Minimising the effects of duplicate content

[Lvet]

Hello,

We realised that one of our clients, copied a large part of content from our website to his. The normal reaction would be to send a cease and desist letter. Nevertheless this would probably mean loosing a good client.

The client dumped the text of several articles (for example:
http://www.velascolawyers.com/en/property-law/136-the-ley-de-costas-coastal-law.html  )

Into the same page:
http://www.freundlinger-partners.com/en/home/faqs-property-law/

I convinced the client to place our authorship tags on this page, but I am wondering if this is enough.

What do you think?

Cheers
Luca

[Kingof5]

A cross-domain canonical tag would probably be a good idea.

[HashtagHustler]

Lvet,

Good morning! Well, there are a few things to keep in mind here. Matt Cutts has said a lot in regards to duplicate content, and people taking content. If someone posts an article & then it is copied and then posted somewhere else Google looks at a lot of factors to determine who will get credit for the article; who posted first, who has more authority and trustworthiness etc.

In this case, not only does your website appear to have more authority, but you also posted first, so on a surface look, it would appear like this is going to hurt them more than going to hurt you. Adding the rel-cannonical tag is basically telling search engines that you know this is the same content as somewhere else, and that you only want one version to be indexed. Search engines have also said that they pay attention to them, but are not obligated to follow it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LsB19wTt0Q Matt Cutts video on the duplicate content and how to make sure you get credit.

My advice, encourage them to rewrite your their content because it will help them bring business and rank better with Google! You kill 2 birds with one stone. You get your page back, and they get their own content!

Hope this helps!

[CleverPhD]

The big point here to make as Hashtag mentioned (nice name BTW) is to explain to the client how it harms them.  I have one site were we have literally thousands of local businesses that work with us and they will do things like this - mostly because they do not know any better.  It is often due to a marketing assistant or outsourced firm that does not know what they are doing.

You actually have an opportunity here to show off your expertise and help your client and get this fixed (whether it is with a canonical or a rewrite).  Staying focused on how this practice 1) hurts them and then 2) how you can help them fix it, makes you a winner and makes it an easier conversation than what you think it might be.

If you think about it, for this type of situation, this is the best possible scenario.  It is a gift! You can most likely fix this as a you have a good relationship with the client, and even be able to improve your relationship with them (and make more money).  If this were some random scraper, there would be nothing you could do besides filing a complaint.

Good luck!

[Lvet]

Hello,

These are all valid points. Educating a client is always better than confrontation. Just a last question. The clients copied several articles coming from 25 different pages from my site into a single page. I suppose I have just to chose a single article (for example the article appearing first) and tell the client to place a canonical link pointing to it. I suppose there is no way to tell google that the content of the client's page is coming from several pages of my site.

Cheers
Luca

[CleverPhD]

Yikes.  I think that would be a good one to counsel them to re-write, otherwise I do not know of a way to divide up the canonicalization tag.

[HashtagHustler]

I concur with the Dr. of Cleverness.