Getting Duplicated Content Removed
-
So I recently took over an in-house SEO role and began some house cleaning. I found a few places that had copied or duplicated our homepage content. Naturally I reached out to them to ask them to remove or change the content. Today I come to the office and one of the sites I had requested to remove the content, had fired back at me that I was being rude, threatening and I should go f**k myself. As if this wasn't enough this guys was an upper level manager (managing director) and knows the upper management where I work. Now I have people in my company pissed at me, when I thought I was doing the right thing. Am I in the wrong or what? I had simply asked to remove or change the content and that failure to do so could result in legal action. I understand that it could have been misconstrued as a threat (which it wasn't intended to be) but its seems like a pretty immature response from a higher level person. Any thoughts or advice on what to do next?
-
It is a very small world in a lot of business niches. Always assume that your boss knows your competitor.
Also, unless you are the owner of the company you should never make a threat or send a nasty email to anyone. Tell your boss about the problem and let him/her do that dirty work. That's what bosses are for (I am a boss so I can say that with confidence.)
Nevertheless... if this person is getting away with using your homepage content he might also be using your product page content, images and who knows what else.
I would be on the lookout for other infringements and if I found them I would (in this instance) gently inform my boss about duplicate content problems that might arise and losses in your corporate advantage related to infringement.
Be ready to give a very short and very convincing statement about why this is an important issue. You have seen how they behaved in this situation. There could be strong relationships between the companies and your company could be on the advantageous side of them.
Good luck. Be careful.
-
Consider if the duplicate content is really enough to make a fuss over, if it is, go to the people he knows and explain to them what they are doing and how it is hurting your bottom line (try to put it into dollar amounts with data).
Money talks, often companies are willing to cooperate and help each other until they understand the dollar amounts involved.
-
People in power like to throw that power around, both to prove to others that they have it, and to remind themselves that they're so amazing.
Since you're the new guy, and have yet to prove your worth, my best suggestion, both from an SEO perspective as well as a life-lesson and general business perspective would be to let the subject drop for the time being. If it's just content on the home page and not the entire site, given the politics of it all, you're probably better off focusing on other tasks so that you can build your worth to management over time.
Maybe one day you'll be able to revisit the concept of why duplicate content is bad for the company, maybe you won't.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate Content for Non-SEO Purposes
Duplicate Content for Non-SEO Purposes There are a few layers to this question, but at the most basic level the question is... -Will having the same article (in the form of archived e-newsletter issues) on multiple different websites' newsletter archives HURT those sites? I'm fairly sure it won't HELP any of them in terms of SEO, but will having these back issues of their e-newsletters archived on their websites get them penalized? For the purpose of this question, these are not clients we are doing SEO for, just hosting and their e-newsletters. So it's fine if the archives provide no SEO benefit, we just don't want to leave them up if they will become LIABILITIES for the websites. -If having the same article in archived issues of e-newsletters on multiple different websites WOULD be harmful, would moving these archives to a sub-domain change anything or would it be best to simply take the archives down altogether? -Alternately, would spinning these articles make any difference in whether or not these sites get penalized? -Lastly, would spinning make the articles usable for archived e-newsletters for clients that ARE signed on for SEO services? I have a hunch about this, but I'd love to hear your expert opinions. Thanks!
Content Development | | BrianAlpert780 -
Use old content from Archive
Hello all, I just were looking on Archive.org and though what if i use the content from a really old website thats already been un-indexed. Could i just use this content on my new website and will it not be duplicate content? Thank you for your comment! Kind regards,
Content Development | | MennoO0 -
Same Press Release Content ?
I recently distribute my first ever PR to PRlog site. Now i am planning to move the PR to other PR sites, should i use the same content which i already submitted or again the same thing spun article will do ?
Content Development | | chandubaba0 -
What are the best widgets to use on Wordpress? And what is most useful on Wordpress for content syndication?
We are in the process of researching the best plugins and widgets for our clients' blogs. It appears that SEO by Yoast is most popular for 2013 so far. Any recommendations on which widgets we should be using or plugins for content syndication? If we use something like the Jetpack plugin, would this do the trick?
Content Development | | qlkasdjfw0 -
I want to remove some pages from my site with PR, what should I do with traffic?
I have a section of a site that I want to remove. It has a main page linked from the nav menu, and a half dozen subpages under that. The pages get some traffic and have ranks up to PR3, which is what my site's home page is. I'm no longer want to do these pages as they require tremendous upkeep and I'm not interested in keeping them going. So, I know if I just remove these pages and that's all, I'm going to pay for it somewhere with Google. What else should I do? I do't really have similar pages to direct them too.
Content Development | | bizzer0 -
Can having similar content on my company's two sites hurt our rankings?
We have a very successful website that has been up for a number of years (www.comellaortho.com). We rank high in the natural rankings for that site. A few months ago, we started seeing patients in another nearby city. I purchased a new domain name, www.dansvilleortho.com, and had our web company duplicate the website under the new domain name. The reality is that the content on these two sites are nearly identical. Some of the pages are different; for example, there are fewer pages on the new site. But the pages that do exist are nearly identical. My question is: Can having similar content on my company's two sites hurt our rankings? Based on what I've read thus far, I believe the answer is "Yes". However, I'm curious how bad this may hurt us. I'm not as worried about the new site (dansvilleortho.com) because our competition in that city is slim to none. But I AM worried about harming the original site/business (comellaortho.com). Which site(s) rankings may be affected by this, and if so, how bad? Thank you.
Content Development | | comellortho0 -
Duplicate Page Content WordPress blog with categories?
Just got a crawl report back from SEOmoz and it gives me lots of errors for "duplicate page content". Upon investigating, I notice this is because my WP blog is setup into categories so the home page is almost identical to one of the category pages. None of my actually posts are the same but the category pages have some overlap since the same post could show up in two or more categories. Is this a problem or can I just ignore this error? Any thing I should be doing differently? Thanks!
Content Development | | frankthetank20 -
How can I use my unique content to my advantage?
Hi, I run http://ablemagazine.co.uk - we also put out a print magazine every 2 months (the biggest disability magazine in Britain) This means we have loads of unique content (around 30 feature stories and 30 news stories every 2 months) Just wondering how I can use this to my advantage? I've been social bookmarking the feature stories (reddit, etc) and a link to all my unique stuff on facebook/twitter. Just wondering if there's anything else I should be doing? Thanks
Content Development | | craven220