Enhancing SEO through Server-Side Tagging
Traditional tagging methods hurt website speed and data security. Server-side tagging offers a faster, more secure solution to improve SEO and user experience. Learn how to make the switch and reap the benefits of accurate data and a happier audience.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a unique discipline in marketing. SEO professionals come from all walks of life, from content writing and creation to technical development backgrounds.
There are a number of key factors in ranking content and driving organic traffic such as the number of backlinks to your domain, the quality of your content, and the user experience of your website. Without discounting the importance of links and quality content, it's clear that major search engines like Google are placing greater emphasis on user experience.
Which begs the question: how can a search engine determine your website's user experience? The answer is through technical signals like page speed, time to interactivity, and how much content shifts during load time. Google's guidance on this comes with its Core Web Vitals reporting.
This makes a lot of sense: a page that loads quickly and allows for interactivity as soon as possible is more likely to deliver what the user wants.
The challenge for many SEO professionals is that fixing page speed issues can feel like a Sisphyean task. Why? In my experience, the number one cause of slow page speed is marketing tags bloating the load time.
Marketing and SEO professionals end up in a dance trying to figure out how to collect data and fire scripts while maximizing load time. It's a self-referential problem.
The Challenges of Client-Side Tagging
No one will deny that client-side tagging is convenient. When the first client-side tag management solution came out, marketers rejoiced at the ability to manage scripts and tags without needing to pester a developer.
Yet, client-side tagging comes with drawbacks, not least of which is the drag it places on web performance. It's not without irony that Google's own solution to client-side tagging is often the biggest culprit of website performance issues.
The answer isn't simple. The obvious answer many web developers will put forward is to defer loading the client-side tag management system until the page itself is loaded and interactive. This is a poor solution because it may affect data collection – which is essential to marketing teams – and determining when a page is fully interactive can be somewhat arbitrary. Do you just add a timer to load these events?
Client-side tagging is often loaded in two separate places, the <head> and <body> tag of your web pages HTML file. Deferring both tags can cause unintended issues and create unnecessary complexity for your development team. This solution will need to be maintained – which sort of defeats the purpose of using a client-side tag management system in the first place.
The Advantages of Server-Side Tagging
SEO professionals looking to improve their website performance should consider an alternative to client-side tagging systems. Server-side tagging isn't just a credible alternative; it's the superior method for setting up tags and scripts on your web properties. Here's why:
- Improved Site Speed and Performance
- Data Privacy and Security
- Accurate and Reliable Analytics
Let's dig into each one with more detail.
Improved Site Speed and Performance
Server-side tagging minimizes the amount of JavaScript required to be processed on a user's browser. Traditional client-side systems require loading the tag management script itself, and then all the other scripts you may have on your site. So you might be loading Google Tag Manager and then Google Tag Manager loads Facebook Ads, Reddit, and LinkedIn ads pixels, not too mention Google Analytics 4 or Amplitude, and any number of other tags.
These scripts don't need to be loaded every time a user visits your site. The convenience of client-side tagging obscures the fact that it wastes valuable browser computing resources by design. If you're loading a dozen or more scripts for each page, it's no wonder the page load time is slowed to a crawl.
Compare this to server-side tagging. Server-side technologies handle event data and tagging in batches rather than sending requests individually. This dramatically reduces the load on the client-side and also decreases the number of server requests. Server-side reduces the number of HTTP requests sent from the client to the server, improving site performance by virtue of reducing the amount of event data sent back and forth.
As an example, you want to send conversion data to Facebook when a lead requests a demo. With a client-side set up, you're loading the Facebook pixel on every page and then sending the conversion event when it occurs. With server-side, you decide how often to call the Facebook pixel – which means you only need to send an event when it's relevant and not load the pixel on every page.
Server-side shifts the onus of event processing from the client's browser to your server. This speeds up performance and, as we'll see, boosts data privacy and security.
Data Privacy and Security
Data regulations like CCPA and GDPR are top of mind for most organizations, and present a challenge to traditional client-side tag management technologies. Non-compliance with these regulations not only poses a risk to user privacy but can also result in hefty fines and reputational damage, making secure tag management a priority.
There's an uncomfortable question for marketers loading third-party scripts on their website: does the script only track what we want or is it tracking other information?
In client-side tagging, each third-party script loaded has potential access to all user interactions and data, which may include sensitive information during sessions. It's not out of the realm of possibility that a third-party script tracks a user's email when they submit a form – and that's the type of behavior privacy regulations aim to stop. You don't control the client-side environment in the same way that you control your own servers.
