What is GDPR & ADA Compliance & How Does it Relate to SEO?

Europeans, Understand How GDPR Affects SEO

The General Data Protection Regulation is legislated European Union Mandate that protects EU citizen’s data and private digital information across all online platforms. To delve into detail, here are the essential requirements that NLM will layout:

 

  • Before processing data, the user must give consent
  • Notifications will be made if there are data breaches
  • All collected data is subject to anonymity
  • Information that crosses borders must be accounted for
  • Some firms need to have a data protection officer to deal with GDPR compliance

How Does GDPR Affect SEO in Europe?

Believe it or not, digital marketers need to understand how it affects their business and how they conduct their services. Since we are strictly a digital marketing firm that specializes in SEO, let us look at the General Data Protection Regulation law from that angle.

SEO on your site is a vital ingredient when it comes to proper on page search engine optimization. It is all about writing content that explains who you are. However, with this mandate, your writing could be altered if you do not address your website’s active goals. The wording where you ask your readers for consent to sign up for your marketing newsletter or your contact form will be altered by GDPR. Overall, make sure that you are clear in your content about giving a request of data & being explicit on how you will use it.

Synopsis: Before you are granted permission by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to grab their email, make sure to tell your human audience that you will only use it for the purpose to which you informed them. No more sneaky tactics that grant you a new subscriber to your digital marketing products.

How Do you Comply in Receiving Proper Data Consent & How does it Affect Your Website Load Speed?

As you can tell, the magic word in this whole topic is ”consent.” You have probably been redirected to read prompts like ”By using this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy” when you click on to a site in incognito mode. Once there, you passively click ”Ok” & voilà, you are reading your favorite blog article.

Unfortunately, as website admin, your plugin or HTML code that pops up that feature will no longer be valid, according to the ICO. The General Data Protection Regulation legislation requires that your human audience be actively involved in agreeing to hand their information to you.

Those of you who are web designers and developers in the EU know that the new pop up features that ask the user for consent & comply under the EU’s 2016/679 regulation must include more content & feature. Inevitably, the more complex the HTML code or characters are, the more likely it’ll be that the compliancy prompt feature will force the associated website to load slower.

Those of you who are SEO gurus know that page speed is an important ranking factor. Therefore, do not be surprised that you will have trade legal security for a slip in the search engine rankings.

To conclude, the data messages that are routed from web servers to your visitor’s web browser when they visit your website need to be tweaked so that the user is actively aware that their information was accessed by a site admin or owner like yourself.

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You Maybe Thinking, How Will Extrapolate My Website Analytics?

More the most part, analytic software such as Google Analytics anonymizes your site visitors and customers. Check to see that you do not have names, email addresses, & phone numbers that can compromise their data.

For example, you may go into the backend of your analytic software and data like keywords most typed to find you or countries from where their IP addresses are. Since those sets of info only categorize your visitors by demographics, then you are fine.

Be aware of sharing personal information even within your company as that can get you in “muddy waters” under this regulation.

What About GDPR Directly Being a Ranking Factor?

Everything NLM has explained is indirectly tied to SEO. Of course, search engines like Google can come out with an algorithm update encompassing it.

Let’s stipulate because Google has a habit of introducing new vetting measures into their algorithms that were initially optional.

Remember the SSL certificate that we talked about in our other blog; this protocol was originally not mandatory.

Another example of a ranking factor that is now required is the mobile friendliness of a site. Now, if you do not load quickly on your mobile devices, you will be placed in the back of the SERP queue.

Moreover, keep an eye out for consent-drive data being another ingredient for an optimized website.

Can GDPR Affect User Experience?

From what we hinted earlier about cookie consent prompts popping up whenever accessing a site, yes, GDPR subtly affects the usability of a website.

Before hopping to any conclusions, keep in mind that user experience changes when following the rules involved in the General Data Protection Regulation mandate.

Overall, updated user experience involves preventing digital platforms from managing an Internet user’s data in any shape or form without their approval.

Let’s Transition to Understanding ADA Compliance

 

Like the EU, American Site Owners Are Mandated to Follow Protocols Too

As far as parallels go, both GDPR & ADA Compliance are both laws that require website owners to comply to their visitors. Besides that, they have far more differences that similarities.

Lately, the United States has been stringent on making websites accommodable to handicap citizens after the US Supreme Court verdict was made last year that caused thousands of website owners to be sued for not being compliant under the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).

Unlike the EU’s GDPR, you are NEVER notified when a lawsuit regarding this matter is filed against your business for not complying.

Unfortunately, ambitious “ambulance chasers” are taking this opportunity to make a quick buck by working with low lives to sew as much as $50,000 to any & possibly all site owners who do not have the protocols that make them compliant.

After a slew of litigations was made to brands, business owners, & celebrities for not being compliant, word spread to the digital marketing niche, as we all are site owners, obviously.

Thanks to dedicated coders & developers, we were able to come up with a software that easily embeds the required information on your site. It makes you lawsuit proof. Best of all, it will not alter your website in any way.