Copyright issues and SEO

Posted by admin on September 24, 2010 under SEO | Be the First to Comment

Copyright is an issue that you probably wouldn’t expect to come up when you embark on a search engine optimization campaign. When you’re dealing with your own site, and your own content, you would expect to be more concerned about your own rights than the rights of others. However, there are some copyright issues you need to be aware of in relation to website design and search engine optimisation.

Most sites can get away with whatever little copyrighted content they feature. This is usually because the owners of the material are unlikely to come across it during a basic search. Website optimisation, however, is all about getting your site viewed by as many people as possible. When your site gains a little notoriety in the search engines, you want to be sure that there are no copyright issues sitting dormant on your pages.

Some copyright issues can creep up on you. Others come as complications of your SEO campaign. It can help to discuss copyright with your optimisation consultant, and you can bring your copyright concerns to our experts at http://www.seoconsult.co.uk. Here are some of the areas you should think about:

*Image copyrights and use on websites. There are plenty of free resources on the internet. Unfortunately, the internet is also full of a lot of instances of fraud. What this means is that you may find that the ‘free’ image you uploaded to your site is the much-loved property of a fee-seeking author. It is best to check that an image, sound or graphic is absolutely rights free to use before you employ it anywhere in your name.

*Copyright of fonts and themes. Large companies regularly contract their own font designs for special projects. These fonts do find their way onto the net and into common use, but occasionally their use is controlled by rights agreements. If you use a specific font in the main design for your page, double check that you’re okay to use it. Similar caution should be had surrounding bought site themes.

*Content copyright. If you source your content from outside your business, copyright may be an issue. It’s important to check the source of content. Regardless of the copyright involved, content lifted straight from another website can cause duplicate content issues as well as legal ones.

*Copyright of SEO techniques. Some SEO companies will wish to retain the rights to the metadata or analytics they perform for your site. This can cause complications when your contract of service with that company ends. At the same time, it’s a fairly common practice for this clause to be inserted in a contract with a reputable search engine optimisation company.

Finally, there is the issue of the copyright of the content on your pages. If you’re sourcing your content from a professional, you will generally purchase the ownership rights to that content as well. Whether you then want to protect the content of your site or not is a decision you have to make. In most cases, the rights may not be worth pursuing. There are some measures to guard against copying that you can take.