Hello world of Search Engine Optimization! The content thieves are frustrating. But does having someone reprint the first few sentences of a post and link back to you really hurt? What does it do for pagerank? Isn’t it simply a qualified link back to Reality Me? For example, hawaii-vacations.expert-travel-help.info has reprinted Darren’s prize list. Should I really care? Is it worth the fight?
Need input from SEO/copyright experts
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4 Comments
Well now…that’s some ironic trackback.
According to the SEO I read, these are in fact detrimental, because the “quality” of the source plays in, as well as the link count. Since you are “associated” (by link) with what could be considered spam, it actually affects you negatively.
I don’t think the links could actually hurt you, as anyone could create a splog and link to their competition. Receiving a link doesn’t imply association, but giving one does. I don’t think they’ll help, either, though.
Personally, I don’t like giving up or loosing control of my work … but I’m not really sure how to stop this? I put a a link or two above the fold going back to my site, so if people take the rss feed, I at least get something out of it, which might act as a deterrent. I also ban hot linking, except to a white-list.
I got the same spam as your first trackback to this post; I’m thinking about banning the IP address it came from, from reading my site. That only works after the fact, though, and only if they preserve the links and send trackbacks.
I wonder if enough of us published those IPs if we couldn’t create a way for people to use Antileech to stop them or at least make their theft more challenging. Of course, then we get into issues of publishing a list were a legitimate site could essentially be blackballed because of our actions.
I’m torn on the issue because for the most part they only use a few sentences and link back to the site. That is really no different than what I do on a daily basis.
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