Affiliate and Earning Disclosure help please
-
Hello Moz Friends,
I wanted to ask about affiliate terms pages.
I'm assuming that if I have an affiliate banner where someone clicks on it, and I get a penny, that I need to have an affiliate disclosure or some sort of link saying that I make money.
I'm know is some legal ground here, but just curious if this is how the concept works?
Thank you so much!
-
Super affiliate here. While Everett and Thomas are right to point you in the direction of the FTC texts, keep in mind that the FTC guidelines are just that: guidelines. They're not law, not widely enforced, and Google largely ignores affiliate links so long as they're nofollowed. They don't seem to be quite up to the level of the sponsored links and content that bloggers must disclose to avoid a Google penalty (but again, that's Google's enforcement of their own guidelines, not law.)
Some merchants with affiliate programs will insist on clear and conspicuous disclosure if you want to remain in their program, but really their panic over the guidelines died down pretty fast after they were released in 2012. The one major exception that comes to mind are credit cards providers, which are exceptionally picky about compliance on this issue since they're subject to tighter regulation on the banking side of things.
All that is not to say that disclosure isn't the right thing to do - only that it's not likely to land you in hot water with anyone anytime soon.
-
Just spent a few minutes, stumbled across this page too, not sure if this is related to affiliate or not, found via here: http://dannybrown.me/2015/04/01/sorry-affiliate-bloggers-but-your-about-page-disclosure-doesnt-cut-it/
The key part I can see is this
"In addition, it is important for advertisers to draw attention to the disclosure. Consumers may not be looking for — or expecting to find — disclosures. Advertisers are responsible for ensuring that their messages are truthful and not deceptive. Accordingly, disclosures must be communicated effectively so that consumers are likely to notice and understand them in connection with the representations that the disclosures modify. Simply making the disclosure available somewhere in the ad, where some consumers might find it, does not meet the clear and conspicuous standard."
-
Hello Chris,
You pretty much hit the nail on the head, except that the Federal Trade Commision (FTC) in the United States says it's not enough to just make the disclosure on a single page. It also needs to appear on the blog / article itself. I've included some links below that you may want to check out.
http://diannej.com/2012/new-ftc-rules-on-writing-reviews-affiliations-and-sponsored-posts/
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
-
AMP Design help please
Hello Moz Friends So Google is nudging me to submit an AMP version of my website, but I'm no coder. In fact I'm a Wordpress Addict. So I'm just curious if you have created an AMP version, what do you use? Or did you have to recode an entire new website? Thank you friends! Chris
Web Design | | asbchris0 -
Please help me articulate why broken pagination is bad for SEO...
Hi fellow Mozzers. I am in need of assistance. Pagination is and has been broken on the Website for which I do SEO in-house...and it's been broken for years. Here is an example: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/audio-technica This category has 122 products, broken down to display 24 at a time across paginated results. However, you will notice that once you enter pagination, all of the URLs become this: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher Even if you hit "Previous" or "Next" or your browser back button, the URL stays: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher I have tried to explain to stakeholders that this is a lost opportunity. That if a user or Google were to find that a particular paginated result contained a unique combination of products that might be more relevant to a searcher's search than the main page in the series, Google couldn't send the searcher to that page because it didn't have a unique URL. In addition, this non-unique URL most likely is bottle-necking the flow of page authority internally because it isn't unique. This is not to mention that 38% of our traffic in Google Analytics is being reported as coming from this page...a problem because this page could be one of several hundred on the site and we have no idea which one a visitor was actually looking at. How do I articulate the magnitude of this problem for SEO? Is there a way I can easily put it in dollars and cents for a business person who really thinks SEOs are a bunch of snake oil salesmen in the first place? Does anyone have any before and after case studies or quantifiable data that they would be willing to share with me (even privately) that can help me articulate better how important it is to address this problem. Even more, what can we hope to get out of fixing it? More traffic, more revenue, higher conversions? Can anyone help me go to the mat with a solid argument as to why pagination should be addressed?
Web Design | | danatanseo0 -
New more "helpful" internal linking causing SERP & traffic drop?
Still dealing with the weird traffic drop on my website. I have removed a bunch of old links from a defunct blog, 301 thin pages, added text to remaining pages. I'm still stumped. So awhile ago I freshened up my website and thought I was "helping people" by making sure they could CONTACT the studio more easily... I added more links to the "contact page" I thought this would help conversions...This changed the number of links to my entire site....Would this be the problem with my ranking/traffic drop? http://bayareaboudoir.com/babinternal1.pdf
Web Design | | Squee1 -
I can’t understand, please help?
