March 2014 Newsletter
Don’t Be An April Fool
We’re starting this month’s My Favourite Holiday Cottages Newsletter with a cautionary tale. If I asked you whether you have ever posted an image on your website without having obtained and paid for permission to use it, the correct answer would be something along the lines of “Never in a million years!.” And that’s how it should be.
The trouble is that it’s so easy to post something on your site in all innocence without thinking that it will get you into trouble (perhaps in a blog or on your property’s Facebook page of an image sent to you by a friend). This is because Getty Images owns the rights to squillions of photographic pictures and buys more every day, which could come knocking at your door. They continually search websites for illegal use of the images for which they own the licencing rights. Should they find one on your site, they’ll send you a strongly worded legal letter, and an invoice which works out to around £400 per image displayed. Ouch! We’ve received two, even though we had permission to use the image from the photographer. However, when the photos were licensed to Getty long after we’d used them, the photographers concerned naturally couldn’t be expected to remember to tell Getty Images every person they’d permitted to use their image as Getty wasn’t told, hence the invoice. You cannot blame either party. However, you may have to pay up unless you have written proof that you had permission at the time.
For some mad but inspired reason, I saved all my e-mails in a large file dating back to two thousand and diddlysquat, so I could produce the evidence that got us off the hook. Even so, we’ve been through our site looking at all the images we have posted to check that we indeed own the rights to all the images we feature. And we think we do. I say ‘think’ advisedly because you and other subscribers list most images on the site. These feature your cottage and other photos from the area around it.
Here’s the crucial bit: Please ensure that you either own or have permission to use each photo you upload. This is set out in our terms and conditions to subscribers, which state that you are liable for every image you’ve uploaded, and have the right to allow us to display the image on your listing. So, for example, if you’ve found and used a beautiful image of a local beach from the Internet and posted it on your listing (or any other listing for that matter), then you are risking a fine if it is licensed to Getty or someone else.
Of course, they’ll write to us as they will to the owners of all other sites on which you’ve posted the image. And while we would love to be in the position to pay your fine because we value your custom, that just isn’t possible, so we’ll be forced to pass details to Getty, who will come and chase you for their money. To avoid this happening, please check all the images you have used on your listing to ensure that you either own or have permission to use them – and remove or replace any that you don’t.
I hope writing will persuade everyone to take appropriate action and avoid a heart-stopping fine. Please, therefore, think of us as the ‘Good Guys’. Please don’t blame the photographers; they have to make a living. As for Getty, well, they are just doing their job, and their charitable foundation, which receives a share of the profits, invests millions in good causes across the globe. For those who cannot remember how to log in to your listing, the following article will tell you exactly how to do that.
How To Log In
You probably know that you can log in to amend your listing on MFHC at any time of the day or night. You can update images, tweak text, add a booking to your calendar or post a recently received glowing testimonial to attract more attention to your listing. It’s a fair bet that many people don’t refresh their listings because they cannot remember how to log in. If you’re one of these, and especially if you’re desperate to make changes to your listing after reading the previous article, here’s how. To log in, go to the My Favourite Holiday Cottages Home page and click on the login button in the top right-hand corner. This will open the Log in page. Add the address used when you registered (this is your username) in the box titled’ E-mail address’.
For most subscribers, this is your main e-mail address for enquiries. Then add your password. If you can’t remember it, contact us, or if you haven’t time for a chat, click on the ‘Forgotten Your Password’ reminder. If you’re stuck, call me, and I’ll look it up for you – although there is a ‘Password Reminder’ tab on the site (we just like a good excuse to chat with subscribers!) Once you are logged in, the column on the left contains all the different menu options. Select the one that describes what you want to do, and away you go. If you wish to update your property information, click on the menu button that says ‘Manage your cottages. And select the appropriate link from the list that appears.
Marketing Tip: Meta title Writing
If you want to improve your website’s rankings on Google, it is essential to ensure that you are using meta titles wisely. They’ll influence the number of appropriate visitors to your website. Forgive me for teaching some of you to suck eggs and using jargon, but meta titles are very important to search engines. This makes them very important to you. For the uninitiated, a meta title is the phrase that sits right at the very top of your web browser box. It describes what your page – or site, if it is the home page - is about. Look at the image above, and you’ll see the meta title is ‘Late Availability Cottages | Discounted Late Bookings’. NB: your subscription includes the unrestricted use of this facility! This is one of the phrases search engines will use in ranking your site. It’s not the only one, but it is pretty darned important. It would be best if you had a different meta title that succinctly describes the purpose of each page.
They are tricky to write as you’re confined to using no more than about 55 characters. This isn’t a hard and fast rule as Google measures the length of a Meta title by character width, so if your title uses the letter ‘w’ a lot, it’ll use more width than a cottage with narrower letters like ‘l’ and ‘i’. Moreover, each page on your site should have its own title – not the same one running throughout the site. Try to make it read as naturally as possible. Don’t just stuff it with keywords, e.g. avoid mentioning words like holiday and cottage 2-3 times, but do use natural phrases that you think may be used by people searching on the Internet for the information on that page.
We are in the process of updating pretty much every meta title for every cottage on My Favourites. If you haven’t done so, take a little time to craft suitable meta titles for your site and forward them to your web designer to upload. It won’t take them very long to do if they’ve correctly proofed the raw material. This won’t see your site rocketing to the top of page one overnight (if only…). Still, if you’ve chosen your words wisely, over time, you will see an increase in the amount of site traffic you get from relevant visitors, i.e. those looking to book a holiday cottage. It’s a long, laborious process, but we hope you’ll soon be enjoying the extra benefit of more click-throughs to your website in due course.
Bring on the Spring!
Well, that is it for this lengthy Newsletter. Congratulations if you made it this far! We are always open to suggestions for making the content of our monthly Newsletters even more relevant. Do let us know if there’s anything we should be covering more frequently, like how to get the best use from parts of the My Favourites site or more marketing tips. We love to listen!