The Importance Of Your Privacy Policy

The name of the game these days when it comes to getting traffic to your website and making a real go on the net with your business is legitimacy. Gone are the days when you could throw together a website that looked and operated as if it were home made, and end up earning money or making a living with your online endeavors.

Web shoppers are much savvier than they were 4 or 5 years ago and with all the scams and so-called deals running on the net today, consumers are more able to spot fraud and business that just doesn’t look right. But beyond that, the buying public also wants to be comfortable with the entities they’re doing business with online. One of the ways to make your customers feel that way is to have all your ducks in a row and include a privacy policy on your site.

Your privacy policy will tell visitors to your site what information is being collected by you as the webmaster and what you intend to do with it. It may also tell your visitors how the information is being collected, how it is being protected and whether or not you will be sharing this information with any third parties. It is a good policy on your part to assure your customers that any data collected is for their benefit, to make future visits to your site more convenient for them and that you will keep the data you have on them only for your use.

Privacy data on your visitors is usually collected in the form of cookies and can be used to present choices and advertising for customers based on previous activity on your site. If you assure your customers of this fact, it can go a long way in making them feel more secure about doing business with you.

There’s even a further benefit to having a privacy policy on your site. Google now wants you to use one if you display Adsense ads and they also will judge your site of a little higher quality when you include a privacy policy. You don’t absolutely have to include a policy when displaying Adsense, but you may be getting ads of a lesser quality or cost running on your site meaning you will be earning less money.

Also, if you don’t include this policy, your search engine rankings could suffer. It is thought that there are over 100 things Google looks at when judging the relevancy of your site and because they ask you to include it with Adsense, it is more than likely they place more weight on one. No one can ever be sure what Google wants, but if you know about something they specifically ask for, that’s reason enough to include it on your site.

Including a privacy policy on your site won’t bring in tons of extra visitors or make you rich because visitors now think you are the only authority in your field however, it is certainly a factor that adds credibility to your business and with ever increasing competition in ecommerce, every little bit helps.