Our old <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> built a lot of bad links (web 2.0, article ect) and in April of 2012 we received the dreaded Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to XXXXXXXX After 4 requests and disavowing all of the links he created we have finally received Reconsideration request for xxxx Manual spam action revoked The only problem is that this feels more of a penalty than when the received the detected links email? Everything across the board as dropped, I know we added more and more links to the disavow but everything has been going up with the quality we have been putting out until today when we received the manual action revoked. Has anyone experienced this, I feel like I wish we were still under the penalty as the rankings have dived.
Web Design | | BobAnderson0 -
Need help in website URL Structure
I have been working on a brand new website currently it is live but I have disallow Googlebots temporarily as I dint want any negative impact. The business of the site is to generate leads , they install and sell Stairlifts and used Stairlifts. There are two main categories New Stairlifts and Reconditioned Stairlifts Currently the URL for new Stairlifts is : http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/stairlifts/ and for Reconditioned Stairlifts is: http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned-stairlifts/ My concerns are that the word Stairlifts is mentioned twice in the urls so is it going to have a negative impact or panda penalty? I am thinking of changing them to http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/new/ and the product pages to display as http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/new/brooks/ Currently its http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/stairlifts/brooks/ Same with reconditioned Stairlifts I like to change it to : http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned Also its product pages to http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned/brooks/ As currently its http://willowstairlifts.co.uk/reconditioned-stairlifts/brooks/ Thanks
Web Design | | conversiontactics0 -
Site Review Please
A few weeks back I posted a question regarding a client's website and the very high Bounce Rate. We were looking at about 70 to 80% BR. The site was rough, and so I asked for some feedback that can be seen here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/high-bounce-rate-on-this-specific-page Since that time we've changed the WP Theme and the client would like specific feedback from the SEO experts. The BR has dropped by roughly 53% over the past month since we changed things, as traffic has risen by roughly 20%. We have lost some rankings for our targeted keywords, even as nothing has greatly changed on the site other than the theme. But even as we've lost some rankings for targeted keywords, we've gained for others and increased traffic dramatically. So, what do you think of the new site? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! http://EraseDisease.com
Web Design | | Linwright0 -
Finally have a budget for a great seo ecommerce site but need help choosing wordpress, joomla, modx, magneto or? Thank you in advance for your generosity of time
We finally have a budget and want to dump our intuit/homestead site www.originalartbroker.com Our budget is 5k-10k but could do more if needed. I am slowly catching my competition with this homestead site that I built. But I do realize it is time to step back, figure out what is best, and hire a pro to get the job done. I am green in the seo and web development arena so please go easy on me and please help to point me in the right direction. Just went out on a limb a couple years ago playing with homestead.com site software and built what we have today. Didn't know anything about website development...it sort of just happened. I feel and know that homestead.com solution is hindering what we could be doing due to the bloated nature of the site and inability to perform such task as 301 redirects etc.... I have been able to slowly attain first page seo rankings on keywords based of the artists we carry using this po-dunk homestead platform to build my site after a ton of work education thanks to seomoz and a lot of you. But, have never asked for help and could really use some generosity of time in explaining a solution that would work best for our business. Do we just go with a wordpress site that is similar to our current setup and use their plugins? Do we use a cms software solution like magneto or joomla? We will only have 200-300 pieces at any given time. We are constantly selling and buying new pieces providing us content. We are need of a site that can perform well in terms of seo. I have heard of a lot of people talking about joomla, wordpress, and magneto. Would like to be able to have a product catalogue that ultimately sends whatever inventory we are uploading to our social sites and blogs so I don’t have to pump the product out to all of these sites. We offer free custom framing with our pieces and it would be nice to have a program that could wrap the photos of the pieces with the different frames for our customers. When I add a new piece I would like this software to have a predesigned product page that it plugs the information into. I would like it to create the url extension based of the artists name, medium used, and piece name to create unique and individual urls. I would like it to also create its own H tags throughout that product page according to the artist name description, and medium used. I would like to be able to sink this up to google merchant and other sites to carry our product. Bottom line is we sell art. We sell pieces by specific artists. We are constantly buying and selling. I need something powerful that keeps up with our content
Web Design | | forecastedinvestments1