If you are a blogger, chances are that sooner or later you will come across a phenomena called “splogs”. These blogs republish your content without your permission and without giving your a proper credit for your work. Some times they do link back to you but dressing up your links in pink colors of “nofollow” attribute. So how do you deal with them?
I came across an interesting discussion on AgentGenius.com on how to deal with splogs. Tom Royce of Real Estate Bloggers suggested a plugin called RSS footer– this plugin allows you to ad an extra link into your feed with a custom message, which can be used to expose and embarrass the splogger.
There is also another similar solution to the above plugin. I have been using it for quiet sometime without realizing it has a potential to insert additional links each of your RSS feed item- Similar Posts Plugin. This plugin undergone husge transformation since I first began using it, if you have it on your blog an kept with plugin’s updates make sure to look at every set of settings to appreciate more what this plugin can do for your blog. You can specify the links to similar post in RSS feed under “Placement” option in the latests version of the plugin.
Since many of the splogs are automated, the extra links to your website will begin to show up on these splogs. There is one more benefit from using the above described plugin- but revealing it means giving away a simple solution to the “developers” of these splogs.
So to all of you who think splogs are fun I am begging you: please go ahead and scrape my blogs.
Note: Above plugins are for WordPress.org powered websites only.
This is absolutely true. i also presently provide a link to my blog in my RSS feeds and this works well.
Another thing that works is to use absolute urls instead of relative urls. This also helps you generate links to your site when your content is stolen.
Who would of thought that theft of your posts can improve your ranking. Thanks – this is good news if used properly – which is my very next task
– Keith in Southern California