With the introduction of digital cookies on the internet, marketers have rapidly detected their potential.
The benefits of cookies were obvious as those greatly helped to understand user behavior on the web and adjust marketing strategies based on that fact.
Therefore, specialists started to use cookies for marketing purposes. The importance of cookies in website optimization is also obvious as those show which elements of the website could be improved for a better user experience.
For learning more details about internet cookies and their value for SEO and digital marketing, continue reading this article.
What Are Digital Cookies?
In brief, internet cookies or digital cookies are officially named HTTP cookies. They were invented by an American internet specialist in 1994 to reduce the load on the web server.
Thus, instead of saving user data on the server side, that information was placed in a file called a cookie on the browser side.
Cookies could also be differentiated depending on the functions they carry out and the user data they gather.
In general, there are two main categories the cookies could be classified into.
The first type of cookies is so-called first-party digital cookies, which includes session cookies and persistent cookies.
Session cookies are those that stay active during the browser session and disappear once a user closes the website.
Those could be geographical location or demographic data that are used by the websites to provide the website version in the regional language, for instance.
Unlike session cookies, persistent cookies are not deleted automatically once the browser is closed. Persistent cookies save more profound user data, which is specifically dedicated to the interaction with the website.
That could be user login details, navigation history on the website, product selection in the cart, etc.
The second category of cookies implies third-party cookies, which means that the user data obtained by one site can be shared with third parties.
For instance, user navigation history and preferences are shared with social media platforms, which gives them the possibility to customize ads.
Many users see third-party cookies as potentially dangerous and privacy-violating, so they usually disable them in browser settings.
Importance Of Cookies In Website SEO
The meaning of digital cookies can’t be underestimated both for users as well as for marketers and SEO specialists.
For instance, when planning a backlink-building strategy, you need to know where most of your users come from and what their preferences are.
Get more detail and secrets on UK backlinks and link-building techniques.
When carrying out SEO activities, analyzing persistent cookies would be already enough. Those cookies conceal all the essential information on user behavior on the website.
Persistent cookies show which clicks were made, what elements were paid attention to, what pages were visited frequently, which products were selected, etc.
Such data helps SEO specialists understand what users pay attention to and in which mode they interact with the website.
To learn more about how persistent cookies could be beneficial for SEO, find this page for more information.
Benefits Of Cookies For Online Marketing
The use of cookies by marketers is even more frequent than that of SEO specialists. Internet cookies for marketing play an immense role in gathering user product preferences.
This helps marketers to develop sophisticated marketing campaigns that would be suitable for the target audience.
Owing to persistent cookies, marketers receive information on which products were made in the cart.
In case the purchase was not completed, marketers could send an email to users with a gentle reminder to proceed with the acquisition of chosen products.
See crmxchange.com to get more marketing tricks on how to address customers who have not completed the purchase but are interested in the company’s products.
Another aspect marketers benefit from cookies is the website pages a user has visited. Based on the user journey on the website, other similar products could be suggested.
Otherwise, the targeted ads of those products could also appear on other websites a user would navigate.
However, in this case, be careful with the product announcements in order not to seem invasive.
Privacy Concerns Related To Cookies
Even though users can customize the cookies preferences in their browsers, some cookies can still be gathered automatically.
This might concern the privacy of users, so each website needs to adopt its own cookie policy. In some countries, the cookie policy is obligatory according to the GDPR regulation.
When such a cookie policy is adopted by the website, users will have to consent to the use of cookies or refuse it instead.
With increasing digitalization, users become more concerned about security as they want to feel safe and protected in the online environment.
Therefore, the majority of users tend to disable the gathering of third-party cookies in their browser settings.
This makes sense as sometimes the user data is not just transferred from one legitimate website to another but could be intercepted by intruders.
Given that fact, marketers need to acknowledge that third-party cookies could be used for customizing ads but that won’t work for every user.
As a result, marketing campaigns should be also complemented by other methods that allow gathering user data and customizing advertisements.
