A semi client of mine reached out to me recently that another site scraped his whole site and traffic dropped significantly.
-
Someone that reaches out to me on occasion for help but is mostly an SEO DIYer recently had his site copied completely and his traffic dropped significantly immediately after. I have never had a client experience this in the past. Does anyone have suggestions or expertise on this? See his question and what he has done below.
Jeremy
This site scraped my credit site. Its appearance coincides with a dramatic sitewide decrease in Google traffic.I submitted a takedown request by paying this company $200. No results yet. My hosting company also placed blocks on the site HTML which pings my server for CSS and picture files. My Google Webmaster tools account shows inbound links coming from the copycat. Is there something more I should be doing? Copy Site: http://masqueros.com/Real Site: https://www.savvyoncredit.com/
-
In addition to Russ's excellent advice, you can quickly and easily submit a DMCA takedown request to Google yourself - no need to pay for it.
Follow the instructions for filling out the form very carefully
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal-request?complaint_type=dmca&visit_id=1-636440705749643193-3331676266&hl=en&rd=1Note this is to get the site removed from Google's index. To get it actually removed from the server, you'll need to serve the takedown notice to the host and the site owner - but folks who engage in this kind of fsckery usually do a good job of insulating themselves from such action.
Get the site out of Google's index, then focus your energy on improving your own site.
Good luck.
Paul
-
Your site continues to rank for long snippets of your content which indicates the copy of the site is probably not the issue with your rankings. You definitely have seen a decline in traffic since April of this year.
Honestly, I would think about doing a content refresh. Go back to each article, especially those which have lost traffic, and greatly update/improve the content and republish at the same location but with the new updated publish date.
It also looks like your site could use some serious link building. The financial space is highly competitive so you have to stay on your toes.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
How do I get more video reviews on a new site?
Hi, I'm working on a site that has video reviews of various places. It's general information/experience that most people possess and production-wise they are selfies. These videos are then transcribed and, voila... searchable content. My problem is this... how do I get large numbers of people to go to the trouble to make a 2 minute selfie? I thought about HARO, since one could work in a plug for something, but they have a site traffic threshold that this new site isn't at. Any and all ideas on how to efficiently generate this content for a new site with very little traffic would be appreciated. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 945010 -
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
Hi there I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website? www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.au Im assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe? Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Competitors Linking to My Site
One of the more successful competitors in my niche has embarked on new strategy that seems to be working well for him. I noticed that many new links began to appear to my site from my competitor's stable of many websites. It appears that he has setup a link wheel to benefit a site that has been in the top Google position for several months now. The rim of the wheel links back to authority sites, including my own main site (established 7 years, now hanging on to the lowly 10th place on the serp). So the strategy seems to be: a) create a dozen sites that no-follow link back to authority sites including competitors, b) place links in a such a manner (bottom of page, uncolored links, from images) that a customer is unlikely to ever click on it, c.) do-follow to your own site and blast it to the top of Google. I don't think this competitor is worried about getting penalized. I've been watching this for years. When one site gets burned, he just shifts things around and brings up another one of his sites. He seems to age them for years, calling them up one by one as they are needed. Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a trend? Because it sure seems to work. He's crowded the front page now with 4 of his sites. Would it be appropriate for me to "disavow" his links? Would it matter?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DarrenX0 -
Do some sites get preference over others by Google just because? Grandfathered theory
So I have a theory that Google "grandfathers" in a handful of old websites from every niche and that no matter what the site does, it will always get the authority to rank high for the relevant keywords in the niche. I have a website in the crafts/cards/printables niche. One of my competitors is http://printable-cards.gotfreecards.com/ This site ranks for everything... http://www.semrush.com/info/gotfreecards.com+(by+organic) Yet, when I go to visit their site, I notice duplicate content all over the place (extremely thin content, if anything at all for some pages that rank for highly searched keywords), I see paginated pages that should be getting noindexed, bad URL structure and I see an overall unfriendly user experience. Also, the backlink profile isn't very impressive, as most of the good links are coming from their other site, www.got-free-ecards.com. Can someone tell me why this site is ranking for what it is other than the fact that it's around 5 years old and potentially has some type of preference from Google?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
It appears that no matter what I do, my website is not picking up traffic. What can I do?
I have tried everything, followed everything by the book...yet nothing is happening. I I yet have to try PPC, but I am sure that by now the website is healthy since I have spent from January to the current date fixing every sort of warning and errors. While I have worked on link building strategies(only submitting links to directories for the moment) However the website is dead. What should I do? Is this due to a Google penalty?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ts24group0 -
Are back links from audio sites any good?
In light of G's view of links from directories and other sources I have heard that links for audio sites like soundcloud.com can be beneficial. Has anyone had any positive experiences building likes from sources like this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
How The HELL Is This Site Ranking So Well In Google Places?
When I do a search for this site it ranks number 2 on Google just below the official federation of master builders website for the keyword phase "builders in london" this is the site http://bit.ly/Lypo8E which is a nasty looking blog which has nothing to do with builders and they don't even have an address anywhere on the site. The only thing I can see is that they are sharing there address with a lot of other businesses and all of the citations from those other businesses are causing them to rank higher on Google places, but surely Google can't be that stupid right?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | penn730 -
Is this site penalized?
So I am working on a potential new client and they run several very well established and well ranking ecommerce sites. They have 1 site which is new and underperforming which they want me to "start" on as a trial. The idea being that if they like the progress I would take over SEO on the other sites. After a little research I am concerned that this site may be have a penalty. The site is www.discoverhookah.com The MOZrank and MOZtrust are actually pretty good considering the site is 6 months old, but if you look at the links they are ALL junk. They seems to be some reciprocal linking as well. I believe this is something they have done on their other sites and been ok with because they are 10+ years old and very trusted, however for a new site this link profile worries me. I do not have their analytics yet but looking at their traffic in compete.com shows a HUGE drop off shortly after the site went up (like from 2500 to under 100 visitors). I dont really trust compete.com's numbers outside of being and good indicator for trends, but it has me concerned. The client did tell me they are getting virtually no traffic. I am waiting on the crawl report to confirm its not a crawl or onsite problem but i dont think it is. I have 2 concerns: 1. I am taking this site on the cheap in order to establish a successful project, so I can work on their other sites, and I dont want to walk into a losing situation on the cheap! 2. I believe their webmaster is following some misguided SEO strategies but she has been with them for a long time. I dont think she wants to do theor SEO anyway, as she is very busy with maintenance and development, but if I could prove a penalty it would go a long way in helping me win the whole account from an SEO standpoint.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BlinkWeb0