Sunday 30 December 2012

National locksmith companies and content theft | Locksmith Blog

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As you may know, running  a locksmith business and a good website is tough work!

I for one work hard to take original photos and write new content for my websites and locksmith blogs.

However in recent weeks iv noticed a lot of my images getting ripped off and used on other locksmith sites.

Ok you expect this to a certain degree its the price you pay for popularity on the web, however it really begins to P me off when rival locksmith companies, particularly national advertisers use images of me opening locks and working.

This is both a breach of UK copyright laws and im sure some form of human rights laws.

Firstly; I do not wish to be associated with a rogue poor performing national locksmith company that rips off its customers.

Secondly; no credit is ever given for the use of your image or content and you will never benefit from it in the way of extra exposure or locksmith work.

In fact this content theft can be harmful to your own locksmith website as Google penalises duplicate content and can sometimes leave the offenders locksmith website ranking above you in the SERPS!

A good tool to detect content theft is here at copyscape

So if you do spot this kind of content theft from your own sites you must act!

Firstly contact the locksmith company directly, usually they have no knowledge of the theft of content as its usually left to an independant web designer.

If they cannot get the content removed or at least link back to you in some form for the use of your work then it is worth threatening legal action to remove the content from the locksmiths website.

I'v found that a lot of these locksmith companies are incredibly difficult to contact as they usually only display a premium rate number and no working email address or physical address.

All the more reason to support the NO to nationals campaign over at http://www.locksmith-directory.org.uk and make sure these crooked locksmith companies die off as quickly as they spring up.