You may have read about bloggers publishing someone else’s content on their site and claiming it as their own. You may have seen it and thought it could never happen to you. But I’m here to tell you. It can happen to you unless you take the right precautions to protect your blog and your content!
Table of Contents
How & Why You Need To Protect Your Blog Content
Don’t be a statistic and have to fight your way to regain your content. Be Proactive and take action now! Not sure how to? Read below for a few examples and if you still need help, just ask below in the comment area.
Don’t Let Bloggers Steal Your Content – Cyber Protect Your Blog!
The blogging community is, on the whole, a very welcoming and friendly place to be. Bloggers are always happy to collaborate and help each other bring more readers to their sites. But there are always going to be people that want to get ahead of the competition using dishonest means, like content theft.
Often a blogger doesn’t even realize it’s happened to them! But another blog could be posting your content and passing it off as their own. That means they’re getting credit for your work. They are building a readership off the back of your hard work. Imagine that?
In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to worry about this but it does happen so you must protect yourself. These are some of the best ways to protect your blog against content theft. Of course, if you use a listening tool you may catch them with it.
How To Protect Your Blog Content From Copying With Copyright Notices
If you don’t lay out, in clear terms, how others are allowed to use your content then you’re going to run into problems. It’s ok for people to share your content on their blog. It can be beneficial as long as they’re doing it with your permission. And, most importantly, giving you the credit and posting a link back to the original article on your site. That’s a great way to get more readers.
However, what you don’t want is people posting it as their work. So you’ve got to have clear guidelines. Write a clear copyright notice that is easily visible on the blog. It should outline how people should proceed if they want to share your content.
You have to have clear guidelines! Write a clear copyright notice that is easily visible on the blog! #blog #protect #theft #content Share on XYou can find an example of a copyright notice for a blog here. If you don’t have a creative copyright notice on your site, a lot of people will think that means they’re allowed to share your content freely without consequence, even if you don’t want them to.
Online Security To Protect Your Blog Content From Copying
Cyber-security attacks are big news at the moment and a lot of companies are falling prey to them. Everybody knows that online security is important for big companies, but a lot of bloggers don’t realize that it’s just as important for them as well.
If you don’t have good security systems in place, that makes it easier for people to log into your blog account and make posts that you haven’t even published yet.
One of the best ways of protecting your blog is to use a virtual private network. Private networks are not that expensive. A private network will ensure that your blog isn’t at risk of being hacked and they protect your IP address. If you’re not very tech-savvy and you may be asking, what is my IP?
An IP address is a unique number that all devices have when they connect to the internet, so other devices know where to send and receive data. It’s important to protect it because hackers can use it to get at all sorts of other information. They can get your details or your credit card number, etc.
The more personal details that they have, the easier it is for them to get onto your blog account and steal content.
Google Alerts
Knowing whether someone has already stolen your content and published it is hard because of the sheer number of different sites on the internet. But you can set up Google alerts to search for particular words and phrases.
If you put your name or the name of the blog at the bottom of posts, you can set up a Google alert so you’ll get an email if it pops up anywhere else. You should also set up alerts for post titles so you’ll know if somebody posts your article elsewhere. I love using Google alerts!
How To Protect Your Blog Content From Copying By Others With Social Listening Tools
Google alerts do not show content that mentions you from social media or blogs. They only share content that is “news”. So if you want to know what others are saying elsewhere you will need a good social listening tool for that.
You can then find out if someone has been copying your content. I love getting emails when someone mentions my brand from my social listening tool. I’ve found some blog copiers there over the years.
Have The Blog Content Removed
If you do get alerts and you find that somebody is using your work without crediting you, you need to get it taken down. You probably don’t want to hear it, but you need to pick your battles in these situations.
Getting a blog post taken down can be a lengthy process if the site owner doesn’t play ball with you. Sometimes, it’s just not worth your time. If you find your post on a site that ranks very low on Google searches and has a tiny amount of subscribers no worries. Nobody is reading it and it’s not worth spending ages fighting over it.
However, if a big website that is making a lot of money is using your content, that’s a different story.
