The end of third-party cookies is already in motion. Every other channel, ranging from paid search, display, and even email marketing, is scrambling to find new ways to track and measure performance. But what about SEO?
Third-party cookies let advertisers track users across different websites. They powered everything from retargeting ads to behavioral tracking and multi-touch attribution.
However, major changes in legislation, e.g., CCPA in California, GDPR in the EU, and others, have made it harder for companies to track people online without consent. On top of that, browsers are cracking down:
- Firefox blocked third-party cookies in 2019.
- Safari did the same in 2020.
- Microsoft Edge blocks them by default.
- And just last year, in 2024, Google Chrome started phasing them out and is aiming for a grand completion this 2025.
This has already shaken up paid media. Now it’s SEO’s turn to adapt, not because SEO depends on cookies but because the measurement frameworks we used to rely on did.
To keep up, Google launched GA4 (Google Analytics 4). It’s their new version of Analytics, designed for a world where tracking people is harder, or even impossible. Old-school Google Analytics tracked you based on sessions, using cookies. Basically, it tried to piece together your behavior from visit to visit using tiny trackers.
GA4 doesn’t do that anymore. Instead of focusing on sessions, it tracks events, that is, individual actions like button clicks, scrolls, or video plays. Then, it uses machine learning to guess the rest, because it can’t collect as much personal data as before.
Here’s How to Do SEO Without Tracking
If cookies are no longer going to be a thing, your SEO strategy needs to be built on context, content, and code, not users. Here’s how you can affect that:
Add Schema Markup
Schema markup is a type of code you add to your site. It actually just helps Google understand what your page is about.
For example:
- If your page is a product, you can mark up the price, reviews, and availability.
- If it’s a blog post, you can tell Google it’s an article and include the author and date.
- If it’s an FAQ, you can show the questions and answers clearly in code.
Google can use this to show your content in richer ways, like featured snippets or product listings. That means more clicks, without tracking anyone.
Build Content Clusters
A content cluster is like a mini Wikipedia for one topic. Let’s say you’re writing about email marketing. Instead of one big post, you create a main page that explains everything at a high level (called a pillar page), and then you also set up supporting pages that go deep into smaller topics:
All these pages link to each other and back to the pillar. That shows Google you know the topic, and it helps you rank for lots of related searches.
Go All-In on On-Page SEO
Now that you can’t track users as easily, your actual web pages need to do more of the heavy lifting. That means you have to:
- Write clear, relevant page titles that match what people search for.
- Use meta descriptions that explain the page and make people want to click.
- Structure your content using headers (H1, H2, H3) so it’s easy to follow.
- Add alt text to your images to help with SEO and accessibility.
- Link your pages together in a logical way so both people and Google can navigate easily.
All of this helps search engines understand your content without needing to know who’s visiting.
Wrapping Up
The cookieless future is already here, and it’s not a threat. It’s to your advantage if you act now. Abacus Web Services helps brands adapt to privacy-first search with modern, ethical SEO strategies that don’t depend on cookies or invasive data.
We brands win in a world where user data is off-limits. Don’t wait for tracking to come back; it’s not going to. Build something better with us.
Contact us today. We can help you ditch your old playbook and grow in a tracking-free world.
