4 STEPS TO HELP PREVENT CONTENT THIEVES.

If you have blogged for very long then I'm sure you've known someone that has had content stolen from their blog.  It's sad to see blog friends who work so hard on a post only to have it appear somewhere else on the internet and get absolutely no credit for it!  Especially if the thief is more than likely making money through AdSense clicks because of the stolen content people are coming to see.

Luckily, it hasn't happened to me yet but I decided that today I was going to figure out ways to make it more difficult for those thieves to get their hands on my content.

Here's what I came up with...

1. Truncate your posts. Truncating your posts creates a "break point" on your post so that only part of the post shows on your home page.  Plus, you can choose where you want your post to break off. Once you truncate your posts there will be a link that will show up asking visitors to "click here to read the rest of this post." Other benefits of truncating your posts are; Having more control over your homepage, showing more posts at once on your homepage and leading visitors to click deeper into your site.

2.  Add No Right Click Code.  If you know how to add html code in your layout then you can add this code.  S.I.M.P.L.E!  Here is the link to the code.  This code will keep visitors from right clicking on your images and saving, printing, sharing them. However, visitors will still be able to share via Pinterest, but your blog address will also be added to the pin.

3.  Watermark.  Always watermark your images.  There are many free programs that will allow you to edit your photo's to add a watermark.  I use PicMonkey and I heart it!  Plus its free!  Hopefully, those pesky thieves will not want to take the time to steal your photos if they have to crop it to remove the watermark.  Plus, if they still use it and don't crop then hopefully you will still get traffic from the stolen content because of your watermark.

4.Google Authorship.  Links your content back to your name and your blog as soon as you create your post.  All you need is a Google+ profile and an email address.  Go here to learn more!

I've done all the above to my blog and hopefully these four steps will be enough to keep content thieves away from my site. Although, in this digital age I really don't think there are any full proof steps that will keep the bad guys away.  If they want it bad enough they're going to get it.  The least we can do is make it as difficult as we can...right?!

I would love to know...Have you have any trouble with stolen content?  What did you do?

If you aren't already then I'd love to have you follow along...

or via LINKY...