The General Data Protection Regulation aims to give individuals more control over the usage of their personal data on May 25th, 2018.

The GDPR is considered to be a response to cases where user data was misused, such as the one involving Cambridge Analytica. After it was implemented, it had an impact on all industries that collect and process user data, including digital marketing.

 

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The General Data Protection Regulation aims to give individuals more control over usage of their personal data, and it went into effect on May 25th, 2018.

 

The GDPR is considered to be a response to cases where user data was misused, such as the one involving Cambridge Analytica. After it was implemented, it had an impact on all industries that collect and process user data, including digital marketing.

 

Considering that data-based personalization and retargeting, which were essential instruments in digital marketing, were against the new regulations, businesses have begun to focus on SEO instead. One of the first things they started working on was increasing the number of outbound links.

 

Easier Outbound Link-Building

According to the GDPR, companies now have to clearly state the privacy policy on their website. As most of them chose to do this through links on the most important pages, it has also brought advantages for the SEO teams, because it gave them a convenient way to control crawlers to-and-from the pages. However, new criteria for ranking and displaying the websites in the search engines were also introduced, security being one of them.

 

Security as a ranking factor

It is believed that websites that are according to GDPR will be ranked higher on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) by Google, but there has not been any official information yet. However, as Google has always been committed to make the internet a safer place, it is obvious that their actions are in sequence with the law.

Looking at the way Google encouraged the adoption of HTTPS, it won’t be long until website owners also begin to implement the privacy protection measures required by the new regulations, trying to face and overcome the difficulties that might appear.

 

Difficulties with Geo-Targeting

The GDPR expands the notion of personal data by adding to the list information such as IP addresses, mobile device identifiers, geo-location, biometric data, economic status etc.

As for geo-targeting information, mobile identifiers and geo-location were used, it is now harder to use this technique for SEO purposes. In order to be able to still use this information for SEO purposes, websites now have to request permission from users.

 

Alternative Personalization Models

Since the GDPR has been applied, websites now have to ask the users for permission to handle their data, and considering the recent scandals, the majority of them might actually not give their permission. Therefore, most of the users will receive generic SERPs, and as another consequence it is considered that the standard personalization models are not as useful as they used to be.

But as the search queries people use are personalized no matter what, the websites are still able to receive personalized traffic search, by creating SEO content based on the users’ search. Yet, website owners should still be careful about which keywords they use for each type of traffic.

 

Reduced Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization appears as a result of the overlap between the goals of paid traffic and organic traffic, especially in brand-bidding and retargeting.

The good thing is that now, due to the fact that retargeting is against GDPR,  organic traffic channels (such as SEO) aren’t exposed to keyword cannibalization anymore.

Moreover, now that the effectiveness of paid traffic is decreasing, companies can invest more in SEO and other organic techniques, that were previously ignored because of the lack of the necessary budget.

 

The General Data Protection Regulation represents just another change for the SEO, and it will not be long until it adapts to the new guidelines, as SEO has been in constant change since search engines became a used mean for finding information online.

To learn more about this article, visit the original source at the Site Pro News website.

 

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