Help with Possible Negative SEO

[newbuilder23]

Hi, longtime lurker here looking for some advice regarding someone scraping my website and linking back to it.

My traffic has bounced around a lot this year. During this most recent update I lost 60%+ of my traffic. Some pages that have always ranked well have completely dropped off.

While looking through GSC, I noticed a domain linking to me ~160 times. I took a look at the domain and it is an exact replica of my site with the exception for the homepage. The homepage looks like a Chinese version of Youtube.

I realize the traffic drop could be due to other factors. But I am wondering how much of a negative impact on ranking can this be having?

I started this site in 2017 when I originally read the digital strategy crash course to try to apply what I was learning. I have written 95% of the content myself.

Domain Age: 6 years
Niche: Seasonal
Posts: 130
Monthly Traffic: 5k-15k
Monthly Earnings: $200-1000 (Mostly Amazon)
Content: Good (but room for improvement)
Backlinks: Weak (DA~15)
EEAT: Okay (room for improvement)

I am looking for advice on my next steps. I am planning to:

1. Record whois info about domain (done)
2. Take screenshots/video to document copyright infringement (done)
3. Disvow the domain.
4. Send DMCA to host.
5. Work through Ryuzaki Kitchen Sink Method.

Please forgive my ignorance, this is a side project I work on from time to time built around a hobby of mine. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[Smith]

I noticed a domain linking to me ~160 times. I took a look at the domain and it is an exact replica of my site with the exception for the homepage. The homepage looks like a Chinese version of Youtube.

One quick solution for the mirror site could be contacting their hosting provider. If it's a big mainstream hosting provider, contact them directly and file a complaint. After you complete the necessary steps they should take the site down immediately. Maybe it's not possible if the site is out of China. But worth a shot. I had this happen to me and was able to get the mirror site offline in less than a day.

 

[Ryuzaki]

If they're using bulletproof hosting "offshore" in a country that doesn't care, the best you can do is issue a DMCA takedown or possibly contact the registrar (same issue as the host). If they want to be stupid they can put up more versions of your site or even retaliate, which could lead to a lot of whack-a-mole activity for you. I doubt they'd take it personally and just move on to the next mindless dumb thing they're doing. As far as Google SEO is concerned, keeping them out of the index is all you need to worry about, which a DMCA takedown does.

Another consideration is to make sure your pages have self-referencing canonicals (something like Yoast includes this) so when you get your HTML scraped it'll include that canonical. If they're just yanking content out of your RSS feed, you should set up your RSS feed to only show the first couple paragraphs or ~100 amount of words.

 

[newbuilder23]

Thank you both for your advice, I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I am going to do everything you both suggested. The registrar (and I think host) are namecheap. I have contacted them. FWIW the registrant country is Iceland. I will follow up with anything interesting. Thanks again.

 

[kennyb]

Any outcome with this? I have a similar issue, looks like they are using a spinner to rewrite it, so it looks "original" - however I put some simple sentences in a few that they clearly didnt remove like " my friends Steve and I" they used the exact same name! soo annoying. I tried to DMCA but no luck with that yet.

 

[Cyber]

You can try filing DMCA, reporting to hosting provider, domain registrar but there isnt much you can do. Try building authority with backlinks, social signals and other off page metrics - thats only way.