It seems nearly everyone has a blog these days. Some are hobby blogs, others are blogs set up for content marketing purposes, and others are a bit more devious. These devious blogs are often called SPAM blogs or “splogs” and get their content by stealing yours.
Often referred to as scraping content, these blogs can ruin your hard work. For a business trying to make money, scrapers can do quite a bit of harm. Luckily, there are some simple steps you can take to thwart these online content thieves and keep control of the content you produce.
Use The rel=”canonical” Tag
While only a hint, the rel=”canonical” tag lets Google and other search engines know which version of a page is the original. Scrapers may try to use this tag, but if you can get your page indexed first, you should “win” and be recognized as the rightful owner.
For the WordPress users, Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin implements this automatically. There is also a Drupal add-on module that can do this as well.
To get a head start on being seen as the original, and making rel=”canonical” more effective, there are a few quick steps to take. First, share your content on social networks like Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. Second, bookmark your new page on sites like Stumbleupon and Delicious. Third, go ahead and leave a few valuable blog comments with the URL of the new page in the web address field.
Last but not least, if you think this piece of content is something really special, email a few other bloggers to let them know what you’ve done and ask if they’ll help you get the word out on their blogs and to their social followings.
Maximize The Benefit Of RSS
RSS is the main way that scrapers steal content. You can always disable your RSS feed, but that limits the number of ways people can subscribe to your site. A better option is to use RSS to build links to your site.
WordPress makes this easy by way of the RSS Footer plugin. Each time you make a post, the RSS feed will be updated with that post, as well as links back to the post and your homepage.
Note that Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin places links in your footer already, but not everyone uses that plugin.
It is also important that you make use of a smart internal linking structure. Link to related posts and important pages so they are included in your RSS feed as well.
While links from scraper sites won’t drive your pages to the top of the search engines, they will rarely hurt. These links, assuming they are not removed by the person behind the scraper site, will also help the search engines to identify the original page. It may take some time, but every little bit counts.
Check Trackbacks
Most WordPress sites attempt to notify other sites when you link to them. This takes place in the form of a trackback. If you receive a trackback, take the time to investigate the blog linking to yours. If the site appears to be a scraper, and you will know since it will be your content on the page you are investigating, you have options.
If your site outranks the scraper site, you can let it be and take the link you just got. That probably will make most people uncomfortable. In this case, filing a DMCA takedown request with Google can get the page removed from Google’s search results. While not very simple, it is an effective way to ensure you maintain the recognized ownership of your content.
Set Up Google Alerts
The last of the simple steps to preventing content theft online is to set up Google Alerts. Place the exact match of your content’s title in the alert field using double quotation marks. Each time this headline shows up elsewhere, you will get an email so you can then investigate and decide what to do.
Of all of these steps, this is by far the easiest. It also has the added benefit of letting you know when real blogs reference your site. You can then comment, email or reach out to them on social media to form a relationship that is beneficial to the both of you.
Conclusion
These are just a few simple steps to help you protect your work online. The internet provides incredible opportunity to both the good people, as well as the bad. Luckily, simple steps usually provide the greatest return.
If these steps are not enough, you can always go a step further. While appealing, do your best to leverage the work of these scrapers and thieves to your benefit. You may be surprised at the benefit you can get with a little work and a touch of cleverness.
@JulianaPayson is an associate at InMotion Hosting, a top ten web-hosting company well known for their tech support and knowledge base in helping out new webmasters. Juliana curates content for their 100k+ newsletter subscribers and web hosting news blog. If you have any tips to share with their web-professional audience, please get in touch with Juliana on Google Plus.
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Nice post and Thanks for sharing these important tips with us. Yes, now days its become very common to steal post from other blog but Thanks to you for sharing these tips and now I will surely implement these tips on my blog.
Sudipto recently posted..Best Android Phone Under 10000
if your blog is popular then everyday you will found someone stealing your content and it makes me sick sometimes.
Twitter: infotech20
says:
Some awesome points you gave here. i always follow the path of trackbacks and go the scene of Content theft and Catch them red handed.These thing must be done on the regular basis is someone want to protect their content from theifs online..
Gautam Kumar recently posted..Torrific Alternatives
Great tips that I’ll be sure to start using immediately. I never understood how big a threat content theft was.
Luis recently posted..6 Razones para tener una Tienda Virtual
So far never had any issues with people taking my content but you never know so I’ll follow the steps in this article. Thanks,.
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Hi,
I had someone actually visit my page, copy the content of a post and then use it for their own post on their site. The only way I found them was because I saw a link that persons link listed as a referral. I am hoping with your guidelines, it will make this process much easier and for the better.
