Legalicy of videos used for local SEO
-
Hello,
A client of mine wants to use someone else's video (video of how to train your dog) in his pages for "dog training (His City)" The person who makes the how to train your dog videos sells DVDs and that's how he makes his money if that matters.
We want to make sure we're giving the proper credit and doing this OK. What do we need to keep in minds for legalities and respecting the author?
Thanks.
-
There have been several high profile law suits over theft of web content
-
Julie and EGOL,
Some excellent information, and useful for protecting my own stuff as I grow! My client's wife happens to be an attorney and she said exactly what both of you said.
Thanks.
-
There is a whole new industry growing of people who look for illegal use of photos, copy, videos etc. so that they can sue.
This is very true. I have gotten intellectual property consultations from multipe attorneys because people have been using my property in violation of copyright law. They would be glad to help me build a situation where I can start suing. Although I have not gone that route, I have been attacking infringers at scale, filing DMCA with Google, web hosts and Adsense. If you kill their SERP visibility, get them kicked off of hosts and their Adsense accounts turned off, they stop using your stuff. Once you get a system for submitting DMCA at scale it takes surprisingly little time - we complained against nearly 200 domains in 2016 - but you better know the difference between infringement and fair use.
-
I researched this for a former client (he quit me when he didn't like my answer) and the risk to using another's intellectual property is high.
If you publish, whether it's a book or a website, you must 1) create it yourself, 2) pay for it yourself or 3) have written permission from the author. Without that you are risking huge penalties if caught. There is a whole new industry growing of people who look for illegal use of photos, copy, videos etc. so that they can sue.
P.S. I'm not sad about losing that client.
-
You are completely right EGOL, in many ways. We will be very careful.
-
This is a legal question and I am not an attorney. So, what I write here is amateur kibitzing and personal opinion.
If I was the person who wanted to use the videos of another person, I would contact that person and ask for written permission. Proper permission will include who you are, why you want to use the videos, what domain you want to post the videos on, a sample of the page where they will be displayed, how long you want to use them and any other information that might influence the owner to say "yes" and especially any information that would influence the owner to say "no". Failure to do this can get you into serious legal trouble. If the owner of the videos has done all of the legal homework, your client could be sued for $150,000 for infringement - without the owner of the videos being required to demonstrate that the infringement has caused damage.
If the owner is making money from these videos, even if it isn't serious money, he/she will probably tell anyone who wants to use them how much money must be paid for a license fee or simply tell them "no".
Really, if your client has a website about dog training, he should be making his own videos. This is best practice because it showcases the client's work, builds credibility with people who want their dogs trained, and the videos can be perfectly customized to the clients business, style, personality and location.
But, if the client is intent on using the videos of another person, he/she should get advice from an attorney who is qualified in copyright law instead of from people in an SEO forum - I sure would not go to a legal forum for SEO advice From my experience, the cost of good legal advice is a lot less than most people fear and more valuable than most people imagine.
This is all of the information that I am able to provide on this matter. Hope your client finds something that works perfectly.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What Service Page Strategy Should We Use to Target City-Specific Local Intent Service Keywords?
Hey guys! We are targeting a number of cities in the Nassau and Suffolk County areas for foundation repair, insulation, and mold remediation keywords, and we were debating on creating city-specific pages for each location and service, or creating one service page for each type of service that contains all of the services and solutions within that service category for each city. Example: City-Specific Pages for Each Service: One page for say foundation repair, one page for foundation crack repair, one page for foundation problems, etc. (for each target city) Service Category Pages for Each City: One page for foundation contractors that lists all services on one page in sections. Which one do you think is better for local SEO and rankings? Both seem to have their advantages and disadvantages to me. Just to throw a couple out there, the category pages may not rank as high as the city pages for each individual service if our competitors have a whole page designed for that service and we only have a part of a page covering the topic. At the same time, they would save labor hours, technical issues would be less, and they would be condensed, and we would have WAY less mess on the backend. I appreciate your expert opinion on this one. The site is www. zavzaseal.com in case you want to check us out.
