Sitting around brainstorming the other day caused me to go and review the terms of a certain affiliate program. In this agreement I noticed that it states affiliates cannot optimize pages with certain “keywords”. This is not just one program that has this clause in their agreement… there are a few other programs that also mention this. Not only does it mention affiliates not being allowed to optimize pages, but it also states affiliate can’t build links with certain anchor texts.
What does this mean exactly? We may never know. Does it mean that xyz poker could one day decide that you are breaking the rules and take all of your players away? Possibly, but I doubt that would ever happen (knock on wood). Really it must be in place to safeguard the poker room from having affiliates outrank them for their own name. For example if an affiliate was to go around buying links left and right and optimizing his pages until one day he out ranks FullTilt Poker for the search phrase “Full Tilt Poker” that would look pretty bad for FT. How would it look to potential customers if a poker room couldn’t rank well for it’s own name? (Yea I know that has probably been the case in the past, but at the current time of this post full tilt ranks number 1 for it’s name). Surely it is there for this reason and not so they can decide to screw all of their affiliates in one day.
In my opinion it all depends on the actual program. Does anyone else have any thoughts about affiliate programs non competition agreements?
Filed under: Poker Affiliate Programs | Tagged: Poker Affiliate Programs
It’s pretty common in SEM for affiliate programs to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on brand name search terms. And honestly, I hadn’t noticed the t&c’s you pointed out in this post. In both cases, I understand the logic, from the poker room’s perspective. Fact is, these programs pretty much have us affiliates by the cods. Practically every program reserves the right to change the t&c’s at their whim, and end the relationship with an affiliate any time they want, and for whatever reason.
Affiliates definitely do optimize for these terms, though their chances of outranking one of these rooms for their own name is pretty damn slim (barring a penalty of some sort).
I’m honestly a little surprised at how long some affiliate programs have allowed affiliates (myself included) to optimize for ” bonus code” type searches. Turning a blind eye to it just leads to the poker rooms paying more for players they’ve already landed.
Before I read that in the terms I had known you couldn’t bid on trademarked terms and such. I was just a little surprised at the limiting of anchor text and optimizing pages.
We also see some affiliates using the poker rooms name in their domain. Mostly this is done with permission from the poker room, but there have been a few affiliates who got the C&D letter because of this rule.
Maybe it’s a little late to stop affiliates from optimizing for bonus code phrases. I don’t think the affiliates would take those pages down, they would probably just send the traffic elsewhere? That would stir up so much shit it would be unreal. I hope that day never comes.
IMO the only thing to safeguard yourself from terms like this is to do straight media buys with the poker room. That way business is done on your terms and not by their affiliate agreement.