GDPR was introduced in May 2018. By this time, your website must be GDPR compliant. You need to buck up and make sure that your website is GDPR compliant at the earliest possible. You need to acknowledge the importance of GDPR. Its chief objective is to assist all those users who are apprehensive about the safety and security of their important online data. Experts firmly believe that GDPR is certainly SEO-friendly. You may have to really slog and overwork in order to comply with GDPR but you could complete the process without losing any rankings or traffic. In case, your website’s traffic and ranking went down post-GDPR, it is an indication that you overdid it and went too far and may have made some mistakes along the way. Let us explore some SEO mistakes that must be avoided while effectively complying with GDPR.
Do Not Allow Pop-ups that Come in the Way of Content
You must have come across several GDPR-related website pop-ups. They typically are of two types: “this website uses cookies” and “we have updated our privacy policy”. If you click on them once, they would not be seen again. However, they could still be a potential threat to your SEO if you are not too careful. The popup “this website uses cookies” is supposed to be definitely more problematic as compared to the other.
As a majority of the websites would prefer to use cookies it is best to click I agree for dismissing the popup. Once that is done, users have the freedom to browse the website’s content at ease and do whatever they like to. But you must also, think of the users who are not interested in accepting your policies. You simply cannot ruin the user experience. This could frustrate your users and you could start losing traffic.
You must keep in mind all those one-time visitors, who generally visit a single page on your website and leave. Obviously, they would not allow you to use any cookies on their laptops and computers. This, to some extent, defeats the purpose of GDPR altogether. There is no point of having a GDPR when users do not have the liberty of browsing the Internet while keeping their data safe. You must provide the option of saying no to your visitors and still carry on viewing your site’s content. Cookies and GDPR must be used effectively for the safety of user data.
Do Not Consider Redirecting Visitors to a Page Containing New Policies
Pop-ups are not necessarily the only way for informing users about GDPR. It is never a good idea to redirect visitors from the actual content they are looking for to a page which talks about new policies. As a website owner, you want the users to know all the important changes. However, many websites that made this mistake had to face a sudden dip in traffic. It is best to fix this issue before your site’s traffic goes down drastically. Moreover, search engine bots are impacted by redirects too. A crucial page that cannot be crawled is surely a major blow to any website’s SEO.
Can You Consider GDPR Compliance As A Ranking Factor?
As per https://www.seoworks.co.uk, “Google has not indicated that GDPR compliance will be a ranking factor in their results – but this doesn’t mean that it won’t happen in the future. Google has a history of introducing concepts that initially appear to be optional (e.g. HTTPS) but end up being a very important factor in how a site is ranked.” We understand that most webmasters would be complying with GDPR in order to stay away from unnecessary trouble associated with the law.
Conclusion
At this point in time, it is not clearly known if GDPR-compliant sites would be getting a boost in ranking and those that are non-compliant would be losing their ranking. Webmasters are still not sure what should be the right step forward. Everyone is waiting to be notified by the Google authorities in the GDPR matter.
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