Can Copyright Infringement Affect Your SEO?

Search engine optimization is crucial if you want your company to succeed. It’s a vital part of online marketing. With good SEO behind your back, you will, among other things, have your web pages rank higher on Google’s search engine results, increasing the chance of someone exactly finding your website and your services and goods.

The actual process of creating content is rather difficult, and it’s followed by a slew of hazards, pitfalls, and difficulties. Anything, from writers' block, right down to getting that design you are working on for hours and hours just right, getting the right content on your pages is not easy. However, there is one issue that is very important, that influences your SEO, and that, unfortunately, happens. We are talking about copyright infringement.

What is copyright infringement

To put it simply, copyright infringement is the creation of duplicate content. Whether this occurs organically by accident, or if it’s a premeditated action, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you now have two competing, identical pieces of content online. This can be anything, from a website, some pages, and perhaps entire articles. However, copyright infringement, as far as SEO is concerned, also deals with duplicated images, designs, even video.

However, this can also happen (and it happens quite often) within the same website. For example, you may have quality video content on your page, but if you put it on several pages on your website at once, it will be detected as duplicate content by Google. We know how hard it is to create original, high-quality content. But having the same stuff on several nigh-identical landing pages is not only lazy, but it clutters your website and will get you penalized by Google’s algorithms.

Outsourcing and copyright issues

You should always double-check the content you post on your website. Be certain that the photos you are using really are stock photos, or that are complete originals. A lack of research, improperly quoting, citing, or referencing content, and this all can lead to copyright infringements. Doing your homework will save you from getting tricked by unscrupulous actors, as well as assist you in avoiding making an honest mistake.

Another common issue that we should warn you about is outsourcing. Since you don’t have much direct control over a company that is creating your content, you can end up in trouble. They might be copying other people’s work, stealing content and ideas. We suggest you always double-check companies you are working with. If you need to outsource, go with respectable companies, like Orion Creative, and then get to work, focusing on the things you are passionate about, things you yourself can only do.

Google, SEO, and copyright

Now let’s get down to Google. Namely, Google owns 70% of the market shares regarding search engine companies. Google is practically running a monopoly, and they are running it to the best of their ability. One of the things they have done is improved their search algorithms. They look at copyright violations much more seriously than before. Several copyright strikes against you can get you into a lot of trouble. This will lower your rankings as far as Google’s algorithms are concerned, and will diminish any hard work you have invested into SEO.

To illustrate how strict they are, you might have a completely original thirty-minute YouTube video on your website. However, if this video, which you yourself made, has a second of copyrighted, non-stock photo images in there, you will get a penalty if this ends up being detected.

SEO is, after all, all about creating trust, showing Google’s algorithms that your website is popular and respected. Duplicate content achieves neither. If you’re building your reputation online, you certainly don’t want to tarnish it with stolen content.

What you should do

So, to sum up – yes, your SEO efforts will be damaged if you get a copyright infringement happening on your website. But, there are a couple of things you can do to avoid these issues.

First, always use stock images. Besides photos that you actually shot yourself, stock images are the best and safest option. You can avoid legal fees that follow copyright issues, as well as avoiding annoying SEO damage. You can find some online, for free, or hire a company that works creates custom stock images.

Always double-check any articles you get, put them into some sort of plagiarism checker. Until you build some trust between yourself and your copywriters, you need to do this for every article. Make a choice – a minute of your time, letting the plagiarism tool analyze the content, or spending several hours putting out fires caused by copyright infringement.

Furthermore, plan regular audits, work hard towards removing any and all pirated and stolen materials on your website. If you’re fast enough, you might just succeed in removing them before your SEO is crippled.

Conclusion

So, if you want to keep your content safe and your company respectable, all the while avoiding Google’s search engine optimization penalties, we suggest you get some research done and be thorough. Double-check the companies you employ when you outsource content and website creation, and then double-check the content they made. Namely, whether we're talking about an entire website, or just an article or two, copyright infringement is not acceptable, and it will give you a great deal of grief in the long run.

Nick Brown is a blogger and a marketing expert currently engaged in projects for Media Gurus, an Australian business, and marketing resource. He is an aspiring street artist and does Audio/Video editing as a hobby.