SEO: Can anyone help?

By Prateek Gupta on July 18, 2016 21 Comments / 2549 views

Hi,

I am Prateek, the founder of COMTIFY.

We have recently started content marketing and trying to generate social and search traffic. We started putting up content on our blog. Screenshot:

We create content, then schedule Tweets, Shares, LinkedIn posts on it. We also repost the blogs on Medium.com (gives a canonical back), LinkedIn Pulse, Quora Blogs (in plan). But here is an issue I am facing.

As soon as I import a post on medium.com (with canonical) and publish it, a website https://bestthenews.com/ scrapes the post and puts it up as their content, without giving a canonical back to us. Examples: this and this. So when I search on Google with the title of these posts (search query shortcut),

a) I get results from this website as top results (first 2 positions).

Also, this means that we are being penalized for duplicate content and not them! Moreover, not even the posts from medium.com are reflecting in Google.

b) Comtify’s own blog posts are nowhere to be seen!! (one more search query shortcut) Only when I put “site:comtify.com” as a query parameter, they get visible on Google.

Request a little help on this from Rodinhooders. Also, need to know if there’s is something dead wrong with our SEO strategy.

My Twitter handle – @paekut

Comments

Prateek Gupta

21 Comments

Mansoor Shaikh July 18, 2016, 7:56 am

Hi Pratik,

Its look like other website is stealing your content and you don’t have any protection/authority on your own content.

a) I hope it is original content (not copies from somewhere else). There are few things you need to check whether you have done or not. 1. Link your website with Google webmaster tool. 2. disable right click option on content so that no one can copy it. 3. Protect your website’s content with DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) which is recommended by Google. You can use DMCA budge which is free. 4. after doing above if someone steal your content then make complaint on DMCA.

Now on your second issue. b) site:comtify.com will return the pages with is associated with domain. Since you put main domain google will show website pages other than blog articles. To see whether your posts indexed in google or not you need to use site:https://comtify.com/blog. As I can see articles are indexed in Google.

Last but not the least – Before posting any content look for plagiarism. Use these tools to check before posting. https://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/ and https://copyscape.com/

Hope these will help you.
Prateek Gupta July 18, 2016, 8:15 am

Hi Mansoor,

Thanks for the reply. Here are my points:

1. I have written this content by hand. There’s no chance that it is a copy.

2. The site is already linked to GWT.

3. As I pointed out, this happens when I repost the content on Medium.com (with canonical). There’s no way I can put some badge on medium.com. Bestthenews has a scraper attached to medium.com. But medium.com generates some traffic so can’t stop reposting on it.

4. I know that site:comtify.com returns results from comtify.com. But the point is different. What I am saying is the page is not at all appearing if I don’t type site:comtify.com and Google is blind to my blog pages.
Mansoor Shaikh July 18, 2016, 8:29 am

Hey,

3. I was wondering why you posting same content on Medium? yourself posting duplicate content on other site which is not a good thing to do.

4. are you saying when you put site:comtify.com not all pages appearing (Google showing all pages) check next page.

Just saw posted date, since you posted it first on your website, make sure you get it indexed before someone other does on their website.
asha chaudhry July 18, 2016, 8:41 am

hi prateek,

i’ve pinged charlie (who writes on SEO) – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/7-off-page-activities-that-can-harm-your-search-rankings

and a few other SEO experts i know on trh!

also share your link on the ASK ABEY page. he might be able to help you!
asha chaudhry July 18, 2016, 8:45 am

hey prateek,

sorry i had to change the url of your post!
Prateek Gupta July 18, 2016, 9:03 am

Hey Mansoor, please find my reply below:

3. I was wondering why you posting same content on Medium? yourself posting duplicate content on other site which is not a good thing to do.

Medium has a specific procedure of reposting articles via its ‘Import’ feature. It gives a linkback and canonical to me, which is fine with Google. Most bloggers do this.

4. are you saying when you put site:comtify.com not all pages appearing (Google showing all pages) check next page.

I am saying that a few pages only appear on putting ‘site:comtify.com’, otherwise not.

Just saw posted date, since you posted it first on your website, make sure you get it indexed before someone other does on their website.