Getting a blog post taken down can be a lengthy process if the site owner doesn’t play ball. #protectyourcontent #blog Share on XContact The Blogger To Protect Your Blog Content From Copying
The first port of call is to contact the blogger. Let them know that they’re violating copyright and ask them to take the post down in 24 hours. Usually, they’ll put their hands up and admit they’ve been caught out and the post will disappear.
If that doesn’t work, you should find the company that is hosting the blog. A website owner can get in a lot of trouble if they’re hosting sites that are breaking copyright law, so they’ll get it sorted for you.
It’s a real shame that there are people out there stealing your content. But unfortunately, it’s a reality of the blogging world so you must protect your blog. Protecting it is imperative for your blogging business today.
Your Turn
Have you ever had content stolen from your blog or website? How do you protect your blog? I’d love to know more in the comments below.
She has 30+ years of experience in marketing/advertising with 11 years of experience in content marketing, social media, blogging, and SEO.
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A very helpful article. I will use many things contained in it. Thank you!
Hello Lisa,
Content theft is a big problem for most of the bloggers. I have personally faced this issue. However, I am able to deal with it and filed the DMCA takedown notice. That’s why I always put a Copyright notice along with a DMCA badge. Google alerts is a great way to stay updated and help to prevent stolen content. Thanks for sharing these helpful tips.
Have a Great Day 🙂
Vishwajeet
The internet makes it easy to steal and hard to protect. While written words are copyright protected immediately, I feel it is difficult to track thieves.
Yes, putting a notice might help someone who isn’t aware of how to deal with content online.
But, it fails if the person wants to steal, she will find a way.
One thing to note is – you can file takedown notices and probably ask for damages if your content is stolen. Be casual and don’t invest a whole lot of time, money in protecting. But if you come across someone who is stealing from you, then go ahead and fight for your work.
Hi Rohan, welcome to Inspire to Thrive. You sure got that right – easy and hard on the wrong things! I would agree to fight for it and try to do it with them before filing any lawsuit. Thanks for your input and have a great day!
Hi Lisa!
What an important topic for a post. Most people aren’t diligent enough about protecting their content until they actually feel the effects about having it stolen.
Fortunately I haven’t had this problem much with blog articles, the real issue has been with my video courses being at times uploaded onto other video hosting sites where anybody can view them for free. In these cases, I often have to resort to C&D letters or DMCA notices to the companies hosting the content for anything to be done.
The sad truth is that thieves of all forms run rampant in this world and as content owners we need to be prepared for this before we become a victim of it.
On an unrelated note, one of my company’s main product line is mugs, and we are sending up to 2 dozen C&D letters a week for people copying the designs of the products! Thieves will truly stop at nothing it seems.
It’s been a long while since we’ve talked last, but hope all has been well. Thanks Lisa!
– James McAllister
Hi James, wow, nice to see you again 🙂 How have you been? I’m so glad you have shared your experiences here with us. I can’t believe about your mugs! Amazing how people can think they can copy things and not worry about lawsuits and such. I didn’t realize how bad this was until this post came out and I’ve heard from several now about their awful experiences of content and such being stolen. Sad 🙁
Thanks for your input on this one and have a great day James.
Overall, things have been pretty well! Professionally it’s been a very successful past few years for my companies, but of course, along with that comes a lot of headaches as well. Still, good problems to have I suppose!
Oh yeah, there’s a ton of issues going on with IP theft of product designs at the moment. This is largely coming from countries where counterfeiting isn’t seen as such a big deal, namely China. That’s not at all political or against Chinese people in any way, just a reality of the marketplace right now. Sadly, it’s not always easy to stop it either.
It just hit me that this is something I should be thinking about and landed here! I didn’t know about Google alerts either, very interesting! I must have had my head in the sand over this topic. Doh. Great post, very informative, Lisa, thanks.
Hi Phil, I guess Google read your mind 🙂 Glad it was informative for you. Welcome to Inspire To Thrive and have a great day. If you haven’t subscribed to our email – feel free to. I sent out free Cheat Sheet for Twitter tips and Facebook page for beginners. 🙂
I have a copyright plugin on all my blogs called Copyright Proof. You have to register it, and now they might charge for it (I got a free version since I was an early adopter; they reached out to me), but it works very well.
