Have you thought about what your pop-ups might be doing to your SEO? There are plenty of considerations, from their timing and how they affect your engagement rates, all the way to Google's official guidelines on the matter. In this episode of Whiteboard Friday, Rand goes over all the reasons why you ought to carefully consider how your overlays and modals work and whether the gains are worth the sacrifice.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about pop-ups, overlays, modals, interstitials, and all things like them. They have specific kinds of interactions with SEO. In addition to Google having some guidelines around them, they also can change how people interact with your website, and that can adversely or positively affect you accomplishing your goals, SEO and otherwise.
Types
So let's walk through what these elements, these design and UX elements do, how they work, and best practices for how we should be thinking about them and how they might interfere with our SEO efforts.
Pop-ups
So, first up, let's talk specifically about what each element is. A pop-up now, okay, there are a few kinds. There are pop-ups that happen in new windows. New window pop-ups are, basically, new window, no good. Google hates those. They are fundamentally against them. Many browsers will stop them automatically. Chrome does. Firefox does. In fact, users despise these as well. There are still some spammy and sketchy sites out there that use them, but, generally speaking, bad news.
Overlays
When we're talking about a pop-up that happens in the same browser window, essentially it's just a visual element, that's often also referred to as an overlay. So, for the purposes of this Whiteboard Friday, we'll call that an overlay. An overlay is basically like this, where you have the page's content and there's some smaller element, a piece, a box, a window, a visual of some kind that comes up and that essentially says, maybe it says, "Sign up for my email newsletter," and then there's a place to enter your email, or, "Get my book now," and you click that and get the book. Those types of overlays are pretty common on the web, and they do not create quite the same problems that pop-ups do, at least from Google's perspective. However, we'll talk about those later, there are some issues around them, especially with mobile.
Modals
Modals tend to be windows of interaction, tend to be more elements of use. So lightboxes for images is a very popular modal. A modal is something where you are doing work inside that new box rather than in the content that's underneath it. So a sign-in form that overlays, that pops up over the rest of the content, but that doesn't allow you to engage with this content underneath it, that would be considered a modal. Generally, most of the time, these aren't a problem, unless they are something like spam, or advertising, or something that's taking you out of the user experience.
Interstitials
Then finally, interstitials are essentially, and many of these can also be called interstitial experiences, but a classic interstitial is something like what Forbes.com does. When you visit Forbes, an article for the first time, you get this, "Welcome. Our sponsor of the day is Brawndo. Brawndo, it has what plants need." Then you can continue after a certain number of seconds. These really piss people off, myself included. I really hate the interstitial experience. I understand that it's an advertising thing. But, yeah, Google hates them too. Not quite enough to kick Forbes out of their SERPs entirely yet, but, fingers crossed, it will happen sometime soon. They have certainly removed plenty of other folks who have gone with invasive or overly heavy interstitials over the years and made those pretty tough.
What are the factors that matter for SEO?
A) Timing
Well, it turns out timing is a big one. So when the element appears matters. Basically, if the element shows up initially upon page load, they will consider it differently than if it shows up after a few minutes. So, for example, if you have a "Sign Up Now" overlay that pops up the second you visit the page, that's going to be treated differently than something that happens when you're 80% or you've just finished scrolling through an entire blog post. That will get treated very differently. Or it may have no effect actually on how Google treats the SEO, and then it really comes down to how users do.
Then how long does it last as well. So interstitials, especially those advertising interstitials, there are some issues governing that with people like Forbes. There are also some issues around an overlay that can't be closed and how long a window can pop up, especially if it shows advertising and those types of things. Generally speaking, obviously, shorter is better, but you can get into trouble even with very short ones.
B) Interaction
Can that element easily be closed, and does it interfere with the content or readability? So Google's new mobile guidelines, I think as of just a few months ago, now state that if an overlay or a modal or something interferes with a visitor's ability to read the actual content on the page, Google may penalize those or remove their mobile-friendly tags and remove any mobile-friendly benefit. That's obviously quite concerning for SEO.
