Give Credit, Links and Traffic Where It’s Due
Blog authors should be careful when they write posts on their own blogs about a post they found on another blog. Earlier today I had a friend instant message me and ask me to look at two posts. One was his and the other was a post that was written about his post. The problem my friend was having with the other post that supposedly was giving him credit was the fact that most of my friend’s original content was copied and pasted into the other post.
The person who copied his content did give credit to my friend and provided a hyperlink. Also the site was clearly a “real blog” and not a splog or MFA site. At any rate, my valued opinion was asked about the situation and I felt like my friend had been cheated and the reason why is simple.
Even though the other author gave full credit, links and recognition to my friend, what’s the point? The end user who views the copied content will have absolutely no reason to click over to my friend’s blog. Why? Because all the goodies are already included on the current page. There is no reason to click further for the information, it’s already there.
A better way for the other author to inform his readers about the great content my friend wrote would be to describe in his own words what his findings were and to provide an immediate and direct link to my friend’s post. From there, the readers from the other blog would have no choice but to visit my friend’s blog for the content being publicized.
The sad part of this story is that the other blogger probably did not have the intention to make my friend angry, but because of the way he went about publishing the content, it created some unwanted friction. If you read an interesting blog post and want to cover a post on your blog about it, you should be careful with how you do it.
There is nothing wrong with writing a post about someone else’s post; however, if you do it in a way that steals the goods from the other post and make it so that people don’t have a need to click over to view the original page, then you might find that it will upset the person who wrote the original post.
While many people have good intentions and just want to help other bloggers out by sharing links, references and sources; if you go about it the wrong way, you can easily create the opposite effects of what you were wanting to achieve. In the case of my friend, he wrote a post that had some cool php code he wanted to share with his readers. Consequently, the entire source code was copied and included on another blog which basically made it so that there would be no reason for visitors of the other blog to click over to view my friend’s blog.
In doing this, the other publisher cheated my friend from having new potential readers, subscribers or even people who would help generate some extra income from his blog. Instead the other blog author in many ways simply grabbed onto the coat tail of my friend and went on a free ride with his content. Do you see where I am coming from?
Sometimes in blogging, its more than just giving credit where credit is due. Everything evolves around traffic and when another author’s content is used towards increasing your own traffic, sometimes that isn’t looked upon too highly. Authors invest a lot of time publishing quality content and credit as well as traffic should be entitled for it. Next time you want to write about the content you read on another blog post, be sure to carefully present this post to your readers in a way that will encourage them to click to view the original author’s post page instead.
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Date/Time: 3-5-2008 01:43:52 Comment #12090
Very interesting…I haven’t really seen any blog that aren’t splogs actually copy content. I guess there are all types of bloggers nowadays…
-Mike
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 06:17:02 Comment #12094
I see it differently.
If your friends post was interesting, which I assume it was otherwise it wouldn’t be copied, then the readers will check out what ELSE he has to say.
This is really nothing different than a guest post and should give the same kind of affect.
I understand your friend being caught off guard but it really is a benefit to him.
Backlink and free publicity for his blog.
My 2 cents.
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 07:51:19 Comment #12095
@ BlogEntrepreneur,
Thanks for the comment. No one has to agree with everything I say. I like reading the opinions of others and in many cases I’ll eat my words too.
Let’s address that. I don’t believe that many people will check out what else the original author will have to say, especially SERP traffic. If the original author’s content doesn’t rank above the person who simply copied and added to the content, then he is screwed out of SERP traffic for sure.
I believe you to be wrong. I write many guest posts on other blogs for the purpose of helping those blogs grow internally while fastidiously helping my own blog increase readership. What I write on other blogs is carefully written and well planned out for optimal coverage. (e.g. readers are going to click the links provided)
There is nothing wrong with a free backlink. However you have to weigh out the “Pros” and “Cons” in the situation. As far as free publicity goes, who cares if no one is clicking? As far as the free backlink goes, who cares if the copied content ranks better than the source article in the SERPs.
Thanks again for the comment, I believe that it will stem a lot more interest than this:
@ Mike,
You’re going to tell me that you have NEVER seen a blog that blockquoted or copied content from another blog? lol
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 08:19:16 Comment #12097
@ Garry, Great article. And I agree with your key point. Just be careful how it is presented, giving links and credit is only part of the equation.
