Dropping keywords into the metatags of a website is an old school SEO technique. And by old school I mean pre-googlistoric. Stuffing metatags in the age of Google, which ignores them, is about as useful as peacock feathers on an armadillo.

Even so, McGills Glass Warehouse owes Venture Tape Corp. $426, 487 in damages in and attorney fees (not to mention five years of its own litigation costs) because they dropped Venture Tape’s trademark in the metatags, dressed in white on white, which did basically nothing to drive to traffic to the website.

A competitor’s trademark as a keyword in the metatag is intended to lure competitor traffic. White text on white background is an attempt to hide the practice. This last element, at least in part, seems to be what really stuck in the judge’s craw.

In addition, the judge decided using trademark keywords counts as a use in commerce, which has been debated for some time, and that McGills had satisfied 7 out of 8 conditions in determining infringement, the remaining unsatisfied condition being one of actual consumer confusion—apparent intent to confuse would seem to suffice.

Despite what happens in the courts eventually (it’s not looking good for defendants, though), blawger Eric Goldman, who’s written extensively on the trademark in metatags issue, advises webmasters just to steer clear of the practice. Too big a risk for so little reward. 
 

In this case, Designer Skin sued S&L Vitamins for reselling Designer Skin products online. S&L was not an approved retail channel, and was selling the self-tanning product at lower prices. Also, the company dropped the Designer Skin name into the metatags of its site to help with organic search rankings (a practice with debatable efficacy), and bid on Designer Skin keywords in order to drive traffic to the site.

Most often in keyword trademark infringement cases, the issue centers on whether competitors – in this instance, another maker of self-tanning lotion – have the right to use keywords in metatags or bid on trademarks. Courts have come down on both sides.

In this case, heard in Arizona, it is not a question of competition, but of sales channel control. At issue is a concept of "initial interest confusion," meaning when searchers see an ad or listing for Designer Skin, they could mistake S&L, a seller, as the maker of the product. The judge didn’t think any consumer with a half a brain would make that mistake:

In contrast to the deceptive conduct that forms the basis of a finding of initial interest confusion, S & L Vitamins uses Designer Skin’s marks to truthfully inform internet searchers where they can find Designer Skin’s products. Rather than deceive customers into visiting their websites, this use truthfully informs customers of the contents of those sites. Indeed, in practical effect S & L Vitamins invites Designer Skin’s customers to purchase Designer Skin’s products. The fact that these customers will have the opportunity to purchase competing products when they arrive at S & L Vitamins’ sites is irrelevant. The customers searching for Designer Skin’s products find exactly what they are looking for when they arrive at these sites. S & L Vitamins is not deceiving consumers in any way.

The outcome of this case will be used as a precedent when deciding others and will bolster the argument that use of keywords in metatags and bidding on trademarked terms for search purposes is a legitimate practice. Fairly often, plaintiffs are more concerned about control of channels and control of competition than they are about trademark infringement.

Eric Goldman, author of Technology and Marketing Law blog, goes into much deeper detail in his posting, and concurs that Designer Skin’s suit was asking too much of the legal system. "[C]ourts are realizing that they are being asked to facilitate anti-competitive practices, and wisely they are balking," he writes.
 

The latest case involves S&L Vitamins and Australian Gold, Inc., says Technology and Marketing Law Blog and law professor Eric Goldman. The verdict against keywords counting as use in commerce follows similar decisions in four other New York federal courts.

But maybe as interesting, as Goldman points out, is how the Internet is killing a certain business model. S&L was reselling Australian Gold’s self-tanning product online for half of what the product was selling for in salons. (You know, the same places you buy the $15 hair gel.)

Australian Gold, naturally, would rather their product stay in that niche channel, as other claims in the lawsuit stretch to shut down S&L’s ability to sell the product at that price. Definitely good news for the consumer, if not so much for high-end retailers.

Now it’s still quite up in the air whether even bidding on a competitor trademark for use in search advertising is infringement, though many cases recently have ruled that it is not. Google still allows that, but MSN and Yahoo do not. American Airlines is taking Google to court over it, which may set a big precedent.

But in the metatags? Where hardly anybody (spider) is looking? Well, apparently, lawyers dig into those tags and cite them as infringements, so tread cautiously.

Playboy even sued one its own Playmate of the Year once for using the terms "Playboy" and "Playmate" in her tags. The court ruled it fair use, as that was part of her official title.

The hardest part of an infringement case to make (at least, to convince me of, the not-a-lawyer) is that keyword metatags would be considered "use in commerce" or cause likelihood for confusion. But some would and have disagreed. 

