Content-Sharing or Stealing?

We have been talking a lot about content and SEO lately here at Blogging Painters. We are fortunate to have some great contributors here and they are generating a wealth of valuable content. Our goal is to create and share the information that helps build our businesses, educate our customers and build a network of professionals with the same goal.

As every blogger knows, there are many out there that just want to use other’s content for SEO purposes, thank goodness for Akismet for catching all those nasty spammers that try to leave comments! But what about the lazy bloggers? The ones who just want your content to fill space on their blog or website?  Or the blogger who does like what you write and puts it on their blog, honestly wanting to share?  What do you do when you see your work in full on another site? Is it flattery or can it bite you in the butt?

Duplicate Content

This mostly refers to having the same content on multiple pages of your own site, here is a Google article that explains it well. But it can hurt your site’s placement in Google searches, if Google finds two similar results, it will return the best one, so there are other factors involved.

Copying Content

• Four reasons why it is bad for you to do it.
• What you can do about it when you find someone copying your site.

Scraping Content

This is a common practice and Google will catch you and penalize you.

Using Media

Media is often misused in the blogosphere, check out Creative Commons for guidelines and information. If you get a photo from a google search, just add a credit at the bottom of the post.

So how do we share the best?

Most of the above is based on people wanting your content for their SEO gain, and that is not a problem for most of us, who rarely rise above a Page Rank of 2! So what is the proper way to share content?

Linking in your own post

When you are writing about topics, add additional information like I did above in Copying Content, notice I did not say “for more information go here” or “link”. You want to use the words that are relevant and hyperlink them. You can say, “Here is a great article about the new ben paint by Tommy Johnson” when you are discussing different brands of paint.

Quoting and Excerpts in your own post

If you do find information that you want to share on your blog, use part of it, the general rule is no more than 20%, don’t copy things like the author profile, sharing buttons or other parts of the blog. Here is an example of a post I shared this way. Press This is a great WordPress  tool to make this simple. If you are a Chrome user, Word This is another option.

Guest Posting

If you find a blogger you really like, ask them to post on your blog, or if you find a blog you feel you could add something to, like Blogging Painters, ask to submit a post. JB over at Building Moxie has a nice process for “tagging” guest posters.

Blogroll

Add a blog you like to your blogroll. Ask to be put on someone else’s after you have connected.

Comments

Writers love feedback, let them know you enjoyed it, ask a question or add your opinion. Make sure you have a Gravatar account, this will add a “calling card” to your name and others will be able to click thru to your blog, I try to avoid putting a link in my comment because it will usually be blocked by the spam filter and I feel it is just not good etiquette, unless it is a link that really pertains to original post.

Social Media

By far the easiest and most effective way to share, there are tons of applications and extensions you can add to your browser to make it easy to Like, Share or Tweet something you like, be sure to add a comment as well, writers love feedback! Remember, the blogging community is a place to share information and learn from each other as well as a way to build an online reputation. Doing this authentically and organically will result in increased SEO, which should be the effect, not the cause!

 

Photo courtesy of http://cogdogblog.com/