Steal This Blog! SEO 2.0 Goes Creative Commons
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Over the years I admired the Creative Commons movement. I have not only been a big fan of it.
I also used a lot of Creative Commons licensed images here on my blog as metaphorical illustrations of my articles.
I always wanted to share my knowledge on blogging, social media and search engine optimization under a Creative Commons license as well but I couldn’t.
Why? Google doesn’t allow you to duplicate your content. In case you do publish the same content on more than one URL you get penalized.
Only one instance of it will rank if you’re lucky. I had to comply with Google’s selfish and arbitrary guidelines.
The Google penalty
One day Google decided to penalize me anyway. During one of the numerous so called Panda updates they decided that my blog is low quality.
Google stopped sending me traffic for most of the relevant search queries I was ranking before.
From then one mostly worthless or downright harmful traffic has been coming via Google. Predominantly people wanting to use my images on their sites were arriving by way of Google search.
Google-free blogging
I decided to quit Google then and banned it altogether on my blog. You probably know that by now.
Then I was free to do whatever I wanted on my blog again and nobody could forbid me to spread my articles all over the Web.
I have disappeared from Google results after banning Google search and I didn’t want to go back.
Still I wanted to spread my know-how and share my insights with as big an audience as possible. Thus going Creative Commons was the logical path to me. From then on you could
legally copy and distribute my articles in their entirety.
Reproducing your articles is the best way to preserve them for the future.
- your blog can get hacked
- your database backup may fail
- you may give up blogging altogether
Yes, you may decide that the hosting costs and hours spend on blogging are not worth it and all of your work vanishes in an instant from the Web. It happens all the time.
Any person who ever has checked their broken links will notice how many blogs disappear for manifold reasons.
Even WordPress security professionals get hacked in retaliation by malicious hackers. This has happened to a blog of mine too.
The actual license
I decided to use the
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
license. It means that you can
- copy
- share
- redistribute
my blog articles on your blog, site or publication but without changing them. Some scrapers for example remove my links and instead link to themselves.
Please copy every article in its entirety including the images.
I don’t want people to think I have written a version that has been changed afterwards. In case you want to use parts of postings or remix them please contact me.
In preparation for my SEO 2.0 I changed my Creative commons license to a non-commercial one.
Why? I will republish the SEO 2.0 ebook here chapter by chapter. I don’t want people to resell my free ebook.
Spread my ebook for free as well but don’s ask readers for any kind of reimbursement, be it
- money
- personal data
- social shares
Keep it free as in free beer and freedom as well.
Credit the source
Please provide a link to the source – that is the specific article you have taken – in the following way:
Steal This Blog! SEO 2.0 Goes Creative Commons is a Creative Commons licensed article by Tad Chef of SEO 2.0
The actual headline gets linked ideally. You can show the license below the actual text but of course I would be delighted to see it above.
Do you have used my work? Please show me where! I may even add the links to the copy in the original articles so that my readers can reach a mirror in case my site is not available.
* (CC BY 2.0) Creative Commons image by Yamashita Yohei
Well, that’s nice of you. Nice to see that genuine, free initiatives still exist.
Thanks for that !
Just recycled 50 Ways to Make the Web a Better Place at http://kercommunications.com/seo/50-ways-to-make-the-web-a-better-place/
When I read it, I wished i had written it because it fits very well with my idea that doing cool things is good SEO.
Oops – forgot to say “Thank you!”
It is very cool of you to share your content under CC. I love using Flickr photos under CC (with attribution) and think it is a win-win for everybody. Kudos!
Abdul: Thank you for the kind feedback!
Nick: “Recycled” sounds as if it’s trash ;-)
It’s a good pick. Also I was a bit disappointed as it didn’t get the audience it deserved yet so this republication will help. That’s why there is no need need to say thank you really because it’s I will get additional publicity!
Alexis: Yeah, I’ve used lots of CC images and it was about time to give back. Plus it’s as you say, you don’t give it away you basically multiply.
Great idea going creative common license and it is the original idea with the web. Information should be free.
[…] to win situation happens when a business pays a professional to craft high quality content and then offers it for free using a non-restrictive Creative Commons […]
“It is very cool of you to share your content under CC. I love using Flickr photos under CC (with attribution) and think it is a win-win for everybody. Kudos!”
Alexis I completely agree with you. When looking for photos for my blog Flickr is the first place I look, always. The win-win is perfect, and its fun knowing that even if I can’t afford to pay for a picture I can still support the photographer.