How GDPR affects Google Ranking and SEO in 2019
GDPR which came into effect from May last year will have a huge impact on the businesses across the European countries. As a business or a person who is responsible for ensuring digital security, you must be aware of the GDPR. But do you know this new regulation will have effects on SEO, which may impact your website.
As data is crucial element of digital marketing, GDPR will certainly impact your website in many ways. There are several aspects of SEO that will witness the impact of this new data protection regulation which was enacted last year in the wake of increasing consumer data misuse.
Whether you work with an agency which provides SEO services or are a business entity, it is important to know how GDPR will impact your website, and what steps you should take as to thwart those consequences.
So we will talk about all those repercussions GDPR which stands for General Data Protection Regulation will have on SEO — eventually on your website — and what are the solutions for a website whose ranking has been impacted.
But before we go ahead, let us have a brief look at the GDPR and its core principles.
What is GDPR?
With increasing cases of data breaches, the European Commission set out plans for data protection reform across the European Union in order to make Europe ‘fit for the digital age’. And four years later, it came out with an agreement whose result is GDPR.
GDPR which is General Data Protection Regulation is a set of rules designed to give EU citizens more control over their personal data.
With this new regulation becoming effective, now it is necessary for webmasters to seek user consent to collect cookies for an enhanced experience.
You also need user consent to gather name, email, and phone number on your website contact form. However, you need to use a means to request users for their information. And you will have to delete on users request.
There are five core principles of GDPR which are:
1. Handling of personal data must be lawful, fair and transparent
2. You can only collect the necessary personal data for the specific purposes that you already informed users about (i.e. no archiving for future purposes that users have no control over)
3. If you’re archiving for scientific or statistical purposes, you must keep identifying data only for as long as it’s necessary to process that data
4. Data processing must ensure against unauthorized access, accidental loss or other damage
5. The data controller (YOU) must be accountable for all these things
Correlation of GDPR and SEO
Do you deal with EU citizens in any way? You are likely to get affected by GDPR. And you, therefore, have to:
1- Continuously monitor email requests from citizens: Set up an email account, and you should access it at least twice a month in order to check the requests and respond them whenever necessary
2- Keep transparency with users: Let your users know about everything you can do with their personal data
3- Keep users at top: Make sure no actions you take have any impact on users
4- Clearly ask for consent: You need to tell your users in an explicit manner about how you can use their data. It is better you use a means for requesting consent
5- Ask for new consent: This means you should get users consent every time you use their data for the different purpose that you have not talked about with users in any way
6- Only collect appropriate data: Make sure you collect only the data that helps you deliver better experience to users
7- Be proactive in obscuring or deleting any data that identifies a user as a person.
8- Ensure gathered data is safe and secure: You are liable to protect the data you collect from users.
Failure to comply with GDPR may not only attract a fine of up to 4% of your annual revenue but also there are several other consequences SEO and website, which might result in a huge loss for your business.
How DGPR Affects SEO
There are various aspects of best SEO that can be affected by this new data protection regulation.
Google Analytics
The popular Google Analytics suite is officially GDPR-compliant, but it puts most of the responsibility on the data controller (you).
Google wants to safeguard itself from the huge fines that might come from failing to comply with GDPR.
So as webmaster or business, you should be aware of these things when using Google analytics.
1. Google can shut down accounts infringing on their privacy terms
2. In case of the lack of a data retention period, Google will automatically do this and delete all data prior to that period.
3. Setting up the GDPR options in Google Analytics will require to input the names of an accountable person and a lawyer — something that solo webmasters and small-sized businesses might not or can’t afford to have.
As Google wants to reduce their risk with GDPR, it will delete the account containing information like usernames, emails, and passwords regardless of you have take users permission.
Google Ads
Last year Google changed its ad policies that require publishers to ask users consent for the collection cookie and profiling. Yet, Google Ads is not fully compliant with GDPR.
But Google provides all the support to help advertisers who to comply with GDPR while using its products such as Google AdWords, AdSense, etc.
Affiliate Links, Conversion Trackers, and Interactive Website Modules
This GDPR is going to affect the way you engage with users. So it is time to rethink the way you use a number of common engagement and conversion tools such as:
· Affiliate links
· Conversion trackers
· Email and comment forms
· Self-hosted forums
Gated Content
GDPR limit the type of content you collect. You can only collect information that helps you provide your service.
So offering gated content such as content that you download by providing email, promotional offer, newsletters will become something difficult for advertisers.
Preventing Your Website from GDPR Adverse Consequences
If there are adverse impacts of the GDPR, there are also some incredible benefits that can be availed of by doing simple yet important things.
1- Go with a GDPR-Compliant Analytics Suite: There are several analytics suites that are GDPR compliant, for example, Slimstat, Statcounter, Mamoto, etc. Switching to GDPR compliant analytics allows you to better comply with the new privacy regulation and prevent any sort of data misuse that may land your business in unwanted legal complication. Even large websites that have resources to tackle the consequences of GDPR are switching to GDPR compliant analytics.
2- Use social media not comment feature for discussion with users: This is a safe approach to user engagement that doesn’t involve storing users’ email and IP addresses, and it doesn’t require you to take time away from other activities to monitor data editing and removal requests. If you don’t want to disable comments entirely, you can opt for a hosted solution like Disqus where users can exercise their rights on their own using the tool’s privacy features.
4- Do not use form unless it is necessary: If you are still using the contact form, it is better you should switch to simple text containing the contact details. This is because of scripts and software store email data in your database. If you cannot avoid the contact form, you should better go with GDPR complaint software allows you to turn on privacy features, consent options and disable cookies, IP address, user agent and storing in the WordPress database.
5- Choose GDPR-Compliant Software for List Building: If you rely on solutions for link buildings, choose GDPR complaint software that has features like opt-in consent checkboxes for segmenting your list, strong security architecture for better data protection, and allows you to easily handle subscriber data.
6- Use open content: Gated content is best if you want to have subscriber-only or member-only content. But if your goal for requesting email addresses is to build a list of prospects, then you should use open content. Make all your downloadable resources free to access
7- Delete server logs: server logs are part of the architecture, and unfortunately, there is no way to disable them. They are used to monitor unauthorized accesses and to get some basic aggregate statistics for your website. The deleting the server logs is the best way you can go with. As doing that manually is time-consuming, you can use software to save your time.
Things to do if GDPR have impacted your website
If your website is already affected by GDPR, and you do not how it did so you can directly go there and do the fixes, these are some crucial things that you should.
1. Use Search Console to push pages not indexed anymore
2. Create new content across various channels to link back to the old content to reignite traffic
3. Syndicate your content
4. Join communities and Facebook groups that allow you to share niche content
5. Go link building
To Sum Up
With all things considered, it seems quite evident that GDPR will have diverse impacts on a business. Not only will it affect the privacy policy but also your SEO and website. However, a business can benefits from this new regulation most by implementing things that we have talked about above in this blog.
