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Showing posts from February, 2013

Understanding Google Searches

Google and Your Business In the last week, I was talking with two different business owners who made the statement to me that when they “Googled” their business name, they were happy to see their website was at the top of the search results.   My question to them was “so what if they are not searching for your business name, but for your service or product instead?”    You should be dominating Google for your business name! Unless your website has no content referring to your business name or website address, you SHOULD be the first result in Google when someone is searching for your business name.   In fact, you should DOMINATE the first page of results.   Results should include individual pages of your website, press releases, social media pages, your business profile on LinkedIn, listings on paid advertising services, and reviews from your clients.   If this is not happening, you need to quickly determine why not! Have your site optimized for the primary search term

Copyright and Your Website

Copyrighted Material and Your Website Over the years I have had several conversations with clients about using photos they found on the internet for their websites.   The conversation goes something like this:   Client – “I have this really cool picture of the lake and I want to use it on my website!” Me – “Did you take the photo yourself?” Client – “No, I found it online and I thought if it was on the web, I can use it.”  Copyright infringement is no minor matter and can cost you money. Images or other material that you don’t own cannot be used without the explicit permission of the person or business that created the material.   If you do use images or other material without express permission, you open your business (and yourself) to potentially devastating legal action.    For photos or other images, copyright attaches as soon as the original work is created. The author is not required to file special paperwork.   If you do infringe on someone’s copyright, the pe