Twitter: blogguidance
says:
Good suggestions about how to protect your content. I once had to contact another blog owner who used some of my content without appropriate attribution, but fortunately she was responsive and it all got worked out. However, I have a question about protecting images from being taken from your blog, especially if they’re images that you’ve taken yourself. Is use of a watermark the best way to go, or are there other options that bloggers should use?
Blogging Guidance recently posted..What is SEO?
Sometimes being the original does not mean you can rank higher on search engines. Some sites with more backlinks than you may beat your article in positions. You really have to put more effort in going after them whilst they use automatic softwares to copy content. Anyways, many of these sites are short lived. They eventually get banned and then they stop.
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also don’t forget to watermark your images. Alot of times people won’t scrape your content exactly but may take shortcuts and just still your graphics for their own posts.
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This is really very informative blog.I like your blog.Thank you for sharing
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i am sick of people stealing my content. these steps might help me to face this problem.
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I actually have the same philosophy about this as you. Most of the time when I discovered someone had stolen my content, it wasn’t because I was looking for it – it was because one of my readers saw it and let me know about it. I don’t have time to chase people down – as long as they are linking back to my blog, I don’t even say anything anymore.
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Twitter: techsparx1
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Hi Kevin! Great post! You know…After reading your post I’m thinking to go for paid advertising option. Thanks!
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Twitter: GKAdams
says:
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this post! I had someone actually visit my page, copy the content of a post and then use it for their own post on their site. The only way I found them was because I saw a link that persons link listed as a referral. Hopefully, with your tips, it will make this process much easier!
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Twitter: QArea
says:
Hi! The best way to protect your content – is a binding site to your Google + Account. Thank you for nice post!
This topic is really important and urgent for today, but it’s a pity that not so much attention is paid to it. Especially when everyone understand that content is the key element in this sphere. I think that using Google Alerts can be really effective
Thanks a lot for the post
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Twitter: Rohitkabdwal
says:
very informative article “myblogguest ” , the problem of article stealing is very critical and very annoying, it get worsened when thief get the whole credit of your writing.
the only remedy of this problem is to file DMCA against these SPAM blogs of splogs.
Rohit kabdwal recently posted..Is it Harmful to “Hibernate” Computer
Twitter: Rohitkabdwal
says:
very informative article “myblogguest ” , the problem of article stealing is very critical and very annoying, it get worsned when thief get the whole credit of your writing.
the only remedy of this problem is to file DMCA against these SPAM blogs of splogs.
Rohit kabdwal recently posted..Is it Harmful to “Hibernate” Computer
Thanks for sharing a important point from which more or less we all are effected and need a proper strategical plan to erode these thieves…coz of content copying sites are badly effected by google algorithms
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Best solution add ‘share’ buttons to your blog or news feed to encourages click-throughs to your site. These buttons also make it easier for you to track who’s shared your content and where. Good unique post, thanks for sharing.
Well, content stealing happens not just online but offline. Its just more prevalent online because its easier to setup and there’s little investment in the process. Those who do this can make hundreds of site with the same strategy.
I’ll look into the canonical tags you mentioned. Thanks for the tip.
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Twitter: Ajayudayagiri
says:
It is too important to protect content online. The copy of our content on other site may even effect our site in the form of Google panda and penguin updates. It is better to use the content checking tools to analyze whether our content is copied by any others. Checking trackbacks can lets us know about them.
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The canonical tag thing is really cool..Love how SEO Yoast does these little things that matter the most..Great post..Keep on sharing such relevant information..
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Unfortunately, even with all of these safeguards, there is little to protect against someone taking all of the ideas of your posts and spinning them in slightly different language on their own blog. It’s highly unlikely that a well-spun article would be picked up as duplicate content by a search engine, and the result is that now your unique content is all over the internet, without you receiving any credit for it!
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Interesting. But what are you supposed to add rel=canonical tag to? A link? So you’d go on social bookmarking sites and add your article link with rel=canonical?
This is really very informative blog.
I like your blog.
Thank you for sharing.
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its very unique post really its very useful and interesting points and i think RSS is very beneficial way really thanks for the sharing me
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Content scraping became the fashion these days. Lazy people do this wisely and ruin the hard working bloggers. Nice tips you have pointed out here. Thanks
Twitter: it_freelancing
says:
Well, I wasn’t aware about rel=”canonical” thing. But certainly heard a lot about “WordPress SEO Yoast” plugin. Must say quite useful and important information.