If they are appearing in Google on putting ‘site:comtify.com’, they are already indexed and there’s no question on it, I think.
Prateek Gupta July 18, 2016, 9:09 am

Thanks a lot Asha!!
Mansoor Shaikh July 18, 2016, 9:44 am

Anyways via medium the content is duplicate. Since that content you already have on your website. And yes there are many bloggers do post but they just want to get traffic not SEO benefits.

Its simple – If I were you, I would not post same content on any other blog/article site. Since I have posted content on my blog first there is no issue with penalize from Google. And there is 19 pages which is indexed in Google, But some pages still pending to be indexed. do it from webmaster or Do SES.
Anirban Das July 18, 2016, 9:56 am

Prateek

Bad to hear this.

Please check this solution: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/find-remove-stolen-content/

## The other way is to out reach bestthenews.com & ask them for link back…else report to Google as guided above.

##While publishing same content on medium, mention original source of the content on signature or last paragraph even its having canonical.

Hope it will help you.
Regards
Anirban
Saikat Sengupta July 18, 2016, 10:31 am

Hi Pratik,

Wait for Google to index the articles on your website first and then post them on Medium, LinkedIn and others. This way, you are telling Google that this article was first found on your website.

They are stealing content – you can contact them/call them and ask to take down the articles. OR ask them to put a link to your website.
Jignesh Gohel July 18, 2016, 11:48 am

Hi Prateek,

I have seen such cases many times and here are the steps for you to follow:

Step 1: Contact BestTheNews webmaster and ask them to stop scrapping your content immediately. Generally people responds to such emails but in worst case, if they don’t remove your content, follow step2:

Step 2: Login to your Google webmaster account and file DMCA complaint against BestTheNews. Here you will have to provide original source and copy source and Google team will remove all those content from Google search result within couple of days. (I personally filed many DMCA request and it works if you can prove that you own the rights of the content).

Step 3: As you recently started this blog, it will definitely take time for crawler to crawl and index the content. You can manually submit your page to get it crawled via Google webmaster account.

I am sure this will help you to get rid from the issue at earliest.

All the best.
Saikat Sengupta July 18, 2016, 11:58 am

DMCA is a United States Copyright Law. How much will it help us in India? Any idea?
Jignesh Gohel July 18, 2016, 12:02 pm

Yes, it will work for Indian website as well.

Here one don’t have to provide any legal notice or anything. The point will be, you will have to prove that the content / image is owned by you and someone has copied from your website and the link is ranking in Google.

I have filed DMCA complain for one of my India based website and they took action against scrapper within 2 days.
Saikat Sengupta July 18, 2016, 12:06 pm

What action did they take?

The problem that Pratik may face here is: the 3rd party website is not copying content directly from HIS website – they are taking it from Medium.
Prateek Gupta July 18, 2016, 12:34 pm

Hi Anirban,

Bestthenews is not giving a canonical, but I think it is giving a linkback, though not direct. Just check, it is redirecting to something else first. It’s at the end of the post.
Prateek Gupta July 18, 2016, 12:45 pm

Thanks a lot Jignesh.

Yes, I think Saiket’s point is valid.

For future, only option would be to not post on Medium? I will definitely crawl my URL first through GWT though.

But the strange thing is that even my content on Medium is not showing up on Google!
Anirban Das July 18, 2016, 12:46 pm

If you don’t want a link back then go for DMCA

or

Share your content @ Medium platform after some span of time.In between make sure you have done following while publishing a blog content:

a.Social engagements, specially tweets & G+ sharing (if possible use multiple promotional accounts)
b.Fetch the blog posting url by using search console account.

I do same thing for my Linked in pulse:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hidden-important-features-facebook-t…

I never had this issue, neither for our clients.

best wishes.
Prateek Gupta July 18, 2016, 12:48 pm

Ok, thanks a lot for this.

Though it’s a bit strange that my content on Medium also isn’t showing up in Google. Any reason for that?
Prateek Gupta July 19, 2016, 4:38 am

Hi all,

Thanks for your support.

Update: They have removed the content when I reached out to their hosting provider to intervene.
Jignesh Gohel July 19, 2016, 7:01 am

They completely removed the page from Google index.
Jignesh Gohel July 19, 2016, 7:03 am

Happy to learn you got the resolution.

Wishing you all the very best for your content marketing campaign. I have recently published a post containing very detailed guidelines (checklist) for content marketing: https://www.olbuz.com/blog/content-marketing-checklist-to-boost-your-content-outreach

I am sure it will be helpful to you.