GDPR and SEO

According to numerous sources published online, the General Data Protection Regulation is by far the most important data protection law enacted to date. It regulates the collection, use, sharing, and protection of data obtained from citizens of all 28 EU member states.

No matter where the organisation is headquartered that is gathering the private information, the regulations apply to everyone in the EU. Businesses who disregard the GDPR risk fines of up to € 20 million or 4% of global revenue. So far, SEO and marketing firms have enjoyed themselves by openly processing client data or taking advantage of several legal ambiguities. This has, however, come to an end.

It regulates the collection, exploitation, communication, and protection of data obtained from individuals residing in each of the 28 countries that are members of the EU.

GDPR and SEO

The requirements are applicable to all individuals inside the EU, irrespective of the location of the organisation that is collecting the sensitive information. If a company chooses to ignore the requirements of the GDPR, they risk incurring fines of up to € 20 million or 4% of the total turnover of the entire world.

However, up until this point, marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) organisations have had their fair share of fun while publicly processing client data or taking advantage of a variety of murky areas. On the other hand, this is now over and done with.

What is GDPR?

The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is a regulation that replaces the outdated Directive of 1995,. In the modern communications environment, where the Internet, mobile devices, and social networks changed the rules of the game, the Directive was already out of date.

This Regulation, which went into effect on May 25, 2018, is distinguished by giving users’ personal data the highest level of legal protection.

Even if a company doesn’t have its headquarters in Europe but nevertheless handles the personal data of European citizens, the legislation nonetheless applies to such a company.

What is GDPR & How Will it Impact Marketing?

GDPR & Its Impact on Digital Marketing

Users must explicitly consent to be monitored under the General Data Protection Regulation, and after doing so, they have a choice as to how they will be tracked.

The harm has already been done, even though it is too early to know if users will heedlessly click “accept,” as marketers hope they will.

Without all the sophisticated attribution tracking that marketers have been accustomed to, the efficacy measurement of certain digital marketing may be approaching that of a billboard on the side of the road. (For instance, without cookie clearance, it is nearly hard to attribute ad view-through tracking, and PPC advertising on search is more opaque.)

A defining piece of legislation intended to protect the privacy of personal information online is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In terms of cyber security, it is also among the strictest legislation in the world.

GDPR’s Affect on Digital Marketing

With all these changes, the key question is how GDPR will affect digital marketing. There are pop-ups everywhere! Websites store little text files called cookies in your browser. All of the major browsers—Chrome, IE, Safari, and Firefox—accept them. These cookies are useful for enabling both basic website functionality and a more customised experience.

Since 1995, cookies have been around and are safe. However, these are what digital marketers use to monitor online behaviour and, if directed to, may compile a plethora of data.

Highly targeted advertising and activity tracking may result in unintentional identification of individuals. The cookies must go through a personal user acceptance process in order to comply with GDPR. Although this procedure is straightforward, the user must decide which cookies they can live with. The acceptance is delivered through a pop-up. Pop-ups are detested by many. Expect to lose, at the very least, some degree of analytical clarity.

Search engine optimization complies fully with GDPR. Connecting folks with a question or need to exactly what they’re seeking is the nature of SEO. Instead of receiving an email that is strangely personalised for you, users are turning to search engines to find what they need or want. SEO concentrates on the term rather than the particular data that a cookie would gather by employing keyword research and data.

How to Help Your SEO Strategies with GDPR

You need to think about GDPR compliance and digital marketing from scratch. For your website to remain visible and user-friendly, it must be in excellent condition, from your website’s security to optimised title tags and headings.

Website security and GDPR

When it comes to GDPR compliance, security is of the utmost significance. Make sure the user’s connection to your website is safe if it collects any kind of information. Since 2014, using SSLs to provide the HTTPS secure protocol has become a ranking factor, and web providers are glad to implement them for a nominal annual cost.

The next level of security for your website and users is HSTS, so if you can, install it. At the end of the day, when a user clicks on the SERPs, they are giving your website some of their trust. Respect that by protecting their information (it can also prevent a fine for you!).

