KANSAS CITY, Mo., Aug. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Kansas City Website Design (aka Kansas City Web Design™) today announced the official trademark registration of its popular search engine optimization service, Kansas City SEO®.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130808/PH60877LOGO)
Per the USPTO website, the trademark scope includes "Consulting services in the field of search engine optimization; Website design and development for others" and the USPTO filing refers to the pseudo mark: "Kansas City Search Engine Optimization"
The firm's CEO, Phil Singleton, remarks: "We know that branding has a positive impact on SEO. Promoting and protecting brand names on the Internet has become more important than ever. Brand name abuse, via various forms of 'trademark stuffing', is becoming more frequent. There's nothing more frustrating for business owners than seeing their brands used in an intentionally misleading way. Let's face it, when people search for a specific brand name, they expect to see the brand owner's site appear highly, if not first, in the organic results."
Many business owners wonder why competing websites outrank their own website, especially for their own company name or brand names. Search engine results can be manipulated when competing sites "stuff" competitor brand names into a website's title and meta tags or within the text content of a web page. This form of keyword stuffing is clearly visible when you type in a search term and see brand names appear on spammy web page titles and in the meta descriptions of search results. Since Internet searches play a role in the majority of consumer purchase decisions, trademark stuffing can be especially damaging. Keyword stuffing is not only prohibited by the major search engines, when linked to brand names or service marks, it could also be trademark infringement.
"In terms of 2012 & 2013, the big stories for the SEO industry were Google's Penguin search engine algorithm update and subsequent Penguin and Panda updates. From our perspective, perhaps of greater importance, has been all the activity related to intellectual property such as the record number of DMCA website takedown requests and search engine related court settlements. Despite the spike in activity, there has been surprisingly little coverage on Trademarks, Copyright & SEO. Look out for trademark and copyright to become a major SEO topic over the next year or two – in addition to other forms of offline SEO."
"Our customers have been leading the charge," Singleton says. "In the last year, several of our clients encountered keyword trademark infringement issues in some shape or form. From what we've seen, trademark protection has been effective against online brand name abuse. When clients ask 'Should we consider trademarking?', we always tell them: absolutely – look into today! Intellectual property protection has always been important. Now it's critical. The Internet (particularly the search engines) influences more purchase decisions that any other medium in history of capitalism. It's the first place your prospective customers look to buy something and the last place they check before making a final decision."
Media Contact:
Phil Singleton
913-674-0322