C) Content
So there's an exception or an exclusion to a lot of Google's rules around this, which is if you have an element that is essentially asking for the user's age, or asking for some form of legal consent, or giving a warning about cookies, which is very popular in the EU, of course, and the UK because of the legal requirements around saying, "Hey, this website uses cookies," and you have to agree to it, those kinds of things, that actually gets around Google's issues. So Google will not give you a hard time if you have an overlay interstitial or modal that says, "Are you of legal drinking age in your country? Enter your birth date to continue." They will not necessarily penalize those types of things.
Advertising, on the other hand, advertising could get you into more trouble, as we have discussed. If it's a call to action for the website itself, again, that could go either way. If it's part of the user experience, generally you are just fine there. Meaning something like a modal where you get to a website and then you say, "Hey, I want to leave a comment," and so there's a modal that makes you log in, that type of a modal. Or you click on an image and it shows you a larger version of that image in a modal, again, no problem. That's part of the user experience.
D) Conditions
Conditions matter as well. So if it is triggered from SERP visits versus not, meaning that if you have an exclusionary protocol in your interstitial, your overlay, your modal that says, "Hey, if someone's visiting from Google, don't show this to them," or "If someone's visiting from Bing, someone's visiting from DuckDuckGo, don't show this to them," that can change how the search engines perceive it as well.
It's also the case that this can change if you only show to cookied or logged in or logged out types of users. Now, logged out types of users means that everyone from a search engine could or will get it. But for logged in users, for example, you can imagine that if you visit a page on a social media site and there's a modal that includes or an overlay that includes some notification around activity that you've already been performing on the site, now that becomes more a part of the user experience. That's not necessarily going to harm you.
Where it can hurt is the other way around, where you get visitors from search engines, they are logged out, and you require them to log in before seeing the content. Quora had a big issue with this for a long time, and they seem to have mostly resolved that through a variety of measures, and they're fairly sophisticated about it. But you can see that Facebook still struggles with this, because a lot of their content, they demand that you log in before you can ever view or access it. That does keep some of their results out of Google, or certainly ranking lower.
E) Engagement impact
I think this is what Google's ultimately trying to measure and what they're trying to essentially say, "Hey, this is why we have these issues around this," which is if you are hurting the click-through rate or you're hurting pogo-sticking, meaning that more people are clicking onto your website from Google and then immediately clicking the Back button when one of these things appears, that is a sign to Google that you have provided a poor user experience, that people are not willing to jump through whatever hoop you've created for them to get access your content, and that suggests they don't want to get there. So this is sort of the ultimate thing that you should be measuring. Some of these can still hurt you even if these are okay, but this is the big one.
Best practices
So some best practices around using all these types of elements on your website. I would strongly urge you to avoid elements that are significantly harming UX. If you're willing to take a small sacrifice in user experience in exchange for a great deal of value because you capture people's email addresses or you get more engagement of other different kinds, okay. But this would be something I'd watch.
There are three or four metrics that I'd urge you to check out to compare whether this is doing the right thing. Those are:
- Bounce rate
- Browse rate
- Return visitor rates, meaning the percentage of people who come back to your site again and again, and
- Time on site after the element appears
So those four will help tell you whether you are truly interfering badly with user experience.
On mobile, ensure that your crucial content is not covered up, that the reading experience, the browsing experience isn't covered up by one of these elements. Please, whatever you do, make those elements easy and obvious to dismiss. This is part of Google's guidelines around it, but it's also a best practice, and it will certainly help your user experience metrics.
Only choose to keep one of these elements if you are finding that the sacrifice... and there's almost always a sacrifice cost, like you will hurt bounce rate or browse rate or return visitor rate or time on site. You will hurt it. The question is, is it a slight enough hurt in exchange for enough gain, and that's that trade-off that you need to decide whether it's worth it. I think if you are hurting visitor interaction by a few seconds on average per visit, but you are getting 5% of your visitors to give you an email address, that's probably worth it. If it's more like 30 seconds and 1%, maybe not as good.
Consider removing the elements from triggering if the visit comes from search engines. So if you're finding that this works fine and great, but you're having issues around search guidelines, you could consider potentially just removing the element from any visit that comes directly from a search engine and instead placing that in the content itself or letting it happen on a second page load, assuming that your browse rate is decently high. That's a fine way to go as well.
