Steps you can take to ensure your content is indexed and registered to your site before a scraper gets to it?
-
Hi,
A clients site has significant amounts of original content that has blatantly been copied and pasted in various other competitor and article sites.
I'm working with the client to rejig lots of this content and to publish new content.
What steps would you recommend to undertake when the new, updated site is launched to ensure Google clearly attributes the content to the clients site first?
One thing I will be doing is submitting a new xml + html sitemap.
Thankyou
-
There are no "best practices" established for the tags' usage at this point. On the one hand, it could technically be used for every page, and on the other, should only be used when it's an article, blog post, or other individual person's writing.
-
Thanks Alan.
Guess there's no magic trick that will give you 100% attribution.
Regarding this tag, do you recommend I add this to EVERY page of the clients website including the homepage? So even the usual about us/contact etc pages?
Cheers
Hash
-
Google continually tries to find new ways to encourage solutions for helping them understand intent, relevance, ownership and authority. It's why Schema.org finally hit this year. None of their previous attempts have been good enough, and each has served a specific individual purpose.
So with Schema, the theory is there's a new, unified framework that can grow and evolve, without having to come up with individual solutions.
The "original source" concept was supposed to address the scraper issue, and there's been some value in that, though it's far from perfect. A good scraper script can find it, strip it out or replace the contents.
rel="author" is yet one more thing that can be used in the overall mix, though Schema.org takes authorship and publisher identity to a whole new, complex, and so far confused level :-).
Since Schema.org is most likely not going to be widely adopted til at least early next year, Google's encouraging use of the rel="author" tag as the primary method for assigning authorship at this point, and will continue to support it even as Schema rolls out.
So if you're looking at a best practices solution, yes, rel="author" is advisable. Until it's not.
-
Thanks Alan... I am surprised to learn about this "original source" information. There must not have been a lot of talk about it when it was released or I would have seen it.
Google recently started encouraging people to use the rel="author" attribute. I am going to use that on my site... now I am wondering if I should be using "original source" too.
Are you recommending rel="author"?
Also, reading that full post there is a section added at the end recommending rel="canonical"
-
Always have a sitemap.xml file with all the URLs you want indexed included in it. Right after publishing, submit the sitemap.xml file (or files if there are tens of thousands of pages) through Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools. Include the Meta "original-source" tag in your page headers.
Include a Copyright line at the bottom of each page with the site or company name, and have that link to the home page.
This does not guarantee with 100% certainty that you'll get proper attribution, however these are the best steps you can take in that regard.
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
-
Could another site copying my content hurt my ranking?
Earlier this week I asked why a page of mine might not be ranking locally. (https://mza.bundledseo.com/community/q/what-could-be-stopping-us-from-ranking-locally). Maybe this might be part of the answer – another firm has copied huge chunks of my website copy: **My company: **https://idearocketanimation.com/video-production-company/ The other company: http://studio3dm.com/studio3dm-com/video/ Could this be causing my page to not rank? And is there anything I can do about it, other than huff and puff to the other firm? (Which I am already doing.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wagster0 -
Can Google read content that is hidden under a "Read More" area?
For example, when a person first lands on a given page, they see a collapsed paragraph but if they want to gather more information they press the "read more" and it expands to reveal the full paragraph. Does Google crawl the full paragraph or just the shortened version? In the same vein, what if you have a text box that contains three different tabs. For example, you're selling a product that has a text box with overview, instructions & ingredients tabs all housed under the same URL. Does Google crawl all three tabs? Thanks for your insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlo76130 -
Our web site lost ranking on google a couple of years ago. We have done lots of work on it but still can not improve our search ranking. Can anyone give us some advise
A couple of years ago the ranking on our site dropped over night. I believe someone working here at the time purchased links about that time. We have been doing lots of work on the site since then to improve it. We can not get our rankings back up on google searches. Can anyone give us some advise about what to do or where to go for some help that we can trust.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
How can I prevent duplicate pages being indexed because of load balancer (hosting)?
The site that I am optimising has a problem with duplicate pages being indexed as a result of the load balancer (which is required and set up by the hosting company). The load balancer passes the site through to 2 different URLs: www.domain.com www2.domain.com Some how, Google have indexed 2 of the same URLs (which I was obviously hoping they wouldn't) - the first on www and the second on www2. The hosting is a mirror image of each other (www and www2), meaning I can't upload a robots.txt to the root of www2.domain.com disallowing all. Also, I can't add a canonical script into the website header of www2.domain.com pointing the individual URLs through to www.domain.com etc. Any suggestions as to how I can resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iam-sold0 -
Can Google read content/see links on subscription sites?
If an article is published on The Times (for example), can Google by-pass the subscription sign-in to read the content and index the links in the article? Example: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/property/overseas/article4245346.ece In the above article there is a link to the resort's website but you can't see this unless you subscribe. I checked the source code of the page with the subscription prompt present and the link isn't there. Is there a way that these sites deal with search engines differently to other user agents to allow the content to be crawled and indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CustardOnlineMarketing0 -
Getting Pages Requiring Login Indexed
Somehow certain newspapers' webpages show up in the index but require login. My client has a whole section of the site that requires a login (registration is free), and we'd love to get that content indexed. The developer offered to remove the login requirement for specific user agents (eg Googlebot, et al.). I am afraid this might get us penalized. Any insight?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheEspresseo0 -
Can you explain why the site is dropping off Google every other week?
Can anyone offer any insight into why since the Google Panda update www.bedandbreakfastsguide.com has been fluctuating on Google so much? One week it's ranked as it used to be, the next it's nowhere to be seen? If you take a look at the screenshot of our traffic, this is the traffic after 75% loss (dropped in two stages) you'll see we get traffic for a week and then nothing. This has been happening for months. Some points that might be involved: Around the same time the SEO guys suggested setting the canonical url to www.bedandbreakfastsguide.com (before there wasn't one so traffic was coming from www. and non-www). A lot of the original urls have been consolidated and rel="canonical" added throughout The "pages" of results all have had a rel="canonical" set to page 1 Could it be that the www is competing with the non-www despite the 301 redirects. We're doing everything we can to help this client (and have reduced their site errors from the millions to low tens-of-thousands) so it's not filling them with confidence when their site just keeps plumetting! What's also irritating/odd is that some of their competitors -who used to be ranked lower and have sites which contradict every rulebook still rank high. Hopefully you can spot something we've missed. Tim I8PNL
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimGaunt0 -
How 'Off Topic' can I go - site wide?
Hello, I am currently number 1 for a competitive keyword - so don't want to push the wrong button and self destruct! My site is highly focused on one relatively narrow niche with about 50-60 pages of content bang on topic. I was wondering if Google will discredit my site in any way if I start adding pages that are** 'loosely related' **to the overall theme of my niche. Some of them are what you might call sister concepts with maybe one mention of my target keyword in the body..... Does the algo value what percentage of the whole site's content is on/ off topic? If so how important is this as a factor? Thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | philipjterry0