The SEO impact of interstitials, before and after

Just lately, an SEO shopper of mine misplaced 82% of desktop natural site visitors to their homepage in a single month.

Then, there was one other 97% decline in desktop natural site visitors within the second month. 

Why? 

The shopper launched a cellular and desktop pop-up for all United States guests. Towards my recommendation, the shopper hoped the conversions would outweigh the decline in natural site visitors.

Here’s a breakdown of the intrusive interstitial and its influence on natural site visitors. 

The influence of earlier than and after an interstitial on cellular and desktop

The homepage pop-up was associated to a promotion and never triggered primarily based on a time delay or scroll. 

Right here is an instance of a cellular pop-up: 

Within the instance above, the pop-up additionally negatively impacts the responsive design. 

Right here is the instance on desktop: 

Along with the drop in natural site visitors, the homepage misplaced 97% of its key phrase rankings on desktop. 

And noticed a 96% decline in cellular rankings for the homepage.

Many of the influence was on branded phrases, not directly impacting the discount in PPC branded spend. 

It additionally negatively impacted our web page expertise and web page pace. 

The web site additionally noticed a 10-second decline in web page pace. 

Earlier than the launch of the pop-up, the web site averaged a 3-second load time.

And a 13-second load time after the launch of the pop-up. 

You possibly can see the adverse influence throughout web page expertise with the pop-up with a lot of structure shifts. 

The homepage noticed a 97% decline in natural site visitors price worth general. 

There isn’t any interstitial penalty or guide motion

The intrusive interstitial results rankings, not indexing. 

Nevertheless, different areas of influence could happen, reminiscent of smooth 404 errors, server pace and the positioning’s general web page expertise. 

Keep in mind, Google crawls from the U.S., so if these overlays are solely current in European nations, Google is not going to detect them. 

The adverse influence of interstitials is a demotion in search

When Google rolled out the Google mobile interstitial penalty on Jan. 10, 2017, it had an incredibly quiet influence. Just a few days later, search engine marketing professionals began seeing pages lose 10 or extra positions in rankings.  

When the Google page experience hit desktop sites in February 2022, intrusive interstitials had been included as a sign. 

It’s necessary to do not forget that interstitials do not require manual action (not less than not but), however they nonetheless negatively influence your web page expertise. 

Google’s John Mueller stated in an SEO Office Hours on Jan. 22, 2021:

• “That is form of like one thing the place we might barely demote the web site in search. Generally, the tough half is these slight demotions. It’s not the case that we’ll take away the positioning from search or transfer it to web page 100. But when it’s related content material, we should present it on the primary web page of the search outcomes, simply not as extremely as doable.”

4 examples of unhealthy interstitials

1. Checking to see should you’re a spammy bot is unhealthy

Gary Illyes from Google posted on LinkedIn, mentioning:

• “Checking if the positioning connection is safe interstitials you see on some websites, a few of the time, is the final search-friendly factor you are able to do.”

Instance: 

Briefly, there are different methods to keep away from spammy bots from hitting your website.

For those who detect a bot, Mueller really useful serving a 5xx status code to manage the robot detection interstitial. 

2. Redirect to interstitial web page 

For those who present a person web page A within the SERPs however redirect it to web page B after the clicking and web page B features a pop-up or interstitial web page, engines like google is not going to detect content material outdoors the redirected web page. 

3. Solely shows interstitial 

Right here is an instance of a pop-up show that covers the physique copy: 

4. Retailer locator pop-ups

Retailer locators are actually hit and miss on pop-ups. 

Right here is an instance of an excellent location locator pop-up: 

As a substitute of a pop-up, Xero opts for a banner advert. 

When you click on the “Change area” button, you’re delivered to this feature to pick out a area. 

4 examples of fine interstitials

1. Displaying a cookies coverage interstitial 

Authorized interstitials are OK, simply so long as engines like google can index the content material with out doing something particular, like asking engines like google to click on on one thing to load the background content material. 

This implies GDPR and cookie insurance policies are high quality.

Right here is an instance of a cookies coverage constructed with a pop-up window:

Right here is one other instance of a cookies coverage constructed with a banner on the backside (my most well-liked methodology):

Mueller talked about in Google Webmaster Workplace Hours that Google is attempting to acknowledge these authorized banners as separate from promoting banners.

2. Requesting age verification

Age verification classifies as a authorized pop-up, so there are not any points with these.

Right here is an instance of an age pop-up accomplished properly:

3. Leveraging banners on the prime and backside

Right here is an instance of Samsung’s promotional advert banner:

4. Exit intent pop-ups which are time or scroll-based

For those who’re going to launch a pop-up, I like to recommend utilizing an exit intent pop-up primarily based on time on the web page (20 seconds or extra) or scroll depth.

Keep tuned for extra updates on the restoration of the interstitial pop-up

I’ll be updating this text as I get extra information on the influence of eradicating the interstitial and restoration.