If you want to protect your WordPress website content from being copied, you have to take a proactive approach. After all, just about anyone can steal your content right off your website. And while this isn’t right, it can be tough for you to track down your duplicated content on the web and take action to get it taken down.
Luckily, if you have original content, images, services, and reviews on your website, and you don’t want anyone stealing it and re-publishing as their own, there are few things that you can do to protect your website content.
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On top of that, any time you publish new and original content on your website, it’s important you too are not copying another person’s work and publishing it as your own.
Though most people are honest and don’t intentionally plagiarize other people’s content, the truth is, it happens. This is especially true when you’re competing with others in industry and trying to publish the highest quality content that drives traffic and boosts conversions. After all, there is only so much you can write about. And if you’re curating content from others in your industry, and trying to put your own unique spin on it, there’s always a chance you accidentally ‘borrow’ too much content from another while trying to inspire your own work.
This is why in addition to protecting your own content from those scraping content off the web and using it as their own, you should also proof your own content for plagiarism – just in case.
Today we’re bringing you the best of both worlds – tools that can help you protect your content from being stolen and tools that can help you ensure you aren’t stealing content from others.
So, let’s take a look!
Why Duplicate Content is So Harmful
It may not seem like a big deal, but duplicate content on the web is harmful to everyone for many reasons:
- It’s not fair to the writer to have their hard work stolen and published for gain by others
- Google cannot distinguish between original content and stolen, duplicate content meaning you’ll end up with SEO problems
- Your traffic numbers will decrease if your content is being published in many places because people will be split between the content
- You risk your original content being punished by Google if crawlers think the stolen content is the original
- Site visitors will have a hard time deciding who the authority is and may abandon both websites and brands
As you can see, there is a lot to lose when your content is stolen or you plagiarize someone else’s work.
How to Protect Your WordPress Website Content
To get started, we’re going to take a look at some of the best ways to protect your own site content from being scraped (or stolen) by others looking to gain from your hard work.
1. Set Up Google Alerts
If you want to make sure that none of your site content is being copied and published elsewhere, you can set up Google Alerts. To do this, simply go to the Google Alerts page, sign in to your Gmail account, and enter the types of search words you want to receive alerts about.
You can have any alerts you create sent directly to your email (up to 1,000 of them). This is a great way to monitor brand reputation and ensure no one is ripping off your content and using it as their own.
2. Create a Copyright on Your Website
Of course, having a copyright notice on your website isn’t going to stop anyone from actively stealing your content. That said, it is a good deterrent and makes your website appear more professional, which can stop people from stealing your content.
You can easily create a copyright that appears in the footer of your website by simply adding some text about your company. Or, if you prefer to use a WordPress plugin, one like Current Year and Copyright Shortcodes is a quick and simple solution.
In the unlikely event someone does steal your site content and you find out, the great thing about a copyright notice is that it gives you a good starting point to take action against the offender.
3. Reach Out to the DMCA
If by chance someone does get a hold of your content and publish it elsewhere on the web, there is one service that you can use to take action and right the wrong. The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) helps protect your intellectual rights by forcing web hosting providers to remove content that is a violation of your rights.
The DMCA will help you deter thieves with a DMCA badge, watermark your images to prevent theft, locate duplicate content throughout the web, and ultimately save you time, money, and the headache that comes with stolen content.
4. Prevent iFraming
iFraming allows an external webpage (i.e., another website besides your own) to be embedded in an HTML document. They can be inserted anywhere and are a common way to steal content and place it on another website. In other words, iFraming allows people to essentially insert a secondary webpage on a main webpage.
The problem with iFraming is that most people believe this is an acceptable way to credit another person’s work – but it’s not. After all, it is just a copy and paste of your content onto their website, which is theft.
Using a WordPress plugin like Advanced iFrame gives you the freedom to add iFrames to your own website, while also preventing others from embedding iFrames without your permission.
5. Disable Right Click Capability
One of the easiest ways to steal content, especially images, from the internet is to right click and save. Again, this is not allowed. But people do it all the time, whether they realize it’s illegal to steal and use other people’s content or not.
If you want to discourage people from right clicking and stealing your WordPress site’s images, just disable right clicking on your site. To achieve this, use a simple WordPress plugin like WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click.
Want to add a watermark to your images too?
