Cookie consent banners: affect on SEO, ranking, and content indexation
Cookie notices can significantly impact a website's performance because they are commonly loaded early in the page load process, are viewed by all users, and can potentially influence the loading of the adverts and other page content.
Seers has been working closely to ensure our customers using our solutions does not impair their website performance. This article will shatter the most prevalent concerns about cookie consent banners and provide valuable information considering a website's ranking, SEO, and content indexation.
1. Cookie consent banners harm my SEO
Cookie consent pop-ups won't harm your search engine rankings because there is no area where using cookies is a ranking factor in search engine optimization by Google or other search engines.
Google is well aware of the legal requirement of cookie consent banners in the EU. So these aren't a ranking factor for Google.
It's also important to note that they don't help your website ranking. Google clearly stated that cookies consent banners would not adversely impact website search performance.
Cookie consent pop-ups or banners do not directly impact your website, despite the fact that too many obtrusive interstitial impair your ranking.
2. Using cookie consent banners affects the performance and speed of my website
Speed is very important for a website. Seers is built to be as non-intrusive and lightweight as possible. Our solutions are designed to have minimal impact on the website's performance.
Our script is loaded synchronously on automated cookie blocking mode to exert control over all other scripts loading. However, in manual mode, it can be loaded asynchronously, which means that the rest of the website does not have to wait for the Seers script to load, further improving performance.
Furthermore, Seers' script is delivered in less than 100ms. Also, remember that screen-dominating pop-ups are not necessary. Many websites include a consent form as a footer at the bottom of the page, which makes it less intrusive to the user's experience.
3. Cookie notice affects my website's content indexation
Seers cookie consent banner does not negatively affect your website's ranking and the indexing of its content or the website's performance.
Any search engine crawler will access your website imitating a "full consent" in fact, the cookie consent banner will not be visible to the crawler. This way the crawler will have access to all content on the website and not be excluded from particular areas of your website that may not be visible to visitors who have not accepted specific categories of cookies.
Furthermore, the cookie texts from the cookie consent banner are not indexed by the crawler and will thus not influence your website's indexation.
Best Practices
If you're building your own cookie consent banner or using a third-party banner, make sure you follow these best practices from both a compliance and a technical perspective.
- Cookie banner scripts should be loaded directly by putting the script tag in the HTML of the main document instead of loading it by using a tag manager or another script.
- When using a third-party script, cookie notice scripts should be loaded asynchronously, as shown below;
<script src="https://show-cookies.com/example-script.js" async>
- It is recommended to place the cookie notice in the footer because it’s less intrusive and is the most common practice.