a non-confrontational person, this might be a little difficult, but it's ultimately your business at stake, so take a breath and dial the number if you can find one.  If you are a confrontational person, this can be a great way to giggle while you listen to the awkward dance from the other side of the line.

Mail Them.  

A "cease and desist" letter can often do the trick to get copied content removed.  Search the web for examples (that you're allowed to copy).

Report Them.

Google doesn't take kindly to copying, and they'll want to know this has occurred.
PlagSpotter works similarly to Copyscape.  At the click of a button, PlagSpotter searches Cyberspace looking for words that look like your own.  PlagSpotter offers its customers the ability to monitor their sites at a set frequency, such as daily, weekly, or monthly.

If you're looking for help with your copywriting or have questions about how marketing can help your business, contact us.  We love to help businesses learn how they can grow with the right marketing!