If you are trying to get the most effective value out of these types of elements, it tends to be the case that the less common and less well used the visual element is, the more interaction and engagement it's going to get. But the other side of that coin is that it can create a more frustrating experience. So if people are not familiar with the overlay or modal or interstitial visual layout design that you've chosen, they may engage more with it. They might not dismiss it out of hand, because they're not used to it yet, but they can also get more frustrated by it. So, again, return to looking at those metrics.
With that in mind, hopefully you will effectively, and not too harmfully to your SEO, be able to use these pop-ups, overlays, interstitials, modals, and all other forms of elements that interfere with user experience.
And we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Great explanation Rand!
I hate Neil patel's website when I read his blog. Overlays, Photos of his mood, advertisement with girl and more trying to get attention and annoy me each and every time.
I don't know about all of you but I really don't like.
I have to agree, I was on yesterday and got TWO exit popups. I closed one, then surprised when I had to close another one.
I think exactly the same as yours. For that reason I do not use pop-ups on my website, nor advertising. Whoever really wants to subscribe, will do so in the corresponding form.
In addition, many pop-ups can realign the website.
I don't use them on my sites either. I think they distract from from the content and other value the visitor might get from it.
Not to say I'm against using them in the future.
Exactly. I guess Neil Patel doesn't know how annoying his popups and overlays are. It's just too much. I can't handle them. My brain is about to explode when I enter his blog. And even if I want to read his content, I get easily distracted by those girls, by that sad face and everything, and I never actually finish reading until the end.
Not sure how they help with his conversions.
Great post Rand!
I totally agree with you guys. Neil Patel it's a clear example of a pain when it comes with dealing with all those popups. As soon as I see them by brain starts telling me: get out of there!
I really think he is a clever guy but I don't understand why he uses them so much. I guess it ends up having a negative impact in his conversions as Ziyoda as stated...
Totally agree. Such a poor UX!
Haha - https://neilpatel.com/blog/ just got another open. I couldnt resist - had to go check it out.
I found a new unmentioned one - a ding'a'ling bell that rings once you get down a page
I noticed it once. Since then I have adblock on. :-)
I didn't agree with you,
I hear you, man. But Neil is a smart guy. He is so successful in marketing that people still finds his ads amusing. There is a reason he induces satire into pop-up ads. To keep potential clients glued to his website.
Great WBF Rand! Shared it with a client today.
One thing I've often recommended to clients who want to show a popup signup for a newsletter, or a % discount, etc. is to keep a "pages visited" counter in a cookie, and only show the popup once the user has visited at least a couple of pages. Not only does it keep the popup out of Googlebot's eyes, but users are often more likely to respond to your popup once they've had a chance to see a bit of your site and decide if they like what you offer enough to give up their email etc.
I think that is completely fair strategy. It sounds logical. If the user has visited one or more pages, it means that they are interested in the website. They will be more likely to signup for any offer you are proposing them.
To contrast, I hate email popups that appear when I am in the process of reading an article. I just came to read your stuff and you are now offering me to subscribe, so intrusively! Let me read till the end first! The same with popup mats and overlays(that come down the full screen from the top). They were cool at the beginning, but right now, I get annoyed by them too. I get even more annoyed when I see those overlays again and again, even if I am already subscribed to new updates... I guess there should be simple script that says: "don't show this overlay to those who already signed up", but nobody implements it.
Thanks for checking out this week's Whiteboard Friday! Some questions I'd love to hear your answers on:
Look forward to your thoughts!
Hi Rand,
I'm more of a listen, learn and implement SEO type of guy, Ireland - Mozcon regular too (4x). I'm not a big commenter but this WBF hit pretty close to the SEO/UX heart. The company I work for has an email marketing strategy for sales and it does pretty well. Our list love our editorial e-letters.
I personally 'dislike' mobile 'modals?' but unfortunately they work very well for us, work so well when I turned off the mobile 'modal' we lost 50% of all mobile conversions :(
Old method:
1. New users desktop - Exit Pop - fire on exit intent to non subscribers or logged in users. 30 day cookie if they didn't sign up.