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Twitter: prabhatrayal
says:
hello kiesha,
thanks for the information. this is really a serious matter. people are stealing others content and their motive is to earn money without doing any work. and i wonder that “SEO by yoast” does almost every task for us, like SEO, taxonomies and the new thing I’ve learnt is placing rel=”canonical” tag. i did not know that. thanks for this information
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Yes, Prabhat SEO by Yoast is an amazing SEO plugin. It adds the rel=canonical tag also that makes your content original to you.
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I have been using the Yoast SEO plugin footer opton for a while now. One should also make sure that he/she should attach rel=”nofollow” tag to such a low quality links. You don’t want to wind up with having hundreds of spammy links following back to your blog.
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Twitter: write_clever
says:
Hi – this is the second post I’ve read about this in the last few days – it’s something I periodically worry about but have never got around to taking any positive action – just too busy doing other things, I guess, so it’s been on my back burner.
I’ll definitely bookmark this for future reference and share it – I’m sure other people will be interested in these tips. Thanks very much!
Sue
Sue Neal recently posted..5 Fatal Blogging Mistakes to Avoid – Lessons from a National Scandal
I get a lot of SPAM on my automotive blog but didn’t realize there were Spam blogs. Copying your work. Luckily i have SEO Yoast installed.
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Twitter: AlisonMSmith
says:
As usual, very good info. This presumes, however, that we have content others actually want to steal. ;)
I have had content stolen before. It’s annoying, but part of the deal, I guess.
I’ve been involved in a process of blogging one post a day for 100 days in a goal setting project. One day, I decided to do a search for a particular phrase to see if others were also blogging about it. What did I find? A woman, who promotes herself as a “life coach” has plagiarized huge portions of this program without so much as giving credit or reference.
I put a note on her facebook page asking about it. The page I referenced disappeared, but she never responded. That’s just nasty.
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Twitter: weblogbetter
says:
Hi Alison,
That’s unfortunate what happened to you. I’ve experienced the same thing, but I’m happy with the content disappearing – I don’t need an explanation – there is no good explanation for stealing content – so I’d rather not hear a bunch of hogwash about how they accidentally stole my content. Rather than get mad, I try to see it as a weird/twisted compliment :)
Twitter: AlisonMSmith
says:
Oh, Kiesha, I didn’t mean to be unclear. It wasn’t MY content they stole, it was the program I was writing about, a goal setting program.
Anyway, I agree with you to take it the best way possible.
Alison Moore Smith recently posted..100DC Day 38: Redemption and Second Acts
Twitter: HadleyHodgson
says:
So far never had any issues with people taking my content but you never know so I’ll follow the steps in this article. Thanks,.
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Twitter: freedommmc
says:
Good post Kiesha,
If there’s only 24 hours in a day I have to ask myself how much do I want to spend on chasing down someone who may have stolen my article?
Wouldn’t that time be better spent creating a new article?
I remember when I was in college and had no money we used to copy each others books on the copier to save a dollar.
If someone is stealing your work doesn’t it say something about whatever you created?
Apparently its so good that people have to have it?
Isn’t that a good thing?
Shout out to everybody reading this on a pirated version of Windows.
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Twitter: weblogbetter
says:
LOL! (pirated Windows!) – HA!
Hi Darnell,
I actually have the same philosophy about this as you. Most of the time when I discovered someone had stolen my content, it wasn’t because I was looking for it – it was because one of my readers saw it and let me know about it. I don’t have time to chase people down – as long as they are linking back to my blog, I don’t even say anything anymore.
I only get upset when people try to make it seem like they are me – using my name as if I’ve been to their blog of if they’ve changed something that makes me look like I’m supporting their weird money making schemes. Other than that, I consider it a low-ranking albeit, incoming link.
Hello Kiesha,
This is a very informative blog post. but i’d like to ask just one question. let’s say you caught the “bad” blogger that steals your work, what are the measures to be taken to bring justice?
babanature recently posted..Adding Categories And Menu To Your WordPress Blog
Twitter: weblogbetter
says:
Hi Babanature,
First, I’d start by contacting the owner of the blog and request that they remove the content and warn them not to repeat the offense. I’d give them a deadline – about a week and then I’d check back again. If the content wasn’t removed by then, my next step would be to contact their host and make them aware of the issue. I’ve never had to go that far – usually they remove the content. Google also has a process for reporting spam sites, but I’ve never had to do that, so I’m not sure of the DMCA take down process. Follow the link above for more details. I hope that helps.
Yeah! you did put some light in it. thaks
Babanature recently posted..Adding Categories And Menu To Your WordPress Blog
Thanks a lot for this great article! Found my articles on the web once, but not postet by myself. Spooky. Now i know how to secure my site and my words. Great news. Thanks again :)