How VPNs affect your digital marketing?
Virtual Private Network (VPN) affects your digital marketing efforts in different ways. It can work both against and for your online marketing strategies. However, its positive effects outweigh any of the negative impacts if may have. So explore both sides and the ways in which the use of VPNs by users can affect your strategies.
Impact of VPN on SEO
Search engine optimization is among the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies. Besides helping generate traffic, it can also build your brand awareness and credibility. All VPNs affect local SEO because they can make changes to a user’s IP address. For example, if a targeted audience in city A (with an IP address from city B) searches for your products/services, they are going to see results for city B. This can render your local SEO efforts useless. This can be concerning for local stores that rely on local SEO to drive foot traffic.
Impact of VPN on Page Load Speed
Page load speed is an important element of User Experience (UX). This further makes it an important factor in SEO. VPNs can slow down page load speeds because of advanced encryption processes. Another reason for the slowdown is the creation of indirect data transfer routes. Slower page load speeds can increase bounce rates and reduce the conversion rates.
Impact of VPNs on Google Analytics
The impact of VPNs isn’t that elaborate and deep on Google Analytics. The powerful web analytics service is extensively used by digital marketers worldwide and most of the data is cookie-based. Even when a user secures their online browsing experience using a VPN, visitor data is accessed and stored through cookies. The only factor that gets affected here is the user location, which is hidden by the VPN.
How VPNs can Benefit Your Digital Marketing Efforts?
A digital marketer needs to browse the web and access a vast collection of applications. VPN services help you in accessing all the information in an anonymous and secure way. You can access all the information remotely, allowing you to work on projects from anywhere and on any device, without any restrictions.
Besides, you are able to access websites and information that is otherwise blocked. Internet censorship is practice in many jurisdictions around the world. All information is encrypted before being transmitted. This helps in protecting privacy and allows you to work without being watched by anyone.
Help with SEO
When creating SEO strategies, your work starts with evaluating current search engine rankings. Since Google and other search engines deliver SERPs that vary from one user to another (because of personalized results), it can be difficult for SEO specialists to gauge the actual results. Using VPN, you are able to get a better idea of what appears in search results. This is because VPNs use a new IP address every time a new search is made. The system makes it difficult for search engines to personalize the results.
VPNs also allow SEOs to view search results in other countries. If you optimize websites for different markets, this can be an effective way to learn about keywords and customer requirements in such markets.
As an SEO professional, you are concerned about the security of your accounts. Not only do you want to prevent anyone from accessing your accounts, you also want to prevent any kind of damage to the data. VPN shields you from any potential hacking attacks.
Thus, VPNs have an impact on your digital marketing efforts. These efforts can be both for and against your strategies. Since you cannot prevent users from using VPNs, it makes all the sense to put it to the best use to help you with your online marketing strategies.