2. New Mobile users - Mobile entry pop (modal) 30% scroll - 30 days cookie if they didn't sign up.
Positive effects: bounce rate decreased by 2%, average pages visited increased .03% and time on site increased from an average of 2.10 minutes to 2.15. This was over the space of a month. I expected it to be a lot more. After an internal business discussion we had to revert to our mobile 'modal' in order to reach goals.
Negative Effects: Over 50% conversion rate drop for mobile conversions.
1st Method Post Mobile Interstitial:
1. New users desktop - Exit Pop - fire on exit intent to non subscribers or logged in users. 30 day cookie if they didn't sign up.
2. New users mobile - 25% screen floating bar mobile device for users from Google referral. 30 day cookie if they didn't sign up.
3. New users mobile - Mobile entry pop (modal) 30% scroll when user comes from all sources except Google. 30 day cookie if they didn't sign up.
Positive Effects: Mobile conversion rate from Google raised 15%
Negative Effects: Bounce rate was increased .07%. Time on site stayed the same and so did average number of pages visited.
This method still got us nowhere near where we needed to be for company growth. Unfortunately, time to get annoying.
2nd Method Post Mobile Interstitial:
1. New users desktop - Exit Pop - fire on exit intent to non subscribers or logged in users. Every page load for non subscribers. ANNOYING
2. New users mobile - 25% screen floating bar mobile device for users from Google referral. 30 day cookie if they didn't sign up. Second page load from Google also sees a pop up Every page load for non subscribers. DREADFUL I KNOW.
3. New users mobile - Mobile entry pop (modal) 30% scroll when user comes from all sources except Google. Every page load for non subscribers. ANNOYING
Positive Effects: Mobile conversion rate from Google raised another 15% from the previous test. Doesn't interfere with readers on mobile from Google.
Negative Effects: Bounce rate was increased 1%. Time on site stayed the same and so did average number of pages visited.
Still no where near our previous conversion rate from mobile.
This method might still see us hit by the mobile interstitial penalty / action but it's the quickest work around until I attain more natural organic traffic. I've had to become extremely annoying to new visitors of our website to attain business goals.
I loved your Whiteboard Friday and I think I still have a lot of work to do in order to reach goals and satisfy website visitors. Help!!! haha.
Interesting White Board Friday!
What's your thoughts in terms of Google for exit pop ups Rand/everyone? They tend not to be subtle (although can be implemented in a variety of different ways) but as people are already leaving your site anyway are they a good last roll of the dice? They can be annoying but if someones going anyway...
According to John Mueller, popups on exit intent are OK to use! Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-mobile-...
Just recently I read (sadly, I can't remember where...) an article that was titled something like 'Pop-Ups: The Most Hated Web Experience' and I remember that their opening line was 'ever since the early days of online marketing, pop-up ads have been annoying' which made me nod and laugh at the same time.
Nod, obviously, because I agree with the annoying part (I mean, OMG Forbes and their interstitials...too bad I can't leave any emojis here because they will explain everything) and laugh, because even though they are annoying, they continue existing, even today in 2017...
Pop-ups like 'if you want to subscribe on my email list' or ' click here for my new ebook' are fine as long as they're not aggressive and you pay attention to content and timing, but pop-up ads are really not welcome!
I mean c'mon, even Ethan Zuckerman the inventor of pop-up ads has publicly apologized for his creation :D
I have a question for you Rand - what’s the worst pop-up experience you’ve ever seen? :)
Where does the content in those modals fall in the whole scheme of things? The content is in the HTML. The search engines have access to that HTML, but are they indexing it if the content isn't shown? Does the fact that you're either positioning the content out of the viewport or hiding it altogether mean that whatever SEO benefit you were going to get from said content is gone?
Good stuff, Rand!
In terms of sites with mobile interstitials for legal obligations, an exception Google has called out, I wouldn't be so sure you're in the clear. 'Legal obligations' is not black-and-white, and anytime Google attempts to measure intent, something pretty subjective, it's bound to screw up here and there.
There's already been at least one case of an age verification interstitial getting unfairly penalized.