Technology & Marketing Law Blog’s Eric Goldman thinks those lawyers are a bit on the irresponsible side of the ethics fence, though:

"I think it’s irresponsible (in an ethical sense, if not from an RPC sense) for a plaintiff’s lawyer to go into court claiming that keyword metatags support trademark infringement without informing the judge of the likely technological irrelevance of the keyword metatag."

Irrelevance, as in, most of Internet’s not going to see them anyway. But, as Goldman points out, a lot of judges may not understand that.

Many search engines and directories read the information in the META tags of web pages to index and cannot index your site without them. META tags are hidden in your HTML code. The web visitor does not see them. The most important META tags for search engine indexing are the title and http://www.startasecretarialbusiness.com/reprint/meta-tags. description tags. To see what META tags look like go to html

Other search engines use the description and site title you provide when registering a site. Some search engines use the text in web pages, especially the first words, sentences, or paragraphs to list web pages. That’s why it’s vital to place your most relevant keywords in your headline and the first paragraph of each page. Follow these tips to write effective keywords, page titles, and site descriptions.

Here are some tips on writing keywords.

- Make a list of 5 to 20 keywords and phrases that are relevant to your web site.

- Use phrases your prospects may enter into a search engine when searching for your topic, product, or service. Web visitors often enter phrases rather than words when searching for web sites.

- List the most important keywords and key phrases first.

- Include your name, business name, product names, and the city and state you’re conducting business in.

- Include common misspellings.

- Include the plural form of the word.

The following are examples of key phrases related to web design:

Web site design, web design, san diego california, web page design, web designer, webmaster, web site development, five star web design.

Page titles are very important for search engine placement. The title of a web page appears on top of the page in the title bar of the browser. Web pages that use search terms in the title will rank higher with some search engines than pages that contain them in the text only. Follows these tips to write your page titles.

- Write a powerful headline for the title of your site. The site title is often used by the search engines to list you in their directory. Make your title compelling to grab your potential buyers’ attention.

- Keep the length 20 words or less. Longer titles may be cut off in the search engine listing.

- Create a different title for each web page.

- Include the most important keywords and phrases.

- By starting your page title with a letter toward the beginning of the alphabet (A, B, C) you may increase your chances of appearing near the top of the listing in some search engines.

Example of Title

- Five Star Web Design in San Diego, California, designs easy-to-navigate web sites to maximize sales.

The site description is used by some search engines to list the description of your web site. When providing your own description in the META description tag, your listing may be displayed in the search engine listing as you provide it. If you don’t provide a META description tag, the search engines will generate their own description from the content on your page. Follow these guidelines to write your descriptions.

- Make your description informative and compelling to attract potential buyers to your site. Provide a benefit or solve a problem.

- Include your most important keywords and phrases.

- Write descriptions of your web site in various lengths (one to three sentences). Submit the maximum allowable length to the search engines to convey a persuasive message.

Example of description

- Get your web site noticed and increase online sales with an easy-to-read-and-navigate web site.

Spend time writing keywords, descriptions, and page titles. To maintain a high ranking consistently, include keywords in your headlines, first paragraphs of each web page, page titles, and site descriptions. It can make a big difference in your search engine positioning.

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Christian
http://www.lingo24.com

Hi Christian,

I took a look at your site in regards to SEO strategies. Well, actually I looked at your site and then your two main competitors to see what they’re doing and how their techniques could help you.

First I’ll look at their strategies, and then at some changes you could make to your own site.

When I Google for “translation,” freetranslation.com comes up first. Here’s why: there are 9,740 sites linking to them, and they have a Google PageRank of 9/10. That’s phenomenal. There are 9,740 sites who link to freetranslation.com because of their free translation service.

Now, I’m not going so far as to republish their metatags for you, but I will say you should drop by their site and see what they have written there. (Also check out Andy Beal’s recent article on metatags) I noticed your metatags could learn a bit from theirs.

Babelfish.com comes up second, but it’s through AltaVista (http://world.altavista.com/). I’m not sure why it works that way – they don’t even rank on the PageRank scale. It must have something to do with being a part of AltaVista…

But if you drop by their natural site: Babelfish.com, you’ll find that their front page is very text heavy. This is a good idea so long as the text is written for both the visitor AND the search engines. Check out this Scott Buresh article for the scoop on SEO friendly site copy.

Also, Babelfish has about 100 links to their splashpage and a PageRank of 6/10. Their metatags are relevant and targeted too. You can see that they KNOW who’s searching for their services and the terms they’ll use.

So that’s the scoop on the industry “big boys.”

