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.
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
-
Incorrect Spelling Indexed In Meta Info - Can't Change It
Hi,It would be great if a member of the community could help me to resolve this issue.Google is indexing an incorrect spelling on of our key pages and we can't identify the reason why.- The page in question: https://newbridgesilverware.com/jewelleryAs you can see from the attached image, the Meta Title is rendered to contain the keyword "jewelry" (the American spelling.) We want this to read as "jewellery" - the British-English spelling. Yet in the page source the word is given in the meta title as "jewellery". Nowhere in the page source or on the page itself does the American spelling appear - yet Google still renders it in the Meta Title.Can anyone identify why this is happening and offer any possible solutions?Much appreciatedDhqJp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed1 -
How can I get Bing to index my subdomain correctly?
Hi guys, My website exists on a subdomain (i.e. https://website.subdomain.com) and is being indexed correctly on all search engines except Bing and Duck Duck Go, which list 'https://www.website.subdomain.com'. Unfortunately my subdomain isn't configured for www (the domain is out of my control), so searchers are seeing a server error when clicking on my homepage in the SERPs. I have verified the site successfully in Bing Webmaster Tools, but it still shows up incorrectly. Does anyone have any advice on how I could fix this issue? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cos20300 -
Content Aggregation Site: How much content per aggregated piece is too much?
Let's say I set up a section of my website that aggregated content from major news outlets and bloggers around a certain topic. For each piece of aggregated content, is there a bad, fair, and good range of word count that should be stipulated? I'm asking this because I've been mulling it over—both SEO (duplicate content) issues and copyright issues—to determine what is considered best practice. Any ideas about what is considered best practice in this situation? Also, are there any other issues to consider that I didn't mention?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
If I only Link to Page via Sitemap, can it still get indexed?
Hi there! I am creating a ton of content for specific geographies. Is it possible for these pages to get indexed if I only put them in my sitemap and don't link to them through my actual site (though the pages will be live). Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
Travis0 -
Duplicate Content/ Indexing Question
I have a real estate Wordpress site that uses an IDX provider to add real estate listings to my site. A new page is created as a new property comes to market and then the page is deleted when the property is sold. I like the functionality of the service but it creates a significant amount of 404's and I'm also concerned about duplicate content because anyone else using the same service here in Las Vegas will have 1000's of the exact same property pages that I do. Any thoughts on this and is there a way that I can have the search engines only index the core 20 pages of my site and ignore future property pages? Your advice is greatly appreciated. See link for example http://www.mylvcondosales.com/mandarin-las-vegas/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnthonyLasVegas0 -
Ajax Content Indexed
I used the following guide to implement the endless scroll https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started crawlers and correctly reads all URLs the command "site:" show me all indexed Url with #!key=value I want it to be indexed only the first URL, for the other Urls I would be scanned but not indexed like if there were the robots meta tag "noindex, follow" how I can do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wwmind1 -
Avoiding duplicate content on an ecommerce site
Hi all, I have an ecommerce site which has a standard block of text on 98% of the product pages. The site also has a blog. Because these cause duplicate content and duplicate title issues respectively, how can I ever get around this? Would having the standard text on the product pages displayed as an image help? And how can I stop the blog being listed as duplicate titles without a nofollow? We already have the canonical attribute applied to some areas where this is appropriate e.g. blog and product categories. Thanks for your help 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMoore850 -
Is there a FastTrack to re-index? a site?
Hello... i just started with a new client this week, before working with us his last domain-hosting-webdev provider cancel their account and took off the entire site and left them with a nice "under construction page" (NOT) and added the noindex, nofollow tags. 4 weeks after that, we come into the scene and of course our client it's expecting us to reinsert at least for branded terms the site, and he wants it done on a matter of hours... I tried my best to explain that it's not possible and we are doing everything we can't.... now i ask you guys.. I already created de GWT account, Created a well structured Sitemap and submitted it to google and bing, did the onpage optimizitation at least the basics... there is a way to speed up the process? kind of like "hey you! google bot, forget about the noindex nonsense a come crawl again?" Any help would be great Daniel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0