12 Ways to Protect Content in WordPress (Ultimate Guide)

Within the 15+ years WPBeginner has been round, we’ve realized there are few issues extra irritating than discovering that somebody is stealing your content material with out permission and displaying it on their very own web site.

They might be monetizing your content material or utilizing it to steal your viewers and outrank you on Google. Consequently, you get much less site visitors and make much less cash.

There are a couple of steps you’ll be able to take to make it harder for others to steal your content material.

For instance, you’ll be able to defend your content material by limiting entry to subscribers solely. Or you’ll be able to get your hands on stolen content material and have it taken down.

On this article, we’ll present you methods to defend your web site’s mental property, comparable to your written content material, photographs, and movies.

How Does Content material Theft Harm Your Backside Line?

You’re employed onerous to create an effective content plan for your website that may entice the fitting guests to your web site. These guests help you earn a living on-line as they buy services and products, click on advertisements or affiliate hyperlinks, pay subscriptions, or make donations.

Unauthorized copying and scraping of your content material can harm your earnings and your status as a creator, model, or enterprise.

With that being mentioned, let’s check out the perfect methods to guard your content material in WordPress. Listed here are the subjects we’ll cowl:

1. Copyright or Trademark Your Content material, Enterprise Title and Brand

If you create a WordPress web site, your content material is routinely coated by copyright legal guidelines. This protects your mental property, model, and enterprise towards authorized challenges, plagiarism, and unauthorized use.

It’s best to clearly show a copyright notice with a dynamic date in your web site. This may make others conscious that your content material is copyrighted and will discourage them from stealing it.

Displaying a copyright discover will even assist if it’s good to file a DCMA grievance to take down your stolen content material. Later within the article, we’ll present you the way to do that.

You can even apply for copyright registration on-line. For detailed data on that, try our information on how to trademark and copyright your blog’s name and logo.

Your web site’s RSS feed lets customers maintain updated together with your newest posts, nevertheless it can be utilized by thieves to scrape your content material. Fortunately, there are a couple of modifications you can also make to your feed to guard your content material.

First, you’ll be able to configure your RSS feed to incorporate solely an excerpt as a substitute of your entire article. With out the total textual content, content material thieves may have nothing to steal.

You could find this setting on the Settings » Studying web page of your dashboard. Merely choose the ‘Excerpt’ choice after which click on the ‘Save Adjustments’ button.

The second factor you are able to do is delay posts from appearing in the RSS feed straight away.

This may give time for Google to index the submit by yourself web site and see you because the authority earlier than the content material will be stolen and revealed on different web sites. Consequently, your search rankings shouldn’t be penalized.

The best method to do that is utilizing the pre-configured ‘Delay Posts in RSS Feeds’ snippet within the free WPCode plugin.

For extra concepts, see our fast and simple tips to optimize your WordPress RSS feed.

3. Password Shield Your WordPress Content material

One option to defend your most necessary content material is to password-protect it. This allows you to make some pages personal whereas the remainder of your website will be accessed by anybody.

WordPress comes with built-in settings to help you password-protect any submit or web page. From the content material editor, merely change the Visibility setting from ‘Public’ to ‘Password Protected’ after which enter a powerful password for the web page.

When you publish or replace the web page, it is going to be protected in order that solely customers who know the password can view it.

As soon as they enter their password, the web page contents will probably be revealed.

You’ll be able to study extra about protected pages and methods to customise them in our information on password-protected pages in WordPress.

However there are issues with this strategy. First, it could develop into troublesome to handle all the completely different passwords for protected pages. And second, when you give somebody a password, you’ll be able to’t management who they share it with.

You should utilize a free password plugin like PPWP or Passster to have extra management when password-protecting pages. For instance, they help you create a listing of passwords to unlock content material and expire passwords after a sure variety of makes use of or a particular time interval.

With Passster it’s also possible to generate distinctive hyperlinks that routinely unlock protected content material and share them with sure customers.

You’ll be able to study these plugins in our information on the best WordPress content protection plugins.

4. Prohibit Content material to Registered Customers

One other option to defend worthwhile net content material is to limit it to registered users. This supplies a greater expertise than utilizing passwords as a result of as soon as a person logs in to your web site, they may routinely be capable to entry premium content material with out continuously getting into passwords.

