There are several factors that can impact on site’s search engine optimisation (SEO) performance, but does having a privacy policy help? Yes, in a way. Aside from being a best practice or legal requirement (depending on the business and site), Google also considers a site ‘legitimate’ and ‘trustworthy’ if it has a Privacy Policy, Terms of Use/Service, and a Contact page (amongst others). These ‘trustworthy’ sites will naturally appear higher in Google rankings compared to their ‘illegitimate’ counterparts.

Apart from making your site favourable for SEO, visitor trust is an important element when it comes to attracting and maintaining site users, which in turn builds SEO. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) claims that 63% of people refuse to deal with organisations if they have privacy concerns. And so a privacy policy can’t just be there for show and SEO, it needs to adhere to the 13 Australian Privacy Principles in order to alleviate any privacy concerns a visitor may have.

So what do your visitors look for in a privacy policy?

• what information is being collected
• if the information collected will be shared with any third parties or disclosed overseas
• how the information will be stored and used
• how they can access and make changes to the information held about them
• how to make a privacy complaint.

Get the right privacy policy on your website to develop visitor trust while growing SEO.