@ BlogEntrepreneur, How is copying and pasting someone else’s content like a Guest Post?
A guest post would not be a duplicated post, but an original on someone else’s blog.
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 08:21:58 Comment #12098
@ David,
You have to handle posts like this with caution, agreed. But you know… screw it. If it is on my mind, then I am blogging about it (within reason). lol!
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 09:00:42 Comment #12099
I’ve seen this a lot on many of the entertainment blogs out there. In the past, I’ve alway posted a small excerpt of the blog post, then posted a link to the source so the reader could follow to the original author’s post to read more. Glad to know that I’ve been doing correctly.
And about the guest posts, aren’t those posts fresh content? And not just an article that was previously on the guest poster’s blog? Wouldn’t that be considered duplicate content, and isn’t that frowned upon as well?
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 09:39:30 Comment #12101
Hi Ruthie!
You got it right. Copy an excerpt (maybe a paragraph or two of content) write a post about it, offer your opinions, thoughts or feelings about it and provide a clear and conscious LINK to the original post.
Yes, BlogEntrepreneur is doing a little “apple / orange” comparison here. Guest posts are totally unrelated to this topic. A guest post is indeed fresh content that can’t be found anywhere else… or it should be.
As far as duplicate content goes… I am on the fence with that. I don’t think it is as bad as it has been hyped up to be. I’ll elaborate on that soon in a post of its own. Check David’s blog too, he might cover or might have already covered his opinion about Dup content as well. Ironically, we’re both on the same page regarding that.
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 09:56:07 Comment #12102
I have covered Duplicate Content in the past, however, my opinion has changed a little.
Internal Duplicate Content I do not worry about too much, I take the proper action with Nofollow, Noindex on certain pages. The impact is which page is the authority, since they are all internal, its not that big of an issues as Matt Cutts has stated on his blog.
External Duplicate Content is another issue. If a post is copied to another site, than it can cause problems because search engines are not sure who do give the Authority too. The threshold for that is probably around 60%, if 60% of a post is copied, it is Duplicate.
So, if someone copies a post from another site they can cause issues with the SERPS and actually become the authority for that content, robbing the owner of the traffic and public credit for the original article.
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 15:42:40 Comment #12109
I totally agree. When I firt started blogging I used to grab images from here and there and not credit them. It was simply not thinking.
Recently I realised this was in some cases probably breaking copyright but more importantly people would not have known that they were not my images.
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 15:43:57 Comment #12110
Oh sorry, another thing. I have been trying to purchase Micro Niche Finder but can’t find a buy or download link on the site. I signed up to the newsletters a while back and can’t find anywhere to buy it from there either!
Am I being stupid?
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 16:04:29 Comment #12111
http://www.garryconn.com/mnf
fill out the email form and on the next page you can make the purchase. Just scroll down to the very bottom of the second page.
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 16:09:00 Comment #12112
Thanks Garry, sorry for being so dumb! Hope you got some affiliate cash from it.
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 17:09:40 Comment #12118
You’re not being dumb… I had to check the site too. It looks like James Jones changed the page, which is very confusing. It says enter your email addy for free videos. And yes, I’ll receive a referral for your purchase, so I appreciate it. However, I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t use it myself.
Download it and give it a spin, feel free to contact me any time if you have questions about it.
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 18:47:52 Comment #12122
What can you do about it? You can ask the author to take it down, but will they? I have accidentally not given due credit before on some PHP code, but the person I got it from probably just pasted it from some where else anyway
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 19:44:25 Comment #12127
@David…the guest post was an analogy….I didn’t mean it actually WAS a guest post.
I know if I liked the post, and it was linked to the original author, I would go check out the OA blog to see what else he/she had to say. That’s me but others apparently think differently.
I am not trying to defend the guy, I personally don’t see it as that big of a deal but I guess my viewpoint might change if it were my content.
Date/Time: 3-5-2008 20:04:23 Comment #12130
I think that, generally speaking, you are right on.
I do know from experience that there are some situations, however, where you can’t really link to a post without copying part of it, unless it was just a “daily links” type of post.
The situations I’m thinking of are tutorials or posts with code snippets, or something along those lines. There is no way to “tease” the content and it would like stupid to have 1 tutorial step, or half a code snippet. Hehe.
Anyway, other than those situations, it was well said!