A easy and reasonably priced method to do that is with the free plan of Restrict Content Pro. This plugin lets you create completely different entry ranges, settle for funds, and prohibit content material by stage or person function.

You could find step-by-step directions on methods to arrange the plugin in our information on how to restrict content to registered users in WordPress.

Nevertheless, some very particular web sites, comparable to membership and eLearning websites, prohibit content material to registered customers. If in case you have a website like this, you will have a greater expertise by putting in a plugin like MemberPress, which is designed for that actual sort of web site.

You’ll be able to learn to create these kind of websites by following one of many guides beneath:

5. Prohibit Content material to Publication Subscribers

Alternatively, you’ll be able to prohibit content material to publication subscribers. Providing entry to locked premium content material is a superb incentive for customers to subscribe to your email list, and it additionally retains the restricted content material out of the fingers of potential thieves.

OptinMonster is the perfect lead generation plugin for WordPress. Its wonderful content-locking function makes it the only option when utilizing unique content material to develop your e-mail listing.

When this setting is enabled, customers will be capable to see the primary a part of a submit however will probably be prevented from viewing the remainder of the content material by displaying a content-locking inline marketing campaign. As soon as the person subscribes to the publication, the content material is unlocked.

We present you methods to configure OptinMonster for this process in our information on how to add content locking in WordPress.

6. Disable Proper Click on and Textual content Choice

You’ll be able to discourage guide copying of your content material by disabling right-click and textual content choice in your web site. Nevertheless, this supplies a poor person expertise to anybody who desires to repeat your textual content for different causes, comparable to sharing your post on social media.

It additionally received’t cease tech-savvy customers from copying your work as a result of they’ll view your website’s supply code or use the Inspect tool to repeat an internet web page.

So, we solely advocate you utilize this technique when you really feel it’s actually wanted to fight content material theft.

You’ll be able to study extra in our information on how to prevent text selection and copy/paste in WordPress.

We even have a information on how to add no right-click on WordPress images that’s extremely helpful.

7. Disable Hotlinking of Photographs

When somebody copies content material out of your web site, the precise photographs within the submit are usually not copied, simply the URLs to the place to load these photographs.

Because of this whereas the pictures are displayed on the opposite particular person’s web site, they’re, in reality, being loaded out of your website. This is called hotlinking, and you’ll cease it by including a code snippet to your .htaccess file.

You’ll be able to learn to do that in our information on how to prevent image theft in WordPress.

After that, the opposite web sites will not present your photographs. Guests will solely see the alt text for every picture, which appears like this.

This offers anybody studying your stolen content material a poor person expertise, which might, in flip, harm the thief’s status with guests and search engines like google and yahoo.

8. Add Watermarks to Photographs

If in case you have a photography website or portfolio, then you’ll be able to defend your photographs by including a watermark. A watermark is a semi-transparent emblem, textual content, or sample overlaid on prime of your photographs.

Watermarks permit your customers to view your pictures, however they can’t obtain and use unmarked information with out shopping for them.

This will prevent image theft by making it troublesome to make use of your photographs with out permission.

You’ll be able to study extra in our information on how to automatically add a watermark to images in WordPress.

9. Set a Canonical URL

A canonical URL is a WordPress function that reveals search engines like google and yahoo the official (or canonical) model of an internet web page. This reveals Google which web page to prioritize in its rankings and might set you up as an authority on the subject.

Setting a canonical URL received’t cease others from stealing your content material. However it is going to assist search engines like google and yahoo acknowledge your web site as the unique supply, even when scraped content material exists elsewhere.

This will probably give your web site a rating benefit over any content material thieves. It would additionally let Google know which article to index in case your website has duplicate content material.

The best option to correctly arrange a canonical URL is utilizing All in One SEO (AIOSEO), the best WordPress SEO plugin in the marketplace, utilized by over 3 million web sites.

After you install and configure AIOSEO, you’ll be able to merely scroll down beneath the content material space of the WordPress block editor to search out the AIOSEO Settings space. As soon as there, click on the ‘Superior’ tab.

Right here you will discover a discipline the place you’ll be able to sort the canonical URL. Most often, this would be the URL of the article you might be modifying.