Optimize your title tags and primary headings

Alongside GDPR, the value of keywords has increased. Any traffic loss resulting from a lack of personalization can be countered by a greater click-through rate by matching searcher intent with the relevant keywords.

Primary headings (h1s) written with the use of excellent keyword research are a good and straightforward technique to grab readers’ attention and lower bounce rates. Another simple technique to raise your click-through rates is to provide helpful meta descriptions that correspond to page titles and headings.

GDPR and SEO

Get technical and improve user experience

Reducing wait times is the simplest method to enhance customer experience on your website. People will wait for value, but relying on it is never a good idea.

Improve user experience by reducing waiting times. The value will make people wait, but it’s never a smart idea to profit from that. With the Core Web Vitals change, Google is increasing the pressure on website performance, which only serves to reinforce this.

All of a website’s performance-related problems can be solved via technical SEO. Your website becomes attractive, useful, and instructive in Google’s eyes thanks to technical SEO. Spend some time writing alt text and compressing your photographs.

How using cookies can impact SEO

When examining page load times and user experiences, both of which are ranking considerations for SEO, SEO practitioners are concerned about the increased use of cookie consent pop-ups brought on by GDPR. Depending on the cookie’s size and the number of requests, cookies may slow down how quickly a web page loads. For instance, if we send 120 requests with 6 KB of cookies each, there is 720 KB of extra data being transferred between requests, potentially slowing down page performance.

Cookies alter user experience, which has been demonstrated to influence search engine rankings, as well as page load times. The majority of the time, when a user accesses a web page and a pop-up window displays, it degrades the user experience, resulting in a bounce or data consent. Many users have now implemented cookie consent pop-ups to their websites in order to comply with GDPR, potentially affecting user experience. Users might leave the page as a result of misunderstanding or the previously noted slow page load caused by this change in permission.

Why am I seeing fewer goal completions/form submissions?

Due to the implementation of GDPR, consumers must now manually consent to receiving marketing materials and having their data collected. Users will now be required to perform more tasks and checkboxes in order to access some marketing content, potentially lowering the number of form submissions and goal completions. As an illustration, UK publisher The Guardian has updated its permission forms to comply with GDPR.

We advise that your goal tracking be transparent and that you have active consent requests in place to ensure that users have the best experience possible on the site. Ensure that you’re only gathering pertinent information and keep the number of fields to a minimum. Despite the ongoing consent requests, this will improve user experience and make your business GDPR compliant.

Potential indicators you could be affected by GDPR

How can I identify if the GDPR regulations will have an impact on my company? is undoubtedly a question that many of you have. Our SEO specialists have compiled a quick list of signs that you might be aiming toward EU citizens:

Language translations
EU currency Hreflang tags
EU domain names
UE folders
Referencing EU news, culture, etc.
Mentioning EU information in the content

It’s likely that you would need to collect and keep data in accordance with GDPR rules if your business is engaged in one or more of the aforementioned activities.

How should I make my SEO strategy GDPR compliant?

How will the GDPR affect my upcoming SEO plan? SEO best practices have changed? Should I be alert to upcoming adjustments to the ranking criteria? These are all questions that we have frequently been asked in the months leading up to the implementation of GDPR. You’re in luck, then! We’ve highlighted what you ought to and ought not to do with regard to your SEO strategy, as well as what to look out for in the upcoming months.

What you should not do in your SEO strategy post-GDPR

We are aware that SEO seems like a difficult task in the GDPR era. You may now be trying to come up with a cunning technique to get around GDPR, such as banning all web traffic from the EU, routing all EU traffic to a GDPR compliance website, or even showing EU visitors one page while showing Google another. Even though some businesses have used these tactics, we have no tolerance for them. We’ll explain how each choice affects your SEO efforts below.