Even if you're in an industry where these types of interstitials seem necessary, I'd still recommend 1) looking for creative workarounds (whether or not you get penalized, we know people hate them) and 2) bracing yourselves just in case.
In this case I would really use a creative workaround, for instance: not displaying any X-rated content, but instead place the maturity question in the page itself, and replace the question with the content (by using Ajax maybe) once the user has clicked YES. There is one drawback, however: You will keep the Googlebot away from the X-rated content, too, because a machine won't know which answer is right.
Rand, YOU ARE THE MAN for hosting, yet again, another helpful Whiteboard Friday.
With so many new "SEO features" to test, this was a great rundown of the pros, cons, etc.
Thank you for post!
Very thorough presentation, Rand! But there is in fact another trade-off you didn't mention unfortunately: Many websites depend on commercial advertising to make profits, and the ads are typically delivered and paid for by an intermediary that is interested in just one thing: making profits. These are the highest when they get very big ads (maybe even in Flash format, eeeeehhh!!!) booked, so they require the publishers to allow pop-ups, overlays, interstitials, and the like. They may even force you to refrain from asynchronous loading of the ads, which means that they will appear before (!) the main content is loaded and therefore will slow down the rendering process. If you have really bad luck, you'll get some poorly programmed Flash element displaying a pretty senseless 50-megabyte-video which would literally kill a slower PC. So you can only choose between typhoid (lousy ads which make your UX worse and endanger your search engine rankings) and cholera (lower revenue from ads). :-(
Very thorough and in-depth analysis Rand, our agency is starting to test out a bottom-corner "pop-up" that only shows up if a user scrolls halfway down the page and this post will definitely be helpful for us. Definitely agree with measuring the following to determine not only effectiveness, but potential SEO impact as well.
Great insight as always, and with more and more people implementing best practices, maybe "pop-ups" won't be abused as much.
Great WBF about the different elements you can use on your site, but I think bounce rate is a bad metric to follow in this case. Google Analytics will track the closing of a modal as an engagement on your website by default so it will actually decrease your bounce rate, even it was a disturbing advertisement, but your visitors closed it. We just tried it a few weeks back and we saw a huge drop in the bounce rate on our landing page when a closable modal appeared in the very first seconds, but none of our other metrics changed.
What was modal's effect on conversion rates? Did it remain the same, or did it decrease slightly?
Finally Google did it. I hate all that kind of spammy pop ups as a user. If I want to subscribe I will. Make good content and I'll look for the subscription box. You have offers? Okey, but show them gently.
Now all those bad practices are being penalised. I think that the key to success is offering something good but not forcing users to buy/subscribe, etc.
Great topic Rand and great WF as usual!
Pop-ups are a big headache for myself. There are many digital marketeers who continue to praise how effective pop-ups can be yet everybody I know is annoyed by them. I was and still am in a debate with myself whether to actually have one on our website or not, currently some of our pages trigger a pop-up but I think I will rather choose some different methods to build a valuable email list than being pushy and use pop-ups. Any recommendation how to do that and still being able to effectively gather email addresses?
Hi Laszlo
I fully agree with you, it's indeed a BIG headache, it annoys everyone. I am surprised to know about its effectiveness at the cost of its visitors!
~ Philip
@PVAriel
Terrific whiteboard Rand, thanks for bringing this issue to our attention!
I've been wondering how Google is treating interstitials and modals that are not lead generation forms or advertisements - for instance, our website (available in several geographies) has a country selection modal popping up immediately after the page is loaded. It is basically a splash page in the form of a modal. Do you think Google is able to recognize the difference between advertisement modals and language selectors (or age selectors), or it just treats every modal the same way regardless?
Although they never confirmed to look at engagement metrics such as bounce rate or time on page as ranking factors, I think this is a good example of when these numbers could be used to establish how useful a popup is.
Hello Rand!
I'm going to ask the question everyone here really wants to ask but no one can get the gumption up to ask...
Where do you get your shirts?
Hey Rand,
No doubt you're the one man SEO!
I found it very interesting. You managed everything so good. Truly, I never thought about popups, models and overlays.
And I first hear about these important SEO fundamentals.
I know that your whiteboard Friday learning always made so good.
