Unique content: learning how to fight plagiarism online

 Internet theft is common at every step and is very detrimental to business. We tell you how to protect your site from content copying.

Unique texts are needed not only for the company's image, but also to make its site better indexed by search engines. Yandex and Google robots are able to distinguish between primary sources of information and should place original material at higher positions in search results. However, this algorithm is not flawless, so sometimes resources with borrowed articles get to the top and collect the main traffic. That is, you will pay for the creation of content, but unscrupulous competitors will benefit from it.

There is no method that is guaranteed to protect a resource from stolen content, but some tips greatly complicate the lives of those who like to take things without asking and help prove authorship.

Upload texts to Yandex. Webmaster

Yandex has a special service with which you can confirm that the text belongs to you. To do this you need to register your site in the Yandex. Webmaster system and upload your unpublished material to a special form in the Original Texts section.

Text can be uploaded to the site after Webmaster has processed the request. Now Yandex's robots will index it as the original source much faster. And if someone steals your article, the search engine administration will be on your side.

Use FeedBurner

FeedBurner is designed to handle RSS feeds. If you activate the Ping Shot feature of FeedBurner, Google will instantly receive notifications when the content on your site has been updated and will start indexing new content much faster. The text that appears in the search results is of much less interest to content thieves, because the original source is already known.

Announce materials

Posting on social networks is another way to achieve proper indexing. Webmasters and SEO experts have long noticed that material linked to on Twitter, Facebook and VKontakte is more likely to be included in search results, and the algorithm perceives it as the original source.

In addition to social networks, it is useful to post announcements in blogs, for example, on LiveJournal or Blogspot, and on partner sites.

Send yourself an email

Copyright lawyers advise you to print out the original text or image and send it to yourself by registered mail before publishing it. When you receive the envelope - do not open it and put it in a drawer with the documents. If someone later copies the material, the postmarks will prove that you created the text or picture much earlier.

Make personalized content

The easiest articles to steal are abstract ones, which are suitable for filling any site whose subject matter is similar to yours. If you write materials in the first person, mentioning the company name, the names of employees and their comments, the text will be more interesting and professional, and it will be difficult to copy it without changes.

"To avoid double conversion, before going to Europe you should order a Mastercard with a euro account" is a text that can be easily published on any website about travel or personal finances.

"On my last trip to Italy, I used a Mastercard in euros to avoid paying conversion fees" is a text that describes the author's personal experience. To steal it, you would have to at least rewrite it. Although it won't protect you from those who copy someone else's content without reading it.

Brand the images

You can add brand colors, graphics, a company logo, or a link to the group and website to original photos, pictures, and videos. This will increase brand recognition and partially protect against copying.

Of course, the logo or watermark can be cut or removed with special programs, but not everyone will spend time and effort on this, which means a percentage of online thieves will bypass you. In addition, a picture with the elements of branding can get fondled to users, and that means there is a chance that they will remember that you are the author of this image, and that is equally important.

To automatically apply watermarks to images, use Image Watermark and NextGEN Gallery plugins or Visual Watermark program. But be careful: a huge logo overlapping part of the picture can irritate users.

Replace pictures with empty files

The Photo Protect plugin will help protect the picture or photo from being downloaded, and instead the thief will only get an empty file. A similar trick can be performed using Photoshop: for this purpose, a transparent layer of the same size is superimposed over the original image.

This option won't let you download the picture in its original size, but if you want you can still copy it by making a screenshot.

Conclusion

It is impossible to protect website content from copying completely, competitors can always rewrite the original texts, remove the logo from the picture or simply steal your idea. Therefore, the fight against plagiarism is mainly concerned with search engine optimization, and unique materials are considered to be those that get to the top of search results.