Content scraping is one of the biggest challenges facing the blogosphere. No matter how hard ones tries to protect their content, scrapers will find a way to steal it. This can be disturbing, considering that your content is all over the web, with no credit for your efforts. Sometimes, stolen content might even outrank your own creation, which is truly stressful. Luckily, a few open routes can help you can help you protect your content from scrapers.
First, it’s very important for you to understand how scrappers manage to steal your content and get away with it. This is because; this understanding will be a good starting point to help you know what loopholes exist and how to seal them.
Scrapers operate in two main ways to steal your content. The first instance is where they steal content from your blog by simply copy pasting the text and then publishing this content on their blogs or websites. The second, yet most challenging technique most scrapers steal your content is when they scrape your RSS feed.
Considering that dealing with plagiarism and scraping content from a website is the hardest job you’ll ever do, the following techniques can help you do it efficiently.
Use of plagiarism checker
Plagiarism checker Plagtracker allows you to detect scrappers whenever they strike your blog in minutes. Rather than go through the stress of copy pasting everything in the search engine search box to detect plagiarism, this tool does it for you automatically, ensuring that your content is authentic and free from duplicates. You can also use the tool to detect the work of content scrapers.
Manage text selection on your blog
This is one of the most effective ways to protect your blog from direct copy pasting. This style is one of the most used ways to steal website content and you’ll be right in their tracks to stop them with it. A number of JavaScript codes can do this for you although WordPress and other blogging platforms have different plugins to limit the copy pasting.
The advantage of using script level control is that, scrapers are beat from the simple acts themselves. Scripts are also easy to implement and edit.
Watermark pictures on your blog
A watermark proves that you’re the authentic copyright owner of particular website content. Moreover, by the simple fact that all your photos have your brand written all over them, scrapers will be discouraged to steal your content, instead, opting to look for other easy targets to scrape.
To enable you do watermarking for photographs, there are many websites that help you do it free. However, Windows Live Write has a good inbuilt watermark plugin many bloggers love and this means, you can easily get the services and benefits for less.
Take charge of your RSS Feeds
The RSS feed is one of the most important tools for web development and management. It ensures that content published is easy to find on a website, which is also good for indexing in the search engines, which scroll the feeds on a regular basis. Nevertheless, RSS feeds are prey to many content scrapers who use them to steal other people’s web content free.
In fact, many bloggers have explained their frustration at the difficulty to control scrapers who use the RSS feeds of their blogs to auto publish stolen work elsewhere. Many times, these scrapers actually benefit from the stolen content.
There are a number of ways to cap this, one among them, making your RSS feeds shorter. Even though they won’t stop scrapers completely, they will give your blog a level of authority, which tells readers where the content came from.
Author Bio:
Sandra Miller is a freelance tech writer from Brooklyn. You can reach her at Google+.