1. Why can’t I block all traffic coming from the EU?

From an SEO standpoint, there are a few reasons why we wouldn’t want to completely limit visitors from the EU. First, preventing all traffic from the EU will prevent bots and crawlers from accessing your site, potentially preventing EU links. This can therefore result in a potential loss of backlinks, a decline in domain authority, and a reduction in the number of referring domains. Ultimately, all of this would have a detrimental effect on how you were positioned in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Second, anyone residing or travelling outside the EU will have a bad user experience if all traffic from the EU is blocked. An American citizen visiting an EU member country and trying to access your U.S.-based domain, for instance, would be prevented from doing so.

2. Can’t I just redirect all traffic to a compliance page?

Because Google also crawls your website, the answer is no. Sending everyone to a compliance page will, therefore, typically cause you to drop in the EU rankings.

3. What if I show Google one page and EU users another?

Do not engage in this activity. This is cloaking, which will always have a bad effect on the SEO of your site and probably lead to a Google penalty. What is cloaking? The goal of the SEO method known as cloaking is to fool search engines by serving crawlers a different piece of information than the user. This now incurs penalties for obvious reasons.

What should my SEO strategy focus on in a post-GDPR world?

Previously said, the majority of SEO ranking variables are not significantly affected by the GDPR’s implementation. Despite this, you should still take care to adhere to SEO best practises in a variety of ways, including page titles, meta descriptions, URL structure, crawlability, website security, and more. The areas listed below are where you should concentrate your SEO efforts to increase visibility while being compliant.

Google Analytics and GDPR

GA, or Google Analytics, is fantastic. The most popular analytics tool on the internet, it is free. A certificate of completion is included in the environment of free training. The most significant benefit of using GA is the ability to track a variety of data about how users interact with your website or application.

The drawback of GA is that it gathers user IDs, personal data, IP addresses, cookies, and other behavioural data, all of which are in violation of GDPR.

You’re safe if the user clicks the relevant accept button. If not, you will need to take the time to make your Google Analytics setup GDPR compliant. Here are a few simple pointers to get you going on the procedure.

Make sure to get the user’s permission before using any Google Analytics cookies.
Limit the cookies! Spend some time making sure that GA’s cookies only operate with users’ authorization.
Be open and honest about the data you are collecting.
In Google Analytics, enable IP anonymization.
Create a privacy policy that is consistent with your Google Analytics usage.

GDPR and SEO

What is the effect of all this?

Regardless of where they are located, all businesses that handle or keep personal data of EU individuals are subject to GDPR.

In this way, even if your business is located in the most remote region of the world, you must abide by this rule if you need a French or German individual to provide you with their personal information.

Keep in mind that personal data includes any type of information that can be used to identify a specific individual. Examples include name, email address, and IP address, as well as cookie data and other less common parts.

In another setting, even a character feature or article of clothing might qualify as personal information if it helps to identify a person.

The GDPR is highly comprehensive in the situation of the data controller when an individual, team, or even the entire business is fully responsible for handling the data.

A privacy impact assessment may occasionally be required due to the use of new technologies, and the data controller must also put measures in place to ensure the security of this data.

The explicit consent that may be required for the processing of individuals’ personal information and the right to be forgotten or to have all of their personal information deleted from business databases are two of the most crucial components of the GDPR.

What is the impact of GDPR on Digital Marketing?

It is a reality that you will need to make certain modifications if you use digital marketing and collect client data in order to comply with European regulations and prevent infractions.

The most significant requirement of GDPR for digital marketing is that you must provide people with the option of choosing how and if they wish to be contacted or tracked.

Users’ approval of the terms of the privacy and cookie policies now determines whether you can track their online activity or not. The following are some particular considerations you should make in addition to that.

Information in the cloud

These services process a sizable portion of personal data nowadays, and they are open to attack, theft, and leakage from any location in the world. Then, businesses must take action to secure the security of client data as well as staff data.

Email Marketing

Regarding GDPR, it is completely forbidden to continue purchasing email lists or scraping them from any website. The ideal scenario in this situation would be for users to opt-in to your email marketing system, indicating that they agree to the usage of their personal information.

