Getting Links by Encouraging Copying

[aristotle]

About a year ago I decided to release the articles on one of my small sites into the public domain. I did this because the articles provide information about a certain social cause, information which I want people to see. So I put a notice on the home page saying that all the articles on the site have been released into the public domain, and that anyone may copy and republish them for any purpose.

Since then, One article has been scraped and republished at least 10 times and most of the others at least once. What surprises me is that the scraper usually includes a link back to the original page on my site, even though in my notice I didn't request a link back.

During this time the site's rankings have improved and overall traffic has steadily increased, probably because of the new backlinks

I realize there is a risk that a copy might eventually get a higher ranking in the SERPs than the original page, but so far that hasn't happened.

Obviously this approach is only suitable for certain types of sites and not for everyone.

[bhartzer]

One article has been scraped and republished at least 10 times

Most refer to this as "syndication", and I'm perfectly find with it as long as I get credit and the links remain in tact.

You just need to make sure your blog post or article is the first crawled and indexed so that you are the originator the content...

[AussieWebmaster]

you may want to look at tynt it embeds a link back to scraps

[wheel]

I've been thinking about doing something a bit similiar. I've considered setting up a password protected section on my site to house say a few dozen articles that I write (top quality). Then offering bloggers in my niche access to the articles to pick and choose as they like, when they like to publish on their sites. One up only, once a blogger picks the article it would get removed.

I think bloggers could then just drop by whenever they wanted a filler post, find an article they like, and post it.

[martinibuster]

Great idea wheel. Hey AW, good suggestion with Tynt. Thanks for bringing that to our attention.

[NixRenewbie]

Although I don't really expect a scraper to leave the link intact, I -do- imagine that having the link 'right there' will be useful for my readers. Moreover, knowing which content others think is worth copying will help me write future articles. So I put it on my blog and also announced to my readers that I had done so.

I like the idea that having the link present messes things up for those who are trying to copy and paste into a spreadsheet with no intention of giving attribution. I am perfectly willing to aggravate these guys all I can.