Content thieves | Copy, Past, find…
The Internet is so vast and so widely available that if you publish something online, you can quickly become a victim of plagiarism. Working in search engine marketing, I write many original articles for our clients, and I always strive for my content to be interesting, informative or just entertaining. I spend time and effort ensuring that I don’t just write bumf with some keywords awkwardly worked or shoved in.
Occasionally I will check to see if any unauthorised copies of my text have been published online. My articles have been used by search engine marketing companies to boost the relevance of their sites without putting in any of their own effort. This is bad enough, but occasionally I find my articles scrambled beyond all comprehension. Every second word is replaced with a synonym; the effect is actually quite entertaining.
For Example, here is an excerpt from my original article:
“Water can quickly permeate through the materials that comprise a property. Resultantly, the full extent of the water damage is not always evident.”
Now look at this (ahem) interpretation of my work:
“Water can dig fast by a element which contains a property. Resultantly, is a full border of water damage is not regularly evident.”
… oooookay.
I can’t decide whether I’m more amused or pained by this butchery.
There is a well-known phrase often used in online marketing: “content is king.” Optimised relevant and interesting content is pure search engine marketing gold, but it does take some man-hours. Scrambled content that is unreadable to humans (but still readable to Google bots) is a deceptive Black Hat SEO technique.
If you are investing in an Online Marketing Company which produces original content, ensure they are not “copying, pasting, finding and replacing” words on an existing article.
Victoria Lloyd
- Content Marketing, Search Engine Marketing
- 10th October 2019
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