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One of the most frustrating things for a website owner is to spend hours or even years compiling excellent and authoritative information only to find that some or all of that information has been duplicated on other websites. To keep your website and your hard work safe from web scraping or content theft, you need to take several important steps. By preventing these activities from occurring, you can help optimize your website and make sure your competition isn't beating you by cheating. What is Content Theft and Why Does It Matter? Content theft has been around as long as the web has existed. Content theft is essentially the act of someone else taking images or information from your website without permission so they can post it on their own site. While some people might not think this is a big deal because they think it just increases the exposure of that information, this is a very serious matter that can result in lost web traffic for your website and business. A content thief often can operate simply by copying and pasting text, or by right clicking on an image and saving it as his own. Once the thief puts it up on another site, your site is at risk of losing web traffic. The duplicate content could penalize your site in the search engine rankings, resulting in fewer people finding you. If people see the same content on your site that they see on other sites, they may not trust your site as much. It's important to protect the information that you have on your site so that you can stay ahead of your competition. If you take the right steps to protect your site from content theft, web scrapers will be less likely to target your site. Basic Ways to Stop Web Scraping and Content Theft While there is no guaranteed way to prevent the content on your site from being stolen, there are many simple ways you can protect your information from content thieves. If you aren't a web designer and don't have advanced HTML or coding skills, you can still take some steps to stop web scraping and content theft from happening to your valuable information. Here are a few actions to take now: Place copyright notices on your website to let people know that you have the rights to the information. Use simple plugins to add copyrights and create digital footprints that will allow others to know if your content has been stolen. Use Google Alerts to let you know when your content is duplicated. Place watermarks on your images and logo. Limit the amount of content posted in your RSS feeds. Use Google Authorship to let the search engines and searchers know that you own the content. These methods usually only take a few minutes and minimal computer skills to effectively put into place. They are all great ways to protect your site from content theft. More Advanced Methods of Protecting Your Site from Content Theft While the simple methods are great for helping to stop web scraping, more advanced technology users can implement other techniques that will give even greater protection against content theft. Taking the help of professional services like Scrapesentry content theft protection can be useful. If you have strong website skills, here are some things to consider in order to keep your content safe: Cut up your images by placing small portions in a table that will display the full image. Use hot linking to your benefit so you can gain back links from your images. Use embed anything technology that makes sure content is always linked back to your site. Disable right clicks on your images to prevent copying or saving. Use contextual linking back to your site in all of your content. Register your work. While this doesn't take advanced computer skills, it does cost money. The small fees can be worth your while if you have valuable content. If you are savvy with computers, put your skills to use by doing the most to protect the content on your website. Protected content is harder to steal and keeps the content thieves away from your site. When it comes to the content on your website, you need to be sure to protect it the best you can. If you make it easy for others to steal your content, they will. When your content appears on other sites, your web traffic and credibility can go down, and the search engines may even start to favor other sites over yours. No matter what your web skills are, if you own a website, you need to do your best to protect your site from content theft.
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