Getting in trouble with our websites can be easier than we might think. For companies that rely heavily on online activities may need to consider a number of things to allow them clear of possible problems. The problem can be quite complicated, because online laws are often changing in some areas. One of the most important components of websites is domain name. Before registering domain names, companies should check its existing trademark registration. It shouldn’t be related to pre-existing trademark. It if happens, the owner of the trademark could be allowed by the law to take away the domain name.
When researching for trademark-free domain names, business owners can check local list of business name. Website owners could also be sued due to improper linking. As an example, there could be links to external web pages without proper identification of target pages. The other websites can be framed, so they appear to be the part of the company’s website. It means that viewers don’t realize who own specific portion of the website. It’s similar to plagiarism, especially if there’s no confirmation about the source of the website. If we do want to show viewers external websites, there should be permission for each link. In this case, the owner of each page can be identified clearly.
This approach may not be practical in many situations, especially if there are so many external references in our website. In this case, when inserting links, we should correctly identify the name and the owner of the target page. When framing is used to show external websites, we should be able to imply that it’s not the part of our website. We should be sure to follow any linking policy. Another component of website that could cause problem is metatags. Our website use metatags to inform search engines about primary and secondary keywords. Metatags are simple keywords and keyphrases that can be used to help search engines to correlate with the content.
When using metatags, we should make sure that there are no trademarked keywords that can affect the traffic from competitors’ websites. However, there are a number of exceptions. In fact, an external website may encourage us create links, because this could improve their search engine performance. Trademarked keywords could be used in metatags if we are selling specific products. In this case, we should make sure that we don’t use trademarked keywords and links to cause financial consequences to other parties. We should use common sense to make sure that our use of trademarks and other online tactics don’t put others under financial problems.