How to Prevent Content Scraping on a WordPress Site: Step-by-Step Guide

It takes a lot of effort to write good blog posts. But think about this: you spend hours writing a blog post, only to find it on another site, hyphen and all. They haven’t credited you. They’ve not linked to you. They’ve simply stolen it. That is called content scraping, and it’s on the increase, especially on WordPress sites.

Content scrapers use bots, RSS feed scrapers, or terrible scripts to scrape your article and truly get it published as their own. The worst part? They will sometimes outrank your original blog post when someone searches for your content, affecting your SEO, traffic, and credibility.

So, what are your options? This article will show you how to prevent content scraping on a WordPress site by employing some strategies, tools, and plugins that work.

Let’s protect your content!

What is Content Scraping and Why is It a Problem?

Content scraping refers to the act of someone copying content from your website—the most common instances being blog posts or long-form product descriptions—and re-publishing the content elsewhere without your permission.

Scraping is done the majority of the time through bots, scripts, or RSS feeds that programmatically scrape your content and push it onto other websites.

Although some scrapers do manually copy and paste content, the majority attempt to crawl and scrape multiple WordPress sites at once, employing automation.

Why is Content Scraping Such a Big Deal?

Not only is it annoying – it’s also harmful.

• It creates duplicate content, confusing search engines over which version is original.
• Scrapers could outrank you, especially if they have a higher DA and/or index content faster than you.
• It harms your SEO, and this can cause less traffic, less visibility, and possibly a penalized ranking.
• It harms your brand credibility, especially when it shows up in low-quality domains or spammy-looking domains.

And given that WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, it is a target. That’s why it’s more important than ever to learn how to prevent content scraping on a WordPress site.

Signs That Your WordPress Site Is Being Scraped

Scrapers don’t send you a courtesy email saying, “Hey, I stole your blog post.” Then, how do you know it is happening?

Here are some obvious indications:

• You Find Your Content on Other Sites: The most obvious sign—Google a sentence from your article inside quotes. If you see that exact block of text somewhere on another domain that is not syndicating your work with permission, then you have been scraped.
• Decreased Rankings for Dudden Reasons: Sometimes, these scraper sites get your content indexed before you do. If Google believes they published it first, your original post may drop in rankings or disappear altogether from search.
• Unusual Referring Domains within Google Search Console: Look at your referring domains, especially if you’re seeing unusual URLs pointing back to yours. If they’re spammy URLs or unrelated to the niche, that could signal someone is using your content to build up their authority.
• Unusual Spikes in Bot Traffic: Open your analytics or server logs to check if you’re seeing traffic from unusual bot user agents (like python-urllib, Scrapy, or curl) or referring traffic from countries you don’t typically serve. If so, then scraper bots are hitting your site, each with different fake IPs.
• Use Copyscape or Plagiarism Checkers: Run your URLs through a tool like Copyscape or Duplichecker to catch duplicate content on the web. These tools are great at finding duplicate content. Use an alert feature so you don’t have to manually check them each week.
• RSS Feed Abuse: If you have a full-text RSS feed and you catch full versions of your posts being published elsewhere, word-for-word, it means somebody is likely scraping your feed and auto-posting it somewhere else.

Pro Tip: Install Wordfence or Cloudflare and watch through your logs for scraper patterns. The majority of scrapers will only hit URLs to blog posts and many of them will do so in bulk.

How to Prevent Content Scraping on a WordPress Site: 8 Effective Methods

Protecting your content doesn’t mean making your site unattractive or putting up so many barriers that no one can navigate your site. Simply put, you want to create smart layers of protection. Below are eight straightforward ways to stop scrapers.

1. Use a Content Protection Plugin

The simplest option is to use a plugin to disable the normal ways of copying, such as right-clicking, selecting text, or using hotkey combinations (e.g., Ctrl+C or Cmd+C).

Recommended Plugins

• WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click: This plugin will prevent right-clicking, block text selection, block the browser developer tools, and prevent print screen copying; all for free!
• Secure Copy Content Protection and Content Locking: This plugin offers stronger options for disabling copying tools across devices
• CopySafe Web Protection: This plugin is perfect for image-heavy websites because it completely stops users from saving or downloading your visual content.

How To Set Up (For Example)

1. Access your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins > Add Plugin.
2. Search for WP Content Copy Protection.
3. Install and Activate Plugin.
4. Navigate to Settings > WP Content Copy Protection for settings to specify what is blocked.

Caution: These plugins only stop the casual scraper, there is nothing that will stop the more developed scraper bots. Use this as only one of multiple layers of protection.

2. Limit or Change Your RSS Feed

Scrapers love RSS full-text feeds – they are easy to parse and automate. If you’re displaying full posts, you are giving away your content on a silver platter.

The Solution to the Issue

Change your RSS feed to display just a summary instead of the full content.

How to Change the RSS Feed to Summary in WordPress

1. Open your WordPress Dashboard and go to Settings > Reading.
2. Find: “For each post in a feed, include”.
3. Select Excerpt instead of Full text and Save Changes.

Plugin Add-ons

• WP RSS Aggregator: Gives you control of how you publish and what you publish in your feed.
• RSS Feed Control by TwinFeeds: Will restrict access and add custom footers to your feed.

