Privacy to Your People

What type of privacy do you guarantee to your people, your website visitors? Does your privacy policy build trust?

Your privacy policy is your insurance that you guarantee NOT to share, divulge, sell or misuse any information you collect about each visitor to your website.

Who cares?

1. Your people!
   Your site visitors care.
   • They are on your website because they are interested in what you say, what you offer - your information, products and services. They need to understand how you plan to use information collected while they visit.
   • Your people are concerned about what is being done with their personal information.
   • They need to trust and be confident you are not being sneaky or Big Brother about their visit.
2. Lawyers.
   Lawyers care. (I won’t venture into “why.”)

People come first. However, if the lawyers feel you’re not meeting their privacy policy requirements, they will come first.

Where to you start?

I used to recommend clients run their privacy policies by their lawyers first. I have a “library” of privacy policy content samples from working in Web development in years past when I would put on my Business Law hat and “draft” one for them. (Often, that draft became final copy on their websites.)

I, admittedly, didn’t put much effort into Pixel Position’s Privacy Policy upon relaunching the site recently. Until this week, my version of privacy has been:

“If you don’t want is spread, don’t make it said.”

I made that up, but that doesn’t meet the needs of my visitors or my lawyers.

You need to consider a lot more about privacy issues! Take a look at these privacy act resources and requirements to grasp the full extent of considerations.

So you ask, “Where do I start?”

Garrett Pierson and his company just launched a Professional Privacy Policy Generator, and it’s all you need! Yes, it generates your privacy policy for you! He offered me a free trial, and I jumped on it. (Thank you, Garrett!)

Sign up. Save hours!! It takes 5-10 minutes. Here’s How It Works:

See that?

1. Create your own Privacy Policy for your needs.
2. Review it to ensure you put all the right information into the generator wizard.
3. Insert the HTML code into your website.

It’s that easy to get your own customized Privacy Policy that meets the needs of your site visitors and the lawyers.

Privacy SEO?

Should you think SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in your privacy policy? Sure, why not? “How?” you ask:

• Link to your home page.
• Use your company name in and around the anchor text of the link to your home page.
• Place a link to your Privacy Policy and your Terms of Use page in your footer.
• You may want to NOFOLLOW to your Privacy Policy, however. You’re not trying to build PageRank for this page. You’re really trying to build trust.

Conversion studies show that a link to one’s Privacy Policy on a contact form increases trust to the point that more people sign up when they feel secure enough about giving you information. SEO is also about conversion. It’s not just about search engines. Your people, your visitors come first!

Give your visitors a sense of confidence that you safeguard their information. Ensure privacy to your people!

Tags: Conversion, Lawyers, NOFOLLOW, PageRank, Privacy Policy, Professional Privacy Policy Generator, Terms of Use