I had wrote the other day about McDonald’s® and the Monopoly® promotion which they run every year. 5 Years ago they changed with times and brought the game "online".

After looking into what McDonald’s does and uses to run the promotion, I think I see a big flaw.

The company Promotions.com is the company who handles the promotion. This makes sense, because they are a promotion company. They know how to do promotions. McDonald’s sells burgers and do it well.

Since the game is now played online by customers of McDonald’s by getting game pieces with certain products at McDonald’s, the game players visit the domain name PlayAtMcD.com .

When visiting PlayAtMcD.com the domain name forwards to Promotions.com and the Monopoly game using a sub-domain on Promotions.com domain name.

Sending people directly to the game is great using a specific domain name related to the promotion.

The problem that I see, McDonald’s is the one paying for the promotion but Promotions.com is getting all the website traffic!

What happens when McDonald’s customers are done with the game? What if these customers want to browse around "the site" a little bit before or after playing the game?

The game is used to promote McDonald’s, but they are running the promotion not even on their site McDonalds.com .

If you run a promotion, I think it is very important to keep the promotion itself directly on your main site. You can do this using a Sub-Domain just the way Promotions.com is. For an example, it could be Monopoly.McDonalds.com . You can make it a category on your main website by using McDonalds.com/Monopoly .

For SEO reasons, a busy site helps a lot. This promotion is not helping McDonalds.com, it is helping Promotions.com .

For Promotions.com, it is a very wise move, but I can’t believe all the big companies using them ALL fell for it and send all this traffic to Promotions.com website.

If the promotion company wants to run it on their site, tell them NO. Your paying the bill. You want the promotion on YOUR site. That traffic that flows to the game is important in many ways. Many of YOUR CUSTOMERS are also interested in many other things on your site. Putting the game on a different site removes the chance that they would purchase something or find information they may want.

I had stated in my first posting about the Monopoly Game that McDonalds.com owns abut doesn’t use MCD.com . The domain they used, PlayAtMcD.com is confusing customers. Many are searching for MCD.com Monopoly game, because they are finding my site and I can see what they are searching for. Since they only "Forward" PlayAtMcD.com, they have poor, if any search engine ranking. This means people searching on the net, can have a hard time finding what they are looking for if at all.

Having the game Directly on McDonalds.com main website, would also take this away. SEO can be used and the sub-domain WILL rank in SE’s. In fact, it will rank pretty quickly due to McDonalds.com being a busy site. You can still promote the site with a specific domain name so people can easily find the sites page.

Bottom Line: Keep your promotions on your Main Site! It will benefit you and your site more than if you have it on a separate site.