Everything You Need to Know About Protecting Your Blog Content
Imagine finding one of your own personal experiences being claimed by someone else on the internet; someone that you’ve never heard of before, or who may be a direct competitor, claiming your well thought out research or hours of creative work as their own and getting thousands of views and hundreds of shares! Think about how you would feel.
I know this worries you because it also worries me, a fellow content creator for the World Wide Web, just like you. No matter if you blog about a certain industry, niche or topic, write articles, produce content for your brand or organization, having something taken from you and claimed as “there’s” is something nobody wants to deal with, EVER.
On my worst days, this worry even stops me from putting out content. So how do you fight against this very real threat and get rid of that fear?
If you follow all or even just a few of the steps in this article, I promise you won’t have to worry about content thieves climbing your high digital walls as you build your brand, protect your reputation, and continue to spread your sphere of influence with peace of mind.
In the virtual world, nothing is unassailable so although you’ll deter a large amount of competition, no one can guarantee your content won’t be stolen.
How to Protect Blog Content Theft: Everything You Need to Know
Google Alerts
One of the easiest ways to protect blog content is setting up an “alarm,” so to speak whenever your keywords are found somewhere on the web by Google’s spiders. In Google Alerts, you can insert any keyword or phrase. When Google’s spiders find it on the web, you’ll get an email notification to your Gmail inbox. When creating your alert you want to use something unique such as your brand name. If you have more than one word, you should always put it in quotes.
Specifically for protecting your content, you can include a single “secret” phrase in all of your blog posts and set up an alert for that specific phrase, so if it is ever found outside of your blog, you’ll know about it. This will save you the hassle of setting up multiple alerts or different alerts for each post or article.
Add the Copyright © Symbol To Your Website
Nolo, one of the world’s leading legal sites, has great information about the use of the copyright. What demands your attention are the three elements to make your copyright valid. First, you must use one of these versions of the copyright: “Copyright,” or © or Copr. You also need to have the year of publication and your name or the owner of the content’s name “Company X” all in one line to make it valid. For example; Copyright © 2015 Nancy R Lin.
You can even add both the Copyright and the © together as I did above for securing your site content. This can ward potential thieves away, but the protection kicks in only when you’ve registered the copyright. A lawyer can do this for you if you don’t want to worry about a headache it offers, but if you’re a form savvy, have at it. The filing fee is $85. Everything you’ve ever created is automatically under copyright by you; however, in the digital world, it’s your safest bet to display it on your live blog or website.
If it’s not published and is live on the web, it’s not protected under your copyright.
Check for Plagiarism
One giant step above Google Alerts is utilizing a plagiarism detection tool. If you’ve never used one before, you can use it to find copies of your work online within minutes. Simply set up the service and drop your file in. Depending on which detection tool you use, you’ll either throw in a website link or upload some of your articles before you publish it.
The detection tool will check your work against billions of indexed pages via search engines, primarily Google and Yahoo! I personally use Unplag, because of their outstanding customer service.
{You can also try Grammarly for checking plagiarism, though it’s a premium tool but you will realize that it worth money}
Disable Copying from Your WordPress Blog
Doesn’t get much easier than this. Disable the ability to copy from your website entirely with WP-Copyprotect. Nobody will even be able to select text from your website, let alone try to copy it. If anybody wants something you’ve written on your WordPress blog, they’ll have to type it out by hand.
Now that’s peace of mind. In the settings you can set it so admins of your website can still copy from your website, so you’re only inconveniencing potential thefts. It doesn’t affect your SEO, and it also prevents thefts from dragging your pictures to a different window if your Blog is founded more on unique images and photos.
Don’t have a WordPress site? Don’t worry. Disabling right click capabilities is all in the code and that’s provided for you free of charge right here.
Protect Your Precious Prose With DCMA Protection
If you’re all about taking down the bad guy, DCMA is right up your alley. Not only will you get a DCMA Protected badge that you can put in your footer, alongside your copyright notice. It will link to your digital DCMA certificate detailing out your protection status, when your protection started and the page that it’s protecting. It is almost a surefire way to prevent someone from attempting to steal from your site since DCMA is a key player in taking action against online thieves disguised as content specialists with their DCMA Takedowns.
You Can Get Creative with Commons Too
Creative Commons is a twist on the normal copyright and it’s free. This form of copyright is a little bit trickier to understand and is primarily for creatives as opposed to non-fiction users. If writing words just aren’t your thing and you’re more into graphic art, photography, making videos, designing themes, templates, or websites, you can add a Creative Commons license onto your site to secure your stuff. This will allow people to use and share your content, with proper attribution, while legally disallowing them to do so for a profit.
Author Bio
Adding your author bio to all of your articles will add a much needed human element to your content and one common way to protect blog content. Everyone should have a professional headshot. Your dress code could range from formal suit & tie, to business casual, to active wear. Your photo should match the style of your audience. Only you know your audience best.
Always have your social media links in your bio to make it easier to be found and to be contacted if someone is courteous enough to ask you to use your work, and/or want to invite you to guest blog for them. This also compounds the effectiveness of writing in the first person because it links personal experiences to a face, your face.
This gives you more credibility and more leverage when seeking to acquire link backs and proper sourcing from the second party when content is used from your website. They will subconsciously be familiar with you, rather than a name in black text on a white page.
Tynt
What’s Tynt? It’s a free copy & paste content protection service that has angered a few people across the internet. Tynt has a link attribution feature that will modify the copied text when the content thief goes to paste it, successfully adding link attribution back to your site. You can imagine how much this will frustrate people who “didn’t copy a link,” from your site in the first place.
However, rather than using this to make people mad, you can just use Tynt for its analytic features. Keep link attribution off, and allow the analytics to track in the background. When you’ve acquired some data, follow-up with where your content was posted so that you can build a relationship and turn it into a win-win.
If it is a credible place that copied your content, you will more than likely get a response and the relationship building begins. If the person or place who took your content has little to no integrity, then you can decide how to proceed from there. I always suggest making any and all attempts at getting attributed in some way: an organic backlink to your website, being properly sourced, etc. Again, this only benefits you, your brand, your mission and your organization in the long run.
Turn Your Content Theft Into a Win-Win Rather Than a Win-Lose
Content theft can actually work to your advantage if you seek out the value and opportunity in what’s really happening. If properly sourced, quoted, and given link backs, what started as content theft can actually become advantageous. It can increase your sphere of influence (your following), credibility and generate more leads that increase sales. Contacting the owner of the site or blog that stole your content might take some time via social channels or e-mail, but that’s your first step in reaching them.
You can also leverage white-space on your site by offering the opportunity to guest post, and link back to their site as well. You must find a way to make the relationship mutually beneficial, not just beneficial for you, that’s the key. People don’t like doing business with greedy people.
Have you ever faced your blog content theft? Do let me know which method you are using to protect your blog content in the comments section. Is it paid or free?
About the Author
Nancy Lin, a young and enthusiastic freelance writer. She is a wordsmith, who enjoys writing about blogging and tech tips.