The premium version of this plugin will help with that too. This way, in case someone figures out how to right click and save your images, the images they save will have your brand’s watermark splayed across it, ruining it for use elsewhere.
6. Reverse Search Your Images
Whether you’re running an online store or a blog, chances are you have lots of images on your website. If that’s the case, and you want to be sure that no one is reposting these images as their own, you can always use a free online tool like TinEye.
If your image is being used elsewhere, this tool will reveal it instantly after you enter your image’s URL and run a quick search. There’s also a premium version of this tool that will alert you immediately any time your images are being used online without permission – which is very helpful for those running photography websites.
How to Check For Duplicate Content on Your Site
Now that you know how to monitor the web for duplicate content of yours, it’s time to take alook inward and make sure the content you’re publishing isn’t doing the one thing you’re trying to prevent – plagiarizing. Of course, some plagiarism is to be expected, up to about 5% or so. This is because simple phrases are going to appear everywhere on the internet no matter the topic.
That said, these are the top free tools that will let you check for duplicate content before you make it live.
1. Grammarly Plagiarism Checker
The Grammarly Plagiarism Checker has become one of the famous free online content tools among bloggers and writers for multiple reasons. For example, it offers tons of great features intended to make your writing better. Plus, it features an excellent plagiarism checker.
If you want to check for plagiarism in your own content, just enter your content into the checker and wait for the results.
2. Copyscape
Copyscape is another robust plagiarism checker that requires you only to enter one of your site’s URLs. From there, this free online tool will check for instance of copied content throughout the web. The interface is super simple to use and is even useful for website owners that employ writers to help with content creation. After all, it’s your reputation on the line whether you physically wrote the content or not.
3. Plagiarism Checker
Plagiarism Checker is one of those free duplicate content tools that makes detecting scraped content a cinch. Though it limits scans to 1000 words at a time, it’s easy enough to break your long form content up into chunks to check.
In addition, Plagiarism Checker has the option to check plagiarism on a specific URL (so you don’t have to copy and paste entire posts into the checker). Plus, you can exclude a specific URL if you want too.
4. Plagiarisma.net
Plagiarisma.net is a neat plagiarism checker because it supports up to 190 different languages. This is perfect for those with multilingual WordPress websites that reach a global audience. In addition, this online tool will let you check for plagiarism in three ways: by uploading a file, copy and pasting the entire document, or inserting the URL of the article that you want to check. You can also define the search engine (Google or Bing) to look for duplicate content in.
5. Webconfs
Webconfs is a suite of free tools that helps with everything from page speed tests to word counts, broken links to content plagiarism. The Similar Page Checker is the tool you want to access when looking for plagiarism within your content when compared to another very similar article. This is great for those times you garner inspiration from your competition, but want to make sure you’re not plagiarizing.
Just enter the URL of your article and the similar article and let Webconfs do the rest. The only downside to this tool is that there is no copy and paste option, meaning your content must be published first before testing. If you have instances of plagiarism, you’re going to have to make some quick changes.
6. Plagium
Plagium is much like the other free copy and paste plagiarism checkers found on the internet. You can check up to 1,000 characters for free and even receive email alerts when copied content is found that can then be forwarded to the writer if applicable. This tool is said to be free for ‘occasional searches,’ whatever that means. In any case, the interface is nice and easy to use.
7. DupliChecker
DupliChecker is a free online plagiarism checker that allows you to copy and paste content or upload a document or text file. When the results are displayed, you’ll see a percentage of a unique and copied content for your reference. You can also click the ‘Make it Unique’ button to spin your content and prevent plagiarism when your content goes live.
As for the results you see above, don’t worry, we just took that content from our own website and entered it into the tool so you could see all the available options.
Wrapping Up
And there you have it! You now know how to not only protect your own original content from being stolen by others, but also ensure you don’t do the same thing to someone else.
Having truly unique and high-quality content on your WordPress website is a must. People have lots of choice when it comes to the websites they visit, and they will only continue to choose your site if you consistently churn out content that is original, educational, and engaging. So, take the time to preserve your hard work and don’t steal the hard work of others.And if you’re ready to have unique content created specifically for your WordPress site, get in touch with us today and see how we can help. We pride ourselves in developing exceptional websites that convert. This includes website development, landing page creation, and you guessed it – content creation that will always pass a plagiarism check.