Article Theft
As many of you are aware there are a lot of webmasters out there which are fraudulent, unethical and consider implementing illegal practices on the Internet. Article theft is an ever growing element of search engine optimisation where unethical webmasters will steal good relative content articles from legitimate sites.
Why webmasters steal articles
So why do webmasters steal articles? Many webmasters steal articles to either publish on their own websites or to resubmit the article to an alternative website or article directory. Obviously this is unethical and completely illegal as webmasters are stealing copyrighted material. These unethical webmasters publish these articles on their website in order to build their own relevant content which helps towards search engine optimisation. Article posting on article directories helps towards search engine optimisation as well by providing one way text links to your website, it can also be beneficial towards attracting new visitors to your website. Usually webmasters will keep a close eye on a website to be ready for when a new article is published on the website, they will then steal this article before it gets indexed on the big three – Google, Yahoo and MSN. This way, from the search engines’ perceptive, it will appear that the unethical webmaster will be the creator of the newly published article, and the original source website will be
Avoiding Article Theft
You now know what article theft is and how webmasters try to use other webmaster’s content to increase the optimisation of their own website, we’ll now proceed onto the methods to prevent article theft.
Publish to top ranking article directories only
Publish your article to a high ranking article directory that is well known and very well respected. Submitting your articles to these types of websites will most probably get your article indexed quickly within the search engines, especially if there is a link from the homepage to your article. How do I know if the article directory is any good? Well, you’ll need todo some SEO analysis on the website, such as checking the number of links pointing to the website, the number of pages indexed within each search engine, whether the website uses dynamic URLs or not, and whether the website appears highly within the search engine ranking pages (SERPs). All of these elements contribute to a successful and well established website. Rule of thumb: the higher the elements the better!
Link pointing to the subject article
If you own numerous websites then this method will only apply to you. Submit your article to the publishing article directory, the moment it gets published get the exact URL to the article and publish it on your website(s). If search engines index the pages on your website sooner than indexing the published article directory then the search engines will follow that article link on your website and index the article as well. Link pointing can add some security and peace of mind your article content will not be stolen. This is probably one of the best methods available only that you’ll have to give up links on your website.
Article URL submission to the search engines
This is probably the most obvious method available. Submit the published article URL to the search engines immediately. Although some search engines do state the URL indexing can take weeks, it may likely get indexed sooner if the article directory is well established.
URL posting to forums
Post the URL of the article on the article directory popular forums, especially ones which do not have dynamic URLs, e.g. they appear as a static webpage myarticle.html and not article.php?id=3333. Search engines some refrain from indexing dynamic URLs, usually as think it maybe duplicate content. A lot of spammers tend to use dynamic URLs as well.
I’ve mentioned these methods to you to prevent you being a victim of article theft. Although not entirely necessary it is best to use a mixture, or all of the methods mentioned above. You want to try and get as many links pointing to the article as possible to avoid the disappoint of article theft. Even if your article content is stolen AFTER the article has been indexed, it will not matter, it will provide very little value or worth on another published website, it’s duplicate content! Remember, the most successful websites on the Internet are the ones which are honest, provide good quality content, and are completely ethical. May I also express the point, publishing duplicate content on your website will not help towards search engine optimisation and most likely enforce a negative effective on your search engine rankings. Good luck with your article copywriting!
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