This resource is intended to provide insights about privacy policies and Terms and Conditions pages, what they’re intended to do, and how they impact your site’s trust and credibility.
What is a privacy policy?
A website privacy policy is a legal page on your website that explains how you collect, use, store, share, and protect the personal information of people who use your site. Both Canadian and US website owners are legally required to have this page on your site if you collect any form of personal data (PIPEDA in Canada and individual state laws in the US). Non-compliance can result in a fine.
You may also have to abide by other countries’ privacy laws—even if you aren’t actively targeting other countries with marketing and SEO efforts, if you collect and store any personal data from residents of that country, you’re legally liable for it.
These are examples of where personal information is collected on the sites that we build for our clients:
- Newsletter signup forms
- Contact forms
- Job application forms
- WordPress login portals
- Google Analytics
- Advertising pixels
Google Analytics is the most important one to note, because that’s where you’re collecting data from users beyond your target region. If you install Google Analytics on your site, which we do on every site that we launch, this tool places cookies on users’ devices to gather data. Google’s own terms of service require you to maintain a privacy policy page.
Technically website privacy policies are privacy notices—privacy policies are internal documentation that tells your team how to protect customer data and deal with any issues or disputes. But the most common website label for this type of content is “privacy policy.”
Does a Privacy Policy Affect SEO?
Having a privacy policy is not a direct ranking factor, but pages that establish legitimacy (privacy, contact) factor into your site’s overall trust score—which does impact ranking.
Having a privacy policy also influences user behaviour that, in turn, tells Google about the quality of your website.
What are Terms and Conditions?
Terms and Conditions on a website (also sometimes called Terms of Service or Terms of Use) is a legally binding agreement between the site owner and the users. They usually outline things like the site being intellectual property, acceptable use, and limitation of liability.
There is no legal requirement to have Terms and Conditions on your site, but it’s recommended for the liability aspect.
Does Terms and Conditions Affect SEO?
As with a privacy policy, Terms and Conditions is not a direct ranking factor. More trust pages will give your site more trustworthiness. If you really want to skip one of the two pages, this is the only one that we’d recommend picking.
You do not need a cookie consent pop-up on a Canadian website if your privacy policy clearly states that you use Google Analytics and clear instructions on how to opt out of tracking. If you do this, your site should be covered by implied consent under PIPEDA. But the rules change if you collect sensitive information, such as medical, financial, ethnic/racial, political, genetic, biometric, religious, and other information.
The same is true in the US—state laws don’t require a cookie consent form, but they do require that you provide some way to opt out of cookie tracking.
We are not lawyers, and laws change. We always recommend having a lawyer write or at least review your site’s legal pages.
Can I use the boilerplate policies that you’ve provided?
We provide a boilerplate privacy policy and Terms and Conditions page because many of our clients don’t know where to start with these documents (and because we always include both pages in the footer menu design by default).
These are meant to be starting points, and should always be heavily reviewed by someone in a leadership position, as they are legally binding. If you can get your legal team or a lawyer to review, even better.
Learn more about what a strong privacy notice should include in our blog article.