Automated marketing

Automation is a potent tool for enhancing the performance of some marketing strategies. You must figure out a means to stop your automated system from automatically sending emails to users who have opted out.

To put it another way, you will need to confirm that the owners of every email address in your client database have granted you their consent to market to them.

Public communications

Because journalists must give you permission to approach them on behalf of your firm before you can share information about a new product to them, you must exercise prudence.

In this regard, using a platform where journalists request to be contacted or using a general email address, such as info@press.com, that does not contain any personal information, are both wise choices.

When journalists get in touch with you personally is another choice. In that situation, you are free to get in touch with them because the communication will be justified by a different legal justification, such as a legitimate interest, and the GDPR won’t be an issue.

What about the impact of GDPR on SEO?

SEO has also been impacted by GDPR, but not as significantly as you might expect. Here are some things to think about.

SEO is more convenient now

Due to the GDPR’s restrictions, businesses now favour producing useful content to reach users. This indicates that SEO complies with GDPR. Because GDPR has reduced retargeting, there is now a better balance between sponsored and organic search.

By making your metadata and URLs more effective, you can benefit from this. As a result, more individuals will click on your pages.

Additionally, you need to place more emphasis on producing pertinent content that offers consumers value and entices them to visit your website repeatedly. Making catchy headlines and subtitles helps with this as well. Finding the ideal balance between providing consumers what they want and using their data in a GDPR-compliant way is difficult because modern users demand highly tailored information.

The easiest way to deal with this is to educate consumers about how their data will be used and ask for their agreement when necessary. You should also explain how this will help you provide them with a richer and more individualised user experience.

User experience

According to GDPR, you must provide your visitors with the option of accepting or rejecting cookies from your website. This implies that they will also take advertisements. It will be a good idea to position your banners in the top and inline header, as well as in the footer. The issue is that employing pop-up advertisements will raise the bounce rate.

Use of Analytics Tools

Many online analysis tools make use of a feature known as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Data collection without the appropriate consent, however, is not in compliance with GDPR.

You must carefully select the tools you use if you wish to evaluate user behaviour using these types of technologies.

In this regard, you should pick those that give you alternatives for safeguarding user data and anonymity, providing them a number of options to accept or reject your website’s data processing and rules.

A good option for this is Google Analytics, since it allows you to set up its features to avoid sending personal data.

Google Analytics, however, does not by default adhere to the GDPR. Additionally, you must ask for permission and disclose all personal data processing in your website’s privacy statement.

Links to the Privacy Policy

Links to other pages on your website couldn’t previously be placed on pages that didn’t relate to the overall subject matter of your website. Now that GDPR has given you permission to do so, you can connect to privacy policies on all of your pages, which gives you the chance to link to other kinds of pages as well.

Traffic blocking and redirection

Blocking and rerouting GDPR-compliant EU traffic is no longer practical because it may harm your B2B SEO strategy and have detrimental effects on your website, such as:

Decrease in backlinks
Your EU ranks dropping
Loss of clients

The easiest approach to prevent this is to modify every page of your website and every piece of content on it to make it compliant with GDPR regulations in the manner already described.

Additional tips to balance GDPR with marketing and SEO

As you can see, GDPR increases user privacy rights, which increases businesses’ obligations. Make sure everything is correct by using the following advice:

Organize your database

Make sure you are in complete control of any personal data. Use this chance to get rid of the info you don’t need. Additionally, keep track of the therapies you send all of that information to using automatic data classification tools or tracking systems.

Ask for clear and express consent for the use of data

The client must specifically consent to the use of their data, but it’s also crucial to make sure that you make clear and simple explanations of how you intend to use the data.

Additionally, it’s crucial to keep track of who gave their consent when, how, and why. This implies that you will need to ask the client for permission once more if you decide to utilise that data for a different reason in the future.

Protect information very well

The execution of technological and organisational measures required by GDPR to ensure a sufficient degree of security is a requirement. It does not, however, specify the precise procedures that must be taken.

