Remember I did a post on how to protect yourself from Pagerank loss and Splogs?

Well today I will reveal another secret that can protect yourself against Blog Post Theft and Splogs.

The secret?

Use tags but hide them using the following code:

<span style="display:none">

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Now, some people might worry that this might go against Google’s ToS policy but as long as you give them a sitemap using the sitemap plugin, there’s no worries.

What does it do?

Well, every time some splogs “scrapes” your content, they will also scrape your “invisible” links.  Now, let’s say you have 10 tags.  Each tag by the way points to something like http://zedomax.net/tag/web20.

So every time a sploggers scrapes your content, they also give back backlinks to you as many tags you put on that post.

This should be good since your scraped content now automatically gets linked back to your blog so the end result?

Even if splogs steal your content, Google will award you and give you higher Pagerank since everything is pointing back at you.

To do this, I highly suggest you use the Simple Tags plugin and do the following as seen here:

(Click to enlarge)

To protect against scrapers who only scrape the top of your content, you can even add your tags to the top of your content.  But I think this should be good enough for most splogs as full page content scraping is the one you need to prevent the most.

If this helped you, subscribe to my blog and I will have more fun stuff…

Today, I will talk briefly about how to identify splogs and protect yourself from losing your precious little Pagerank.

First and foremost, if you are a blogger, (and this article is intended for a blogger) you need to be aware of trackbacks left on your blog.

Now, most trackbacks will show up on your comments list. Although Akismet does a pretty good job, sometimes you really gotta keep a keen eye on things and make sure splogs don’t leave you a trackback.

Now, when you get a trackback, to protect yourself, all you have to do is check the link and make sure it’s a blog written by a human being. If it’s not, simply mark it as spam and delete it.

There is a better way so you do less work by using some Wordpress plugins.

I use Simple Trackback Validation plugin which checks each trackback to see if there’s a valid website linking to it. This won’t stop splogs but will cut down on your spam checking and filter out most of trackback hackers.

If you have a blog with a pretty good blog, I actually recommended you disable trackbacks completely. I have seen some of my big blogger friends do this, and it works. Simply by limiting the links going out, you can raise your Pagerank, especially if your blog is getting big.

To turn off trackbacks, simply go to Settings->Discussion then unselect Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks).

To Google, trackbacks are nothing but links going out, it doesn’t really help your Pagerank unless you are just starting out.

Now, this probably beats the whole purpose of trackbacks but in this fast moving Web2.0 world, sometimes you gotta do what you need to do to get the job done.

I hope that helps you from losing Pagerank and next time I will show you how to protect yourself against Blog Post Theft and Splogs.

Remember my last post about Quality vs. Quantity?

Well, after doing some testing with most of my blogs, it’s clear now that content isn’t everything.  Quantity can bring you stability of a blog’s growth while Quality can bring you a high number of niche readers.

Why do you ask?

Because content is great, only if you can couple that with great internet marketing.

You can compare to real life business.

For example, you have the greatest product in the world but no one knows about you and you end up selling very few.

It’s the same thing in the blogging world. I know many great bloggers with the highest quality content, yet their traffic, PageRank, and readership never grows over time because they don’t market themselves.

The best way for someone who is not already famous is to blog a LOT. I don’t mean to create splogs but do create original content but you must blog a LOT.

How much is blogging a lot?

Well, if you want to be serious about making money blogging or getting ahead of competition, you have to at least blog as much as your competition. You look at the Top 100 blogs in the world, they all blog no less than 24 posts per day, 1 per hour. I personally do find 1 per hour is most optimal.

If you are not John Chow and you do not already have 20K RSS readership nor 6K unique visitors per day, there is no way you will ever grow in traffic and SEO unless you start blogging like crazy.

Of course, there are always exceptions.  If you are already famous, you are a total expert on your topic, or you simply know “internet marketing”.  If that’s the case, that’s fine but if not, I highly suggest you start blogging at least 3 to 5 posts per day minimum.

Those big bloggers will beat you down and no one will hear your voice unless you can keep up with their blogging pace.

Now, if you ignore my advice and you do 1 or 2 posts per day, you will probably be okay too. (It might take you longer to reach the same goals)

24 posts per day is definitely recommended for all you bloggers serious about going “pro”.  If your topic is hard to write so many posts per day, then do focus on “fun” content.  No one likes to read a Master’s Thesis, but everyone likes a joke, humor, or something to take their mind off the long day.