Site's Privacy Policy Has to Be Displayed for Legal Reasons

Home pages and navigation bars are inescapable elements of website development, and the same can be said about site maps as well as privacy policies, which have become ubiquitous elements of compliance and search engine optimization.

Any website developed for commercial purposes should have a privacy policy; any law firm will tell you that there is no getting around this requirement. Posting a privacy policy is a matter of dealing with everyday liability, particularly in highly litigious jurisdictions such as the United States and the European Union. This does not mean that simply posting a privacy policy will shield you from lawsuits; the problem is when you do not have one at all and you end up facing a frivolous lawsuit that plaintiffs can easily win because you did not include it.

There really isn't much to say about a website privacy policy as it relates to SEO. If your website is affiliated with a digital marketing firm that pays you for embedding cookies, the privacy policy should be placed as a pop-up element with the option of either accepting or managing cookies. Thus far, SEO professionals have not noticed any negative effects of not displaying a privacy policy, but it should always be there for legal reasons. If there are no cookies for visitors to worry about, the privacy policy is traditionally placed on the footer element.

As for site maps, they play an important role in terms of SEO, but they can also be useful to some visitors. It does not matter if you have the cleanest website layout with flawless navigation; if you do not include an XML site map for the benefit of the Google, Bing, and Yahoo search engine crawlers, your website will not gain as much rank on the search engine results page. Don't forget to submit the XML site map via the Google Search Console.

Even though HTML site maps have become relics of a time when the web was friendlier, the fact is that screen readers for visitors with disabilities will take their cue from these HTML documents. Similar to the privacy policy, the Americans with Disabilities Act is a matter of compliance, which means that HTML site maps should not be discarded. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/jv0c7m/privacypolicysitemapsand_seo/.