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
English pages given preference over local language
We recently launched a new design of our website and for SEO purposes we decided to have our website both in English and in Dutch. However, when I look at the rankings in MOZ for many of our keywords, it seems the English pages are being preferred over the Dutch ones. That never used to be the case when we had our website in the old design. It mainly is for pages that have an English keyword attached to them, but even then the Dutch page would just rank. I'm trying to figure out why English pages are being preferred now and whether that could actually damage our rankings, as search engines would prefer copy in the local language. An example is this page: https://www.bluebillywig.com/nl/html5-video-player/ for the keywords "HTML5 player" and "HTML5 video player".
Local SEO | | Billywig0 -
Is dynamic keyword insertion a viable local SEO tactic/strategy for your content?
Hi mozzers, I have a meeting tomorrow with the dev team to discuss about dynamic keyword insertion implementation on a new site. This site currently holds 40 geo specific microsites with several service pages each carrying unique content. These pages(about 400 pages) are seen by VP of marketing as hard to maintain and inconvenient when wanting to change content across these pages. The VP is looking to automate content as much as possible without hurting our local SEO efforts. The dev team will be asking me if dynamic keyword insertion could a viable strategy for these 40 locations without harming local SEO. Currently we have a robust local SEO strategy in place and wouldn't want to change it unless dynamic keyword insertion is a viable option and won't hurt all the seo efforts that are in place? If this is not a viable solution, any recommendations on any other solutions we could use to satisfy the VP? If you have used DKI for your local SEO efforts, please share your thoughts and results that you have seen. Any real case scenario data/knowledge would be really helpful. Thank you!
Local SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Find high DA link opportunities in your local area
Hi, part of my link building strategy is ideally going to be from outreach to local businesses. I run a local service business operating in multiple locations (with no physical base). I have created local landing pages on which I'm showcasing local businesses and photographers (relevant not in terms of industry but location). Its my intention to show off their business as best I can, then get in touch to say "hey, we love what you're doing with X product/service, check out our site here [link]. We'd love it if you could link to us etc etc". Assuming that this is a valid strategy, what is the best way to find locally relevant sites with the highest domain authority?
Local SEO | | Cleanily0 -
Does the physical location of a server effect the local rankings of a site?
I've just been running a report on a site and noticed that while they have a .co.uk domain it is hosted on a server in the United States and just wondered if anyone was aware, if the physical location of a server mattered to search engines for ranking purposes especially with local search?
Local SEO | | ben_dpp0 -
Why do SMB owners want more calls as a result of SEO, but don't answer 62% of them?
Working mostly with SMBs for 8 years now, we have gradually developed the notion that small business owners are hard to reach by phone. Our Customer Service agents spend hours unsuccessfully trying to reach business owners. If a potential customer calls the business, they'll have to face the same outcome. This means missed opportunities for both parties. Needless to say, one of the most important KPIs in local SEO is the number of generated phone calls...but no one's there to answer. We wanted to dig deeper into the matter, so we did a small study with 85 businesses. Results show that: 37.8% of calls are answered by a person. 37.8% of calls are answered by an answering machine, where no actual conversation (nor conversion) is possible, so we treat these calls as unanswered. 24.3% of calls are unanswered. We also gathered a list of possible solutions to the problem, but what we really need to know is WHY do business owners neglect such an important part of their business? And what resolutions can you think of?
Local SEO | | 411Locals0 -
Local SEO same company two different locations
I have a client who has 2 locations approx 20 miles apart. He wants to reach new customers at the second office location. He is an owner of a law firm he practices elder law, in the second location he has an attorney who practices injury law. The second location is in an area where targeting prospects for elder law could also be lucrative. We currently have two separate websites for each area of law. My question is... Would it be suggested to create another elder law website to target the potential clients in this second location. Also for the first location we have put in place a content marketing strategy that has increased revenue considerably. Basically creating content (blog posts) that resonate with the target audience. If a new website is in order can the blog post be posted here too with a canonical referencing the original website. Im thinking a slow redistribution of content on the new site. Advice here is greatly appreciated as this new market for my client could increase revenue even more.
Local SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
Does this tactic fall into the Local SEO best practice?
Hi Mozzers, I have a client who serves the entire San Francisco bay area but has only one physical location. He asked me if he should get different addresses by renting out offices in different cities so he could use that for a better localization of his business. Thanks for letting me know!
Local SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0