How Can Copyright Infringement Affect Your SEO

Your goal as a business owner isn’t just to survive. Rather, you also want to thrive, to get as much money, as possible. Of course, one of the best ways you can do this is through your marketing efforts. Marketing is vital, it’s all about getting your business and your company pushed forward, getting it out there. People will learn of your name, what you stand for, what you represent. And one of the most important parts of marketing is digital SEO marketing.

Good SEO is vital, it’s what keeps your online marketing efforts going. Getting every aspect of your SEO is vital if you want to succeed, and one of the most important and dangerous obstacles towards SEO success is copyright infringement.

Content, SEO, and copyright

Regularly creating fresh and interesting content is important if you want to get the most out of your SEO. Therein lies the problem as well. It’s very difficult to create content on a regular basis like this, people try out various methods, and sometimes, simply put, people make mistakes which leads to copyright infringement.

Content is a great way to attract visitors to your website, to get people to check out what you have to offer. Articles, videos, infographics, all of these lead to amazing results, and great conversions. In the rush to get as much content out there, gathering lots of data and information from all sides, we sometimes lose track and end up copying someone else’s work. Or, someone might have done the same for you. An accident or not, malicious intent or none at all, you can count on Copyright infringement seriously messing with your search engine optimization efforts.

The penalties are severe. Google’s algorithms can punish your website, and you’re content. Your rankings will plummet significantly, and even the work you did that is pretty much perfect won’t matter as much.

What falls under copyright infringement

To put it simply, copyright infringement is a duplication of content. If the content on your website is exactly the same as the content on other websites, you ended up with an article or blog post that will be penalized by Google.

Furthermore, you can do the same for your own website. Just because you have an article that is 2 years old doesn’t mean you can just copy it and post it again (without deleting the original). Having the same articles on several landing pages, and only having a different heading or title is pretty lazy, it clutters up your website, and makes you seem unprofessional.

Google’s spiders will find your content, and they will penalize you for it.

Outsourcing and safety measures

If you don’t already, you should always double-check if you haven’t copyrighted or plagiarised other people’s work. Now, you may do this, but ask yourself – do you outsource any of your content creation plans and activities? If so, know that you need to keep an eye on your people, or at the very least hammer home the importance of copyright infringements. You still need to maintain the quality of your work, that is the most important thing, but not even a section, not even one single paragraph in a ten-page article can be plagiarised or poorly quoted.

The power of Google

Are you doing any SEO Sydney work, do you need a company that has the right optimization tools and training? Maybe you want somebody that provides Graphic design work in Seattle? Or perhaps a Website Development Company from the USA? Whatever services you require, you can count on any big company that does its work online, or for the online world, to tell you that Google calls the shots.

Over 70% of all market shares for search engine companies are owned by Google. This means they have a lot of power, but it also means they have a lot of responsibility. Google is responsible for the results you get from their search engines, and they are in charge of some parts, some repercussions that come about when one website or company steals from another.

Now, this also means that are tweaking their algorithms on a regular basis, working on improving them more and more. They are getting better and better at figuring things out, at finding a way to recognize and penalize offending websites.

Namely, their algorithms can detect copyright violations for photos, music, or videos. These things add up, and they add up quickly. With enough offences, your website will not only be lower in the rankings, but it can also actually get unlisted.

Consent and penalization

Audio, video, photos, writing samples – all of these can be copyrighted. If the creator of all this content notices that you have used it without their consent, or if Google notices it, you will be penalized. This also includes making a video that uses copyrighted music or images.

We suggest you act quickly and swiftly and remove any and all copyrighted content the moment you realize it’s on your website. The faster you do this, the greater your chances of not getting into trouble with Google. Do regular audits of your content, scour everything regularly. You can also put disclaimers, as well as clear sources that lead towards the creator of the copyrighted material you are using, which might save your bacon in certain circumstances. Be detailed, remove content that seems suspicious. Hell, you can even ask for permission – you might just get it. The last thing you need is getting all your advanced SEO, all your effort and energy go to waste because you didn’t feel like double-checking your website.

Conclusion

Copyright infringement can and will damage your standing online, it messes up your rankings. This means that all the money and effort you invested in online marketing and your SEO options will be gone, removed, it will disappear. So, keep an eye on your copywriters, your designers, anybody towards whom you outsource some work. If you do notice some infringement, act fast, get rid of it quickly, and maybe you won’t feel the repercussions.