10. Scan the Internet for Content material Theft

You most likely received’t know in case your content material has been scraped or stolen except you search for it. You are able to do this utilizing a variety of on-line instruments.

A technique to do this is utilizing Google Alerts. Merely enter the identify of your web site and your URL, or use a portion of your article.

If you happen to end each weblog submit with the identical name to motion or different textual content, then you’ll be able to arrange alerts for that textual content and get notifications each time it seems on-line.

One other software is Copyscape. Merely enter the URL of your web site, submit, or web page to see if it has been copied and stolen.

A 3rd software is Grammarly, the favored online grammar-checking tool.

The premium model has a built-in plagiarism checker. It may possibly run scans to search out matches on-line to your pasted content material.

For detailed directions on methods to use these instruments, see our information on how to easily find and remove stolen content in WordPress.

11. Block IP Addresses

If you happen to discover that somebody is stealing your content material, you’ll be able to block their IP deal with from accessing your web site. Nevertheless, this may be difficult as a result of hackers usually use a variety of random IP addresses from around the globe.

That’s why we advocate you utilize a web application firewall (WAF) like Sucuri. This sort of plugin screens your web site site visitors and routinely blocks frequent safety threats earlier than they attain your website.

Nevertheless, superior customers can discover the suspicious IP deal with by trying on the ‘Uncooked Entry Logs’ of their net host’s cPanel dashboard. Be aware of any IP addresses with an unusually excessive variety of requests.

Subsequent, it is best to verify these IP addresses utilizing a web based IP lookup tool to search out out extra about it. You’ll be able to block the addresses you might be assured belong to content material thieves by including them to your website’s .htaccess file like this:

You’ll be able to add a number of IP addresses on the identical line, separated by areas.

For detailed directions, see our information on how to block IP addresses in WordPress.

12. Problem a DMCA Takedown

Lastly, you’ll be able to ship a request to Google and different search engines like google and yahoo to take away your stolen content material on the web so as to adjust to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

However it is best to do that with care. Submitting a report requires strong proof, and a false report can get your account in hassle.

There are a couple of methods to file a DMCA grievance, and we advocate Google Search Console.

First, it’s good to hyperlink your WordPress website with Google Search Console. You’ll be able to learn to do that in our information on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

After that, you should utilize the Google Search Console Copyright Removal Tool.

Merely click on the ‘+ Create a report’ button and choose ‘New DMCA report’ from the drop-down.

This may take you to a display screen that explains what occurs subsequent and allows you to add the related data comparable to your contact data, the posts that had been stolen, and the URLs the place you discovered them.

An alternate software is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) tool which helps you each discover and report stolen content material.

You’ll be able to study extra about each of those strategies and far more in our information on how to easily find and remove stolen content in WordPress.

Bonus: Take Benefit of Stolen Content material

As you’ll be able to see, defending your WordPress content material is quite a lot of work, and it turns into virtually unimaginable to maintain observe as your weblog grows.

That’s why, at WPBeginner, we additionally attempt to reap the benefits of web sites which can be stealing our content material. If somebody goes to submit our content material on their very own website, then we strive to verify we will earn a living or achieve site visitors from it.

For instance, we make internal linking an necessary apply. That implies that any stolen content material will comprise many hyperlinks that deliver readers again to our personal web site. These hyperlinks are additionally counted as worthwhile backlinks, which improves our search engine marketing.

We additionally automatically add affiliate links to our content material. These hyperlinks will seem within the scraped content material, so the content material thieves assist us earn more money.

Lastly, you should utilize the All in One SEO plugin so as to add a banner selling your services and products to the footer of your RSS feed. The banners will even seem within the stolen content material, giving your website free promotion.

We use the identical technique so as to add a disclaimer on the backside of posts in our RSS feeds. This seems on the scraper’s website as effectively, letting customers know that the location is stealing our content material and signaling to search engines like google and yahoo that we’re the authority.

For additional particulars, see the ‘Take Benefit of Content material Scrapers’ part of our newbie’s information on preventing blog content scraping in WordPress.

Skilled Guides Associated to WordPress Monetization

Now that you understand how to guard content material in WordPress, you could wish to see another guides on creating wealth on-line and defending your funding:

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