Your site is more optimized, as I can see from your title tag, for the term “translation company.” For “translation company” you come up 11th in Google. That’s really where you should focus your attention right now, as you’re more likely to be competitive for that term.

Look at your competitors there for that particular term. See what they’re doing and figure out a fresh twist on their strategies.

Another option is to find a whole new search term to optimize for. Neal Lebar wrote an article about choosing keywords for the pay-per-click search engines, but the strategy would apply to your search for keywords… It might be that there are translation-related terms being searched for out there that are ignored by the big players in your industry, and unknown to the smaller companies.

Make all the text in your links in the nav bar more specific, and work the word “translation” into as many as makes sense. I’m not sure how much this helps, only that it does help some.

On another note, consider an e-newsletter. Especially if you can provide a good source of valuable business information for your readers. Start building your email list now, and have your staff members write about globalization, or foreign customs that will give your readers confidence in business. Then post these articles on your site, and submit them to other e-newsletters.

From what I’ve seen though, a list you build in-house, though slow growing, is one of THE most valuable marketing tools.

That’s the drive by SEO review, Christian. Thanks for your question, and let me know if you need any elaboration.

Garrett

Garrett French is the editor of iEntry’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.

I guess I’ll start with the first page of the site. The first thing I noticed was that the red and blue text did not fit in with the color scheme. Having the majority of the text bright like that, is hard on the eyes. The underlined blue text, makes you think it’s a link, which it wasn’t. There’s nowhere for your focus to land. It was also inconvenient having to scroll down the little bit to see the rest of the page. You might try adjusting things so it can all fit in the window without scrolling. Also, whenever you write your email address, you might want to make it an email link.

In looking at the source code of this page, you have a wonderful description of the site in your metatags. Use it on your page under your title! You need some content on the page that uses your keywords. For search engine optimization, keywords are only supposed to be used 1-7 times per 100 words on your page. You also will want to put the most important words first, in your metatag. Each page needs to have it’s own set of keyword and description metatags, specific to the page’s content. Don’t just load them all up on your index page.

Upon entering the store, I was expecting to see the products. Instead, I got another ad for your catalog. (And this one didn’t tell me I could get it free with a $50 order!) This gave me the feeling that the catalog was the most important item in your store. I, of course, was not interested in the catalog, without having seen any of the products yet. I didn’t even notice the guarantee. I was already going for the products link.

A suggestion for the menu at the top of the page. You did good putting the “Products” link first. That should be where you want people to focus first. The links used for ordering, should be grouped together. (“View Basket”, “Shipping”, and “Checkout”) I was expecting the “Directory” link to be a site map, not the catalog again. You want to minimize the amount of clicks it takes to navigate your site. I would suggest putting the “Search” box on the “Products” page, instead of on a page of it’s own. Then it is more accessible if it is needed. You might want to put your “Sales items” on the “Promos” page, instead of leaving it empty. (Remember, every click should count.)

Your guarantee should also be placed on the “Shipping”, “Products” and “Checkout” pages. (Just in case someone like me misses it.)

Now, on to the “Products” page. Again, I was expecting to see some pictures of products. This page was actually more of a site map. May I suggest putting just the category titles on the page, with a thumbnail image of your most popular item, in each category, displayed next to the titles. Add a little sales pitch type of description to each category, and the search engines will love it! (Remember, content is King!) You’ll hold your customer’s interest longer too. Also, be sure to use your keywords in your Alt tags on your images. (More spider food! Yummm!)

When a category is clicked, you could put thumbnail images of all the products, in that category, on the one page. Add-in your little sales pitch description and price, to each. Now we have a happy customer who doesn’t have to click back and forth to see each item. They can browse through them, clicking on the ones that interest them most, to see the larger picture with the “Quantity” box and “Add to Basket” button next to it. You might want to list the price again, just in case they forgot, so they don’t have to click back to refresh their memory. Be sure to tell the customer to “Click” to see the larger image and to order, though. They may not think of it on their own.

On your “Contact Info” page, you might want to just remove the fax number, instead of showing zeros. It might look a little nicer too, if you put a space between the email image and the last line of text, and then center the image and maybe even put an outset border around it, to make it look like a button.

I hope these suggestions help you come up with some ideas to make your store the best it can be. It’s a nice little store!

To your success,
Leslie Carl (leslie@cncnetmarketing.com
Las Vegas Business Directory

Peer reviewers volunteer their time and effort to help other site owners with their websites. Please take time to visit this reviewer’s site and say that you think what they’re doing is valuable to the web business community. If you’d like your site reviewed, send an email to editors@ientry.com.