Category: Web Content

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Fair Use Law Demystified

“Fair use is a basic principle of copyright law that says the general public may use certain portions of a copyrighted work without a license from the copyright owner, provided the use is for purposes such as commentary, criticism, search engines, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving or scholarship.” Read the full article at SiteProNews.

So when are you crossing the line when it comes to using someone else’s content based on the Fair Use Law?

  1. Are you using this for a not for profit site that is mainly educational or research oriented? If yes, then you may be okay. If you are a commercial business using content under the Fair Use Law you are most likely actually infringing on the copyright and not eligible to claim Fair Use.
  2. If you have taken the full piece without attribution and link you are overstepping and ending up in a copyright infringement area. Even for a non-profit to take the full work is pushing the envelope. Better yet is to be safe and quote a section and link back to the full piece on the other website.
  3. The copyright owner may fight any supposed Fair Use so the best bet is to just be careful and not grab what is not yours.

Here is the rule we have our blog writers follow.

  • Never take more than a paragraph of content. Always wrap what  you take in a quote and then attribute or link back to the original work.
  • Never pass off, even mildly reworded as yours something that is not truly yours.

I have been successful before in taking down an entire website through the host for copyright infringement when people have taken my content. Don’t be fooled into thinking that content you find on the Web is simply yours for the taking. Everything is copyrighted whether you see a notice or not. Fair Use may be a slippery slope and it is by far better to create your own content or link to other content than to steal it.

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Did You Know Most Infographics Have Hidden Links?

Infographics are the new web rage, but did you know that most have hidden embedded links in them? The next time someone offers to allow you to use their infographic or solicits your posting their infographic on your website or blog, be aware that you may be unknowingly promoting their hidden link agenda.

The marketing of infographics with hidden links has proliferated so much on the web that Google is now discounting links from infographics. You can read more on this topic in this interesting article on links and infographics at SiteProNews.

First if you don’t know what an infographic is, here’s one as an example on search engines.  They are a visual story that is interesting to look at and contains graphs and data. Usually a site will embed the whole image in a blog post or on a website page. Another view of just the same image so you can see the length.

Here is the crux of the problem:

“…black hat SEO pros saw an opportunity to trick the search engine. They simply create any infographic based on the current trends and link irrelevant text or images back to the target websites. For example, the infographic would be about Euro 2012 but the image of some footballer would link back to a payday loan website. The intention is not to get as many clicks as possible but to generate as many links as possible. So this is how links are hidden behind irrelevant images or text. The links grow as the infographic is shared by real users without noticing the hidden link. While it is no harm for the people sharing the infographic because they find the information good to be shared, for Google a spammy link is being spread which confuses the bots and may make it rank the payday website in the example high based on this.” More information. 

As a result, Google has now discounted links coming from infographics. Although you may still want to use an infographic on your website or blog as they can be interesting and informative, remember that when you link to spammy sites, your own PageRank and website authority are impacted by linking out to poor quality sites.

So, just be aware that really interesting graphic you were just approached to put on your website, may actually have a dark side to it. Just be aware of the down side!

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Will a New Website Win You More Customers? You Bet!

Here’s the scenario: No leads, a five page website with very little content, in Google Analytics only company name variations searches appear in the statistics.

Solution: Here’s how you re mediate this type of online visibility problem.

  1. Create landing pages quickly that reflect your true nature and put your products in services in a concise and clear light. Start AdWords ASAP with a budget high enough to get placement and clicks. This will get you in the game and stop the slide while you work to fix your website problems and exposure.
  2. Install a blog now and get blogging. Even if you don’t have the website you want you will benefit from great content on your blog and can be building links and providing value.

You can have number 1 and 2 done and rolling in two or three days!

Then dig in deep and work on resolving the real problem, your website content and website. It can sometimes take two to four months for a new website so by blogging and doing AdWords you stop treading water and start getting leads to fund your new design and content building project.

Take the time to build out great content while you are selling and blogging. People will forgive a poor looking website if it has great content. But they won’t forgive a great website with poor content.

If the scenario in paragraph one is yours, don’t buy into the approach that everything has to be perfect and I have to be getting lead conversions from my website before I start promoting it. The truth is the quality of the people who are on your website right now may never convert as they really are not looking for your products and services. These visitors may even be potential employees or competitors, you need to caste a bigger net and start getting the exposure that WILL get you business now to fund the things you want to do.

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Why Venting on Your Blog Doesn’t Work Positively For You

I read an interesting blog this past week and winced when I read it. I would imagine that a junior staffer wrote it and if the president of the company saw it, it would be taken down immediately.

The blog post was a rant about why an unnamed competitor was stealing this firm’s thunder and online juice. The blog post details seven points that the writer was upset about from bidding on their firms name in AdWords, copying service offerings, imitating content, and blog post commenting with links back to their own website.

The title caught my eye, but when I read the blog post I thought “ouch, this rant should have been filtered”. When you rant on your own blog about a competitor or situation especially when you don’t name names (and you should not), you come off sounding like a whiner and a bad sport.

Yes, pretty sucky things can really happen in the world of business, but you don’t have to blog about them and take a black eye in the process. I recommend that sensitive and negative issues unless done as a case study in a thought provoking objective way be off topic for blogs. You may end up doing more damage to your own online reputation than you would think making your competitor howl for glee.