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What if it's a online store that is a legal reseller of the brands?
I would like to know if there is any court decision, or anything negative that could happen if an online store, or even a bricks & mortar store's website uses some of the brand names that they sell on the meta description or keywords.
I mean, the website does list the brands they carry on the content of the site anyway, would it be a problem to list on the meta tags?
Thanks for your input.
1. If the words are in the main body of the page then why even bother with the keywords metatag and risk a lawsuit? Metatags won't give you any advantage in such an instance.
2. Companies allow 'fair use' of trademarks if you are authorised to sell their stuff. Is stuffing data into a page purely for the benefit of search engines fair use? It's those debatable questions that lawyers get paid so well to resolve (and not always sensibly). If you are asking if it's OK to put them in then it's easy for a company to ask their lawyers to explore the same subject, only at great cost to whoever has to defend it.
3. It often depends on the company that owns the trademark, we deal with a big company that encourages us to use their trademarks and branding on certain pages, even to the point of providing full documentation and nice graphics (which suits us as it adds authenticity to the pages). Other companies would sue your a$$ off if you took such liberties with their corporate image.
1. If the words are in the main body of the page then why even bother with the keywords metatag and risk a lawsuit? Metatags won't give you any advantage in such an instance.
The site is in flash, so the text on the body won't help with SEO. In this case it's a site with a store locator of the brick n' mortar stores.
2. Companies allow 'fair use' of trademarks if you are authorised to sell their stuff. Is stuffing data into a page purely for the benefit of search engines fair use? It's those debatable questions that lawyers get paid so well to resolve (and not always sensibly). If you are asking if it's OK to put them in then it's easy for a company to ask their lawyers to explore the same subject, only at great cost to whoever has to defend it.
By asking if it's ok, I actually mean, is it common practice? Are there decisions agains it?
Thanks
The site is in flash, so the text on the body won't help with SEO.
skuba - If you don't have any body text, meta keywords aren't going to help you either. Even if you did have body text, it's highly unlikely that meta keywords would make any difference.
My suggestion would be to rebuild the site in html and add Flash elements to some pages. But if the site doesn't default to spiderable html content, the search engines aren't going to be able to see it or index it.