This means that you should decide which tools to employ based on the situation and that you must inform any personal data breach within 72 hours in the event that there is a leak or theft of personal data.

What happens if you don’t follow the measures to comply with GDPR?

If you choose to disobey this regulation, you should be ready since, in addition to the potential reputational disaster, the potential sanctions for doing so can amount to up to 4% of your annual global revenue or up to 20 million euros.

A comprehensive analysis of how GDPR impacts the SEO industry – GDPR and SEO

The majority of SEO professionals are presently experiencing a little panic attacks since they are unaware of how to adhere to the GDPR regulations while running their companies without suffering losses or running the danger of fines.

GDPR could not be avoided. The former data protection statute, passed in 1995, has become tragically out of date in a time of hyper-connectivity, increased globalisation, and highly advanced technological innovation.

On the internet, particularly in the SEO sector, there have been a lot of misunderstandings, educated guesses, and confusion.

We decided to put together a thorough overview of how GDPR will affect the SEO industry because of this.

In this essay, we’ll examine the significance of GDPR and how it will affect SEO businesses in terms of the SERP ranking structure as well as the changes that the industry will unavoidably go through.

We will present our incisive analysis of the changes to the digital world we may expect given the significance of SEO in inbound marketing enigmas.

GDPR and SEO

1. Consent management

Consent is one of the major difficulties that the GDPR addresses. Several websites presently attempt to obtain agreement by employing a variation of the phrase “By using this site, you agree to our Cookie Policy.”

However, once GDPR is in effect, it will no longer be accepted, and your websites will need to convince visitors to agree actively rather than passively. Some websites have reported that pop-up cookie approval messages have caused page load speeds to increase, which has already caused some controversy.

However, because loading speed is a ranking factor, it has the potential to cause a decline in your Google position. In theory, all websites need to get permission to use cookies. Therefore, the change has no special negative effects.

This does, however, mean that you’ll need to pay closer attention to how these popups affect the pace at which your website loads.

2. Data analytics

Every business will need to consider how they now use user data for analytics procedures. For example, Google Analytics allows you to view client information.

Once more, social media analysis analytics save the day by helping marketers create stronger campaigns and guarantee the maximum yield. But because the statistics are anonymous, the above conforms with GDPR rules. Even so, you would not be recognised as GDPR compliant if you currently use a de-anonymization technique.

Examine your own metrics; you may find that internal practices, such as sharing private information with employees via email or including particular information in email campaign statistics, are against the law.

There is yet no proof from any search engine that GDPR adoption will affect how results are ranked, although this does not rule it out. Search engines include tactics that initially appear to be optional but end up playing a crucial role in how a page is positioned.

We need simply look to HTTPS as one of the most recent examples. Previously simply a preferred requirement, HTTPS is now taken so seriously by Google that users are warned whenever they attempt to access a non-HTTPS website through Chrome. Additionally, the switch to HTTPS shows that Google is beginning to favour websites with stronger security measures and is factoring them heavily into their iterative algorithm.

3. Usability and UX

According to recent e-commerce trend research, you must have total control over the user experience (UX) of your website across numerous channels, including desktop, social media, and mobile, for your business. Everything must be planned with your target market in mind, and the brand’s visual identity must be developed.

User experience (UX) is increasingly being used by several search engines as a ranking factor in their algorithms. However, there is no reason to believe that GDPR won’t affect how users experience websites. A more prominent cookie approval pop-up is one of the elements that is currently doing this. There could be considerable obstacles once additional changes are needed to comply with GDPR and confidentially.

Website designers will probably need to collaborate with SEO specialists and experts who are familiar with GDPR compliance to ensure that designs incorporate the necessary elements while remaining user-friendly.

4. Value-added content

Businesses now choose to create relevant material in order to reach subscribers due to the GDPR’s constraints. This suggests that SEO adheres to GDPR. The GDPR has brought forth a new harmony between organic and sponsored search because it has decreased remarketing.

