Steal This Blog! SEO2.blog Uses Creative Commons License
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For many years I admired the Creative Commons movement.
Yet I have not only been a big fan of community and sharing.
I also used a lot of Creative Commons licensed images here on the SEO2.blog!
Usually I uploaded CC photos as metaphorical illustrations of my articles.
It’s time to give back! This blog is also using a Creative Commons license now.
Spreading the Word – Literally!
I always loved to share my knowledge on blogging, social media and search!
Yet search engine optimization and a Creative Commons license do not work well!
Why? Google doesn’t allow you to duplicate your content as they call republished text.
In case you do publish the same content on more than one page you get penalized.
Only one instance of it will rank if you’re lucky. Everything else is literally against the Google guidelines.
Thus I had to comply with Google’s selfish and arbitrary demands to avoid getting demoted.
The Google Penalty
One day Google decided to penalize me anyway. It was a random act of cruelty.
During one of the numerous so called Panda updates they decided that my blog is low quality.
Over night all my rankings were gone even though I ranked top 10 for [seo blog] for years e.g.
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 search then and banned it altogether on my blog to prevent content theft.
Yet it was not the only reason of course. It was also about freedom to write what I wanted.
I was free to do whatever I wanted on my blog again! Yay!
No tasteless keyword stuffing to borify my headline metaphors.
Also nobody could forbid me to spread my articles all over the Web.
I have disappeared from Google results after banning Google search.
Yet I didn’t want to go back. It banned Google search for three years.
Then I published an ebook here and couldn’t risk not getting found for the term “SEO 2.0” anymore.
Yet first things first. While Google-free blogging I still wanted to reach interested audiences.
I wanted to spread my know-how and share my insights with as many people as possible.
Thus using a Creative Commons license was the logical step for me. Since then you could
legally copy and distribute my articles in their entirety.
Another advantage of Reproducing your articles is that it’s 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!
What happens then? All of your work vanishes in an instant from the Web. It happens all the time.
If you are lucky Archive.org has some copies of your article in the Way Back Machine.
My very first art, design and trend blog called sum1 got persevered that way after it got hacked in 2010.
Yet Archive.org does not copy every website, the content layout often looks broken and it’s also very slow to load.
The Way Back Machine is only a last resort – not a real “fall back strategy” for disappearing websites.
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 my art blog.
The Actual Creative Commons License SEO2.blog Uses
There are many different Creative commons licenses to choose from.
For actual articles it was kind of risky to allow rewriting of my posts.
Why? Someone could change the wording and then claim it was me who said it.
Yet, I know, editors do it all the time and they never add their name top the mistakes they are responsible for.
Thus I decided to use a license that allows you to copy my content in an unchanged form. It’s 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 in their entirety without changing them.
Some scrapers for example remove my links and instead link to themselves.
Please copy every article as it is 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 ebook I changed my Creative Commons license to a non-commercial one.
Why? I wanted republish the SEO 2.0 ebook here chapter by chapter.
I didn’t want people to resell my free ebook.
You can 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 – the SEO2.blog
Please provide a link to the source – that is the specific article you have taken – in the following way:
Steal This Blog! SEO2.blog Uses Creative Commons is a Creative Commons licensed article by Tad Chef of SEO2.blog
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 body text of the original articles!
That way my readers can reach a mirror in case my site is not available for some reason.
* (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.