Love the way you work.
Thanks,
Hi Rand,
Happy to be here again.
A very timely subject. Indeed these pop-ups really an irritating thing, some time it is a big hindrance to read the content. Recently i faced such situation and informed blog owner to fix it. Some pop-ups hesitate even move unless you subscribe. This is really a disgusting thing. As someone said, just ignore this menace and go forward with quality contents. That pull crowds to your page and don't depend on this.
Not only that, as mentioned pop ups are basically appear with new window and is of no good. Google hates those too then what is the use in creasing such nuisances. Better thing is just to ignore, but the sad thing is that some times those pop-ups do not go unless you subsribe the page, once subscribed still this appear nd do not move away that is really disgusting.
Thanks for sharing this detail report on the impact of pop-up on SEO SERP etc.
Have a wonderful and profitable month of May 2017
Best.
~ Philip
@PVAriel
Hi Rand, OK I'm glad I read this. We put a blog out on the same subject when the announcement from Google came out but based on what you've explained here I think it needs updating.
Cheers.
What’s up Rand?
Thanks for talking on this topic. Your nuggets of wisdom solves our complications.
Pop-up overlays lead to dead ends. They are very annoying. You are right 100% that perfect timings can be the decisive factor. Sometimes I close pop-ups without even looking at the content. Force of habit though. Upfront advertisement pisses me off too.
Good article. Kindly explain certain things like pop-up, Bounce rate, Browser Rate, Return Visitor Rates, Time on site after the element appears, how to check? Is there any plus use of Interstitial? This might give us (Readers) more insight and ways of understanding and using this in a better way. Anyway, Thanks for the well written article.
Neil's blog is nothing compared to Forbes in the terms of wasting your time. On Neil's blog you can close the overlays with one click but on Forbes you can't do anything just wait and waste your time. Therefore, I don't read Forbes anymore. Cheers, Martin
Hey Rand, thanks for the breakdown, it was very helpful!
I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed by Forbes' ads. I will give them credit though, they have created a lot of interesting content that covers a wide variety of subjects, so hopefully Google only hits them hard enough to make them stop with the annoying ad practices.
Rand freaking amazing as always and something that needs to be touched on. The less intrusive the better is my opinion. I noticed that when I made the time length longer before a email signup pop up appeared there were many more conversions instead of the pop up happening right when the visitor ends up on the site. I also placed some code to prevent the pop up from happening if the user has already visited the site.
I find that by doing this you do not bother the visitor, get some conversions, and by making the box small and to the point it does not distract on mobile or desktop. I really liked how you mentioned the factors to look for bounce rate, return rate, ect to determine if the sacrifice of having it makes sense.
Yes. These are very disruptive and offcourse much aanoying as in native you cannot see proper website in mobile and it also occupy space in website as well as increases pageload.
In simple words, Ignore Pop-Ups and focus to create valuable content that draws the visitors.
Hi Rand,
Once again a nice post :).
I want to know how pop-under affects SEO? I have seen a lot of travel websites like Tripadvisor, Triphobo & many hotel booking websites using pop-under windows.
I had never even considered that pop-ups would have an impact on SEO SERP impact in a negative form. But it makes sense when it comes to website visitor experience. Thanks for the informative article.
- Simple and easy to x out. I'm not familiar with the specific plugins, but I think Constant Contact has one that allows you to put something on the page with ease (our designers handle this.)
Thank you for the great post, Rand! It's specifically applicable to one of my clients I'm talking with today. The Forbes/Facebook examples, along with others in the overview of each type of interstitial were very helpful in distinguishing differences. Have a great weekend!-Ray
Great piece and it really speaks to me. Popups affect my user experience to the point where I refuse to put them on my site. I felt like I was being reactionary at first, but it seems like services are catching on to reward sites for having outstanding user experience.
Very well done!
Now... can Google start de-ranking sites that detect Ad Blockers and block content?
Thanks for sharing great info about pop ups, overlays and model interact with seo and how we can optimize for our website.
Thank you. I want to know that if overlay popup contain link of other site, is it harmful for SEO?
I think that for people like me it is impossible to measure this things, or at least I should learn lots of statistics.