By optimising your metadata and URLs, you can gain from this. The number of users who click on the pages will rise as a result. Additionally, you should focus more on creating relevant content that offers clients value and motivates them to visit your website frequently. Making catchy headers and headlines is also beneficial.

The hardest part is finding the correct balance between giving subscribers what they want and using their data in a GDPR-compliant way because modern customers expect highly personalised content. The best course of action in this situation is to obtain consent when needed and make people aware of how you intend to utilise the statistics, explaining how doing so will help you deliver a better, more individualised customer journey.

5. Privacy policies and traffic blocking

Previously, links to other internet pages that made no contribution to the page’s overall content could not be inserted there. You can now link to security procedures on each of your pages thanks to GDPR, which also makes it possible to link to specific other types of pages.

On a related note, searching may now be done completely anonymously, unlike other portals for data retrieval that involves logging in and sharing personal information. Without logging into a search engine, anyone can use Googling or DuckDuckGo to do incognito searches if they are paranoid or concerned about their privacy.

Except for the customisation search aspects, excellent search results can be obtained without much help from cookies or other user data. Blocking and redirecting GDPR-compliant EU visitors is no longer an option because this could affect your brand’s B2B SEO strategies and have detrimental effects on your online platform, such as:

Backlinks are getting taken down.
Your standings in the EU have slipped.
Client churn

Making changes to your entire website and content to make them GDPR compliant in the manner that has previously been outlined is the key to preventing this.

6. Budget reallocation and lower cannibalization

A sizeable portion of the 2018 marketing budget was predetermined before the start of the year for larger businesses with stringent accounting systems. Due to GDPR’s dismantling of attribution, budgets for compensated advertisements are beginning to be reexamined; this may make funds available for SEO requirements more readily available.

Some of those wishlisted backburner ventures might materialise if such monies are redirected to SEO. Once more, there has always been some cannibalization between organic and sponsored search, especially when factors like product bidding or retargeting are taken into account.

The effectiveness of retargeting is currently illegal in the European Union, and contextualization issues may limit some brand searches. As a result, the organic channels are expected to expand as click volume switches to organic results as paid listings within search engines are reduced.

What is GDPR’s impact on the future of SEO?

The future of SEO is constantly changing, requiring webmasters, SEO specialists and marketing teams to adapt quickly and efficiently. The EU’s GDPR is a great example of how quickly a change can occur. Currently, there are no immediate changes needed for your SEO strategy. However, it’s safe to say that Google’s ranking factors may change to reflect the guidelines instituted by GDPR as security and safety become an area of increased focus.

For now, the best practice is to stay as compliant as possible with GDPR. Focus on SEO best practices, keep your forms as short as possible to only collect relevant information and begin taking data privacy steps to prepare for potential global changes using GDPR as a model for best practice.

Conclusion – GDPR and SEO

Digital marketers must follow international regulations from Europe and beyond. These features could harm your brand if you don’t take the essential steps and treat data improperly. Crime, reputation damage, and other problems can result.

Contacting experts in the field will help you establish a data protection strategy that fits your digital marketing plan. GDPR may squeeze your organisation. No worries.

SEO constantly changes. New restrictions like the GDPR will likely affect ranking listings, but it’s difficult to say how until search engines respond. You must be informed of what these changes mean for your online platform and make any necessary adjustments.

If you’re worried about how GDPR will influence your company’s search ranking, contact your SEO supervisor or agency. If you own a small business and manage your own online presence, get assistance to ensure GDPR compliance.

Search engines seldom change their algorithms drastically. They offer sites time to meet the criteria. With fast globalisation and digital progress, we’ve seen new ways to capture and share personal data. GDPR defined how, where, why, and when personal data can be legally acquired.

GDPR creates a new global standard for data privacy and security, allowing individuals complete control of their personal data. Thanks for reading the whole essay. We explained how GDPR will affect SEO and digital marketing. Industry experts may expect several hurdles and obstacles in the near future, especially when it comes to collecting data correctly, being honest, and surviving data economy transformations.