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
-
Help with 302 Temporary Redirect warning via MOZ crawl
Hi Guys, This is my first post so hopefully I'm using the forum correctly. MOZ crawl tells me that I have 35 pages with a temporary redirect The URL column displays 302 Found along with the http:// URL Redirection Location column shows the corresponding https:// URL This all seems pretty self explanatory. However, I’ve checked my .htaccess file and I can’t see any 302 references in it. I'm trying to figure out where the 302 redirects are from and how I can make them permanent Please can anyone help me out? My .htaccess looks like it needs a little tidy (there are 2 if blocks) <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
Web Design | | ianalannash
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mysite.com/$1 [R,L]</ifmodule> BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule> END WordPress0 -
Help, site traffic has dropped significantly since we changed from http to https
Heya, so I am just in charge of the content on the site, and the SEO content, not the actual back-end stuff. A little under 2 weeks ago we switched to https, and our site traffic has been down a lot ever since. When I SERP check our keywords, they don't seem to have dropped in rankings pages. Here is what I got when I asked our dev guy if 301 redirects were put in: I did not add any redirects so all of the content is accessible on both unless individual links get hardcoded one way or the other. The only thing in place is a Cloudflare plugin which rewrites links in cached pages to match the way its accessed, so if for example you access a page over https you don’t get the version cached with a bunch of http links since that will throw up mixed content warnings in the browser. Other than that WP mostly generates all its links to match whatever protocol you are accessing the current page with. We can make specific pages redirect one way or the other in the future if we want to though... As a startup, site traffic is a metric we track to gouge progress, and so I really need to get to the bottom of if it was the change from http to https that has causes the drop, and if so, what can we do about it? Also, in case it is relevant: the bounce rate is now sky high (ave. 15% to 64% this last week!) Any help is very welcome! Site: https://mobileday.com Thank you!
Web Design | | MobileDay1 -
Can anyone help me detect some SEO improvements onpage please...
Can anyone help me detect some SEO improvements onpage please... I have shortened the website URl so its not easily found when searched via search engines.. http://goo.gl/GlfMRl Please have a look and give me some tips. Thanks
Web Design | | Nettv0 -
Pleas Help! My microdata format disappeared?
Hi guys im new on this comunity, reacently i have an ishue taht i do not know how to solve. Google suggested that you can put microdata on my website and its look very cool on the organic search pages. So whtat happend. I have change my website to a new one with all rich snippets and microdata, submited a xml.sitiemap dinamic one that refresh every time when i putt something new on my website. do a redirection from my old site to a new one. All that google propose. I have check all the pages in webmaster tools and in a that tool google show everything, also microdata have shown on a google organic search aproximetly 7 days when he refresh my pages from old site. After that microdata and little stars just desapired from organic serch on google. I do not know why? I did not do anything. So can anyone help me how to return little stars on my links on google shown on organic serch. website: www.telekoplus.com hosted in Serbia Thank you in advance Beket Borocki P.S Sorry if i have mistakes in writing on English.
Web Design | | telekoplus0 -
I need help with international SEO for two sites?
I'll try to keep this clear... I am working with an company based in Germany, they own company.com/de and company.com/en, and that's how they are currently structuring their domains. They also own companyusa.com that they really want to show up in USA only. They want to keep company.com/en for England/english speaking Europe and company.com/de for their German audience in Germany. They are wanting us to optimize/SEO for companyusa.com, and they want that URL to show up as the top google search in the USA for their "company" keyword. What is showing up now is www.company.com/en 1st in Google because it's been around longer and it has more domain authority. What is the best practice for us optimize companyusa.com so that it is the top dog in the USA while not messing up the other domains? Should we merge? Subfolders all around? Thanks for all the input.
Web Design | | Rocket.Fuel0 -
Need help with image resizing (re: slow site)
I'm trying to figure out why I'm having speed issues with my site, and using google speed test to help me knock out some of the issues. One of issues deals with image resizing. I have a responsive design and so even though on the home page the normal width is 580 of the blog area, the full post can go up to 1170. So I size all of my images to 1170 wide and let CSS resize them depending on the size of the browser. (The images on the most recent post are a little bigger than this because I was testing something.) I was wondering what the best practice was in regard to what I'm trying to do. Also feel free to check out my site and let me know of any other feedback / advice you have. Thanks !:)
Web Design | | NoahsDad0 -
Need help setting up google analytics goals / tracking
I don't use Google analytics to see much more than how many visits I'm getting and what sort of keywords people are using to find our site. I'd like to step up my GA skills a bit. I'm wondring if you guys could give me some advice. I've never really set up any GA goals, or used it to track specific things, but I'd like to. Here are a few things off the top of my head that I would like to track. I'm wondring if these are posable in GA, and if someone could give me some feedback on how to track it / set up goals. Thanks.1 1. I'd like to know how many people click play on a video when they are on a page that has a video. 2. I'd like to know how many people are clicking "like" " google plus, etc.) 3. I'd like to know the path people are taking on our site. For instance, if they click a link from Facebook, and go to a landing page, what page are they visiting next..... 4. How long people are staying on the page I would really like to break this down further by people that visit a link I posted on Facebook, or twitter, or from the link on my twitter profile page, etc... Also if there are any other valuable goals / reports that would be useful for a blogger to track I'd appreciate your feedback. Thanks.
Web Design | | NoahsDad0 -
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