Awesome Mitch, thanks for sharing that one here! Another person had asked about this. LOVE it and will have to search for it. Enjoy your day! 🙂
? Those are all wonderful ideas, Lisa.
I would like to share a trick with you that I learned from Neil Patel; which is to go on the Copyscape website (preferably their plagiarism checker section) and add the URL to any of your articles.
On the 28th of January, 2019, someone copied and pasted one of my blog posts and published it on their blog (I wasn’t too pleased about that).
I ended up sending in a submission for a DMCA takedown.
Two days later, my blog post was removed from the offender’s blog.
I guess that those people who publish fabulous content are targets for those people whose wish it is to steal well-written content.
Hi Renard, I LOVE your story. I guess many would not like a DMCA takedown 🙂 It’s unbelievable how many think they would not get caught doing this! Always amazes me. Thanks for sharing your story here with us Renard and enjoy the weekend!
I have found too Lisa, the bigger your tribe and more genuine your blogging voice, you literally cannot be copied. Folks may copy and paste posts, but this crowd dissolves into oblivion. Plus as your influence expands, people see your content and your blogging voice on another blog, and ignore it. Neat effect of much hard work, a decade of building up your influence to epic levels.
Hi Ryan, I LOVE your take on this one. That is awesome! I know some readers here would know if they read the same thing elsewhere. Thanks for sharing your insights on this one. I hope you have a nice weekend over there. 🙂
Hi Lisa,
I have read a lot about the content thefts earlier also. This is such a nice article.
But I want to ask, as I am using wordpress for my website, is there any good plugin or something like that which tells the content is subjected to some theft issues?
Again thanks for the article.
Hi Kaushal, Mitch Mitchell just answered this “a copyright plugin on all my blogs called Copyright Proof. You have to register it, and now they might charge for it (I got a free version since I was an early adopter; they reached out to me), but it works very well.” I hope you find it as well. Thanks for coming by and welcome to Inspire To Thrive.
Hey Lisa! It’s snowing here! Yuk! LOL
This is so very important. I remember hearing about some fellow bloggers who this actually happened to. The hoops they had to jump through to get their content removed from the “poser” blogger was terrible. Two I know actually had to get lawyers involved to help settle the issue. Blogging is not easy and I think people go into blogging thinking it is. Once they discover how hard creating content on a routine basis, publishing, marketing it is, they decide to take the easy way out and STEAL other’s work. It’s truly sad but if anyone knows, you do like I do, the blogging world can be a dog eat world.
It’s better to be safe than sorry and protect your blog and your content. I remember years ago I used a plugin for this but then found out that when the content shows up in an RSS reader, you can still copy and paste. Go figure. 😉
Great post, Lisa! Have a great day!
B
Hi Brenda, Lucky you. I came back to NONE 🙁 Wow, I haven’t heard of those directly but have read it can happen with lawsuits and such. SAD 🙁
Geez, what plugin did you use Brenda? Now I’m curious.
Thanks for coming by on this Brenda and I hope you enjoy your weekend! I can’t wait for the SuperBowl to see if Brady can do it again 🙂
I’ll have to dig around and find out what plugin that was. It’s been a few years so may be expired. But yeah, I did a blog post on it and that’s how I found out if it appears in a reader, the content is free for stealing. 🙁 Enjoy your game today! Go Rams! 🙂
Thanks Brenda, That would be cool. Sorry your team lost. Sort of 🙂 I did enjoy it very much. I hope your week is starting out well.
Well Lisa,
As far as WordPress goes, there are a lot of options available. I guess I am right in saying that we need to protect our blog from only those have such intentions of causing trouble or damage of any kind. Be it attack-wise or spam wise.
VPN is a good option to protect and hide the original IP.
Thanks for sharing these tips with us. I ll go and check how secure my blog is.
Regards
Vineet Saxena
Hi Vineet, Are you using anything special to do that for you? Plugins or such? Oh yes, there is always a way if there’s a will, right? Sad but true sometimes. Thanks for coming by on this and have a nice weekend 🙂