With server-side tagging, you determine what event is sent to various tags. The event data package only contains information you want to send. This dramatically reduces your surface area for potential data leaks such as personally identifiable information (PII). Server-side setups facilitate easier compliance with security standards such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2, providing structured security practices that enhance data integrity and confidentiality.
On top of this, server-side tagging allows your data to flow through a centralized service where it's much easier to implement and monitor security protocols. You have full control over data security protocols like HTTPS, data encryption, and access controls. Your security and legal team can breathe a lot easier knowing that robust security measures are in place with a server-side tagging setup. For instance, server-side tagging simplifies the enforcement of user consent preferences across multiple platforms, ensuring that data is not sent without proper authorization.
Accurate and Reliable Analytics
SEO professionals and digital marketers rely on accurate and reliable analytics to make data-informed decisions about the website. Server-side tagging offers benefits here as well. For instance, being able to implement uniform data handling in terms of how events are tracked across different devices and platforms.
Modern browsers and ad blockers severely restrict the ability of JavaScript trackers to collect and send data. Server-side addresses this by shifting data collection to the server which operates more conclusively as a single source of truth. Just consider form tracking; traditional client-side solutions often rely on thank you pages or submission button clicks, whereas if you're relying on server responses, you only get event data when the form is successfully submitted.
Server-side environments also allow for more sophisticated data processing, such a validation, enrichment, and filtering before the data is used or stored. This is critical for many data-driven teams, as it also ensures uniform data is sent to each analytics platform. Client-side tags will collect data in their own way; server-side enforces uniformity at the point of data collection ensuring data is normalized. This is a huge benefit for teams with sophisticated business intelligence tools.
Just as with data collection, server-side tagging also allows you to set up data collection and processing rules that comply with privacy regulations. Tools like MetaRouter enforce privacy and security at the moment of data collection – they account for real-time data handling based on user consent. Data collected via server-side tagging can be configured to ensure legal and ethical data collection to enhance data reliability while minimizing risks.
SEO professionals rely on accurate and reliable analytics to steer decisions about the website. Server-side tagging can provide benefits such as uniform data handling – from how events are tracked across different client-side devices and browsers. Server-side also helps address challenges with tracking where modern browsers and extensions block or restrict JavaScript-based trackers. Server-side circumvents these challenges because data collection occurs on the server helping to create a more complete and accurate data pipeline.
Adopting a Server-Side Approach
At the heart of the client-side vs server-side tagging approach is the question, who owns the implementation?
Client-side tagging tools like Google Tag Manager became so popular because they gave marketers and SEOs the ability to implement tags without direct assistance from the development. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that it puts a powerful tool in the digital marketer's toolkit; the curse is that these tools still need some technical ownership.
Complex web analytics tracking setups require custom code to be deployed to the browser for accurate tracking. In theory, tracking events like form submissions should be easy with a client-side tagging tool; in practice, every website does forms differently whether it's deploying custom forms or using embedded forms from a marketing automation tool. It's inevitable that accurate tracking of web events requires some degree of technical assistance.
During the migration from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, many organizations were surprised to find tag management instances where the owner and subject-expert had long since left the company. Marketing teams have varying degrees of internal support for technical web-based projects. While some enjoy web development under the CMO, many do not. One could also make the argument that with the shift to event-based analytics in Google Analytics 4, the market itself is seeing a maturation of web analytics and convergence with product analytics and experience analytics.
A server-side tagging approach ought to recruit the right people in your organization to take ownership over the web data pipeline. It may feel like giving up hard-won control over a system (eg, client-side tagging systems), but it's more like recognizing the maturation of the market and growing demands for private, secure data. Having a server-side approach tames the wild-west approach of client-side, and puts digital analytics on the same level as other organizational data requirements.
How Can SEO Professionals Guide the Shift to Server-Side Tagging?
SEO professionals have dedicated their careers to straddling both the technical and non-technical aspects of web marketing. With the rise of server-side tagging technologies, they can help champion the benefits for SEO to data teams and help to convey the technical advantages to marketing teams. And while the page speed benefits are likely what will have the most immediate impact, meaningful benefits like improved data privacy and security are critical paths forward.
At MetaRouter, we're changing the way enterprises manage customer data. Our platform is designed to help you modernize your data processing and touring approach while staying compliant with all modern data regulations. Why not take a few minutes to book a demo with us?