It just happened to me again – Google Alerts sent me an email notification of a new post on a website I’ve never seen before. The headline and excerpt looked like something I’d written myself, not too long ago on one of my blogs. Lo and behold – someone has copied my previous post in its entirety and presented it as their own. That person needed quality content for their new blog, so they could make money from ad clicks in their side bars.

No specific back link to the original source and no mentioning of the original author – me. It’s called content theft, right?

What can I do when someone steals my original content?

I’d like to point you toward this excellent article written by my friend Erica, over at SquidLog.com:

“Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery”

Erica gives us a brief definition of copyright as it relates to our own content, and then she explains a number of actions to take when content theft happens to us.

Furthermore, Erica links out to a couple of excellent articles on this subject. The procedures might look time-consuming at first, but in the end it is easier than we might think. However, it is important that we educate ourselves on these issues. Two reasons:

• Content thieves steal our traffic! They must be shut down.
• Appropriate counter actions need to be done in a professional way and in accordance with specific guidelines.

We might not be able to eliminate Content Theft completely, but we have the power to make it ever harder for online criminals to make money from our hard work.

By the way, the cute devil image in this post’s thumbnail comes from this free clip art site. Thank you.