You can also put your link back to the original post or copyright notice inside your feed items to reinforce ownership.

3. Apply Canonical Tags on Your Blog Posts

Scraping sites can outrank your content if Google considers their version of the content original. The solution is to set canonical tags telling search engines which content is the “real” one. Most of the popular SEO plugins do this for you.

How to Use Canonical Tags

• If you are using Yoast SEO:
  • Canonical URLs are automatically set to the original post URL.
  • You can verify under each post: scroll to the Yoast section → Advanced tab → Check Canonical URL.
• If you are using Rank Math:
  • Find the post editor.
  • Scroll to Rank Math’s SEO settings → Advanced Tab.
  • Ensure the canonical URL matches your original post permalink.

By ensuring you always provide a canonical tag, even if someone scrapes and republishes your post, Google will know where the original post lives.

4. Block Known Scraper Bots via .htaccess or Firewall

Many scraping bots have unique user-agent strings. You can block them using your .htaccess file or with a firewall plugin.

Block Bots with .htaccess (Apache servers only)

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*(Scrapy|Curl|HttpClient|Python-urllib|libwww).* [NC]
    RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>

Add this to your site’s .htaccess file (via FTP or File Manager in cPanel). This denies access to known scraper tools.

WordPress Firewall Plugins

• Sucuri Security: Offers server-level WAF with brute-force protection
• WordFence(Free and Premium)
  • Real-time bot protection
  • Live traffic view for blocking IPs
• All In One WP Security: Lightweight and beginner-friendly

Use These Plugins To

• Block suspicious IPs
• Enable rate-limiting
• Stop XML-RPC abuse (common scraping method)

5. Set Up Google Alerts to Find Stolen Content

Want to find out when someone else reposts your work? There’s a free and easy way to set up Google Alerts.

How to Set Up Google Alerts

1. Go to Google Alerts.
2. Type a unique phrase from your content inside the quotes.
   • Example: “How to prevent content scraping on a WordPress site”.
3. Click Show options and then choose your alert frequency and sources.
4. Enter your email and click Create Alert.

You will receive an email anytime Google indexes that exact phrase on another domain.

6. Watermark Your Images and Infographics

Scrapers are interested in images too, not just text. If you are using original graphics, screenshots, or data charts, think about watermarks for your work.

Tools to Watermark Images

• Canva – to position semi-transparent logos or to overlay text
• Snagit – a decent app for making screenshots that are marked up and branded
• Watermarkly.com – a free web tool to watermark images in batch

Bonus Tip: If you are watermarking an image, include your brand name or website URL. If someone steals your content, it will help your brand identity travel with it.

7. File a DMCA Complaint to Remove Copyrighted Work

If you can’t stop people from taking your content, the only option is to take action. If you find a site that has copied your content without consent, you want to serve them a DMCA takedown notice.

Here’s What to Do

• First, find out who the host of the site is with the copied content using a tool like WHOIS Search.
• Now you will send a DMCA notice to:
  • The hosting provider.
  • Google (to deindex the copied page): Google Copyright Tool

Use this DMCA Template to Speed Things up

Subject: DMCA Takedown Request

Hello,

I am the original author of the following content:
[Link to your original blog post]

The following website has copied my content without permission:
[Link to the scraped version]

Please remove the infringing content immediately.

I am the copyright owner and swear under penalty of perjury that this is accurate.

Name: [Your Name]
Email: [Your Email]

DMCA notices are powerful, especially if the scraper site relies on Google or ad networks.

8. Make use of a Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) can be used to filter all incoming traffic data to your website, including malicious behavior such as scraping attempts.

Some of the Top WAF Options are

• Cloudflare Free + Pro:
  • Use Bot Fight Mode to block malicious bots
  • Create Custom Firewall rules from the request data patterns
• Sucuri Website Firewall:
  • Real-time bot detection and protection
  • Global CDN included
• MalCare Security: Easy setup with bot and brute-force protection.

Cloudflare Custom Rule Example

Create a rule to challenge any request hitting multiple pages too quickly:

Field: URI Path
Operator: contains
Value: /blog/
AND
Field: Request frequency > 30 in 1 minute
Action: Challenge (CAPTCHA)

This slows down bots that scrape hundreds of pages in seconds.

Bonus Step: Add a Copyright Notice in Your Footer

It might seem small, but it adds legal weight.

Use something like: Copyright [Current Year] © [Your Site Name]. All rights reserved.

Also, include terms of use page with language around content usage rights.

Final Thoughts

Content scraping is not going to go away, especially if you are running a WordPress site and creating great content. However, you should not just sit back and watch your content get stolen.

Now that you know how to prevent content scraping on a WordPress site, you need to take action. Start with the low-hanging fruit: install a content protection plugin, check your RSS settings, check your canonical tags, and get your site conducive to social sharing.

Then, implement the stronger techniques: add a firewall to your site, file a DMCA notice, and utilize some scraper monitoring tools.

No method is foolproof, and you won’t make your site 100% scrape-proof; however, making multiple methods of protecting your site provides more layers of security, making your site less appealing as a scrape target.

And that’s the point: to reduce scrape opportunities, not hinder your search rankings and put your content ownership into the proper context.

Your content is your asset, and you should treat it with the same level of protection as the other assets you own.

FAQs – How to Prevent Content Scraping on a WordPress Site