Do pop-ups really work for a website? Could pop-ups effect SEO? Is it bad for SEO? Is Google penalize the website having pop-ups? What are the rules of Google for displaying Pop-up? If you are looking for the answer of these questions, then you are at the right place. Here, you will know the answer of all of your question and types of pop-ups that would impact SEO negatively. Let’s get started.
Before starting, you should know few things about pop-ups. Basically, pop-ups are very annoying for most of the readers but it is liked by the webmasters as it works as the great medium for conversions. The main challenge for webmasters is displaying the pop-ups in such way that it is most effective for conversions and does not seems intrusive for the readers. Scroll down to know the way to use pop-ups efficiently without impacting SEO for your website.
Now, the question is why we should use pop-ups? So, the answer is pop-up is an excellent tool that helps in grabbing the attention of readers and direct visitors to some specific area of the website. The pop-up persuades the audience to pay for a service, buy a product, renew a subscription, signup to a newsletter and many more. It is found in a study that a conversion rate produced by pop-ups is around 4% which is awesome as 9 comes for top-performing pop-ups.
It happened with most of us that we are reading an article online and a pop up appears on the entire page. After that you exit out from the ad to see your content which you are reading but sometimes the option to close the popup window is hidden. It is one of the annoying experiences faced by the readers. But as a marketer, it is a good idea to featured a pop-up message on the website. There are some practices which can positively and negatively affect the SEO of a website. Scroll down to know how popup were performed and whether they help in getting organic ranking or not.
According to some marketing companies, it is a good idea to use the pop-ups in the website as it will helps in influencing the behaviour of prospective customers effectively. By using pop-ups, you can able to grow your email newsletter subscriber list, more organic search effectively. The problem is users receive the emails but there are less chances that they open these emails and actually purchase the products and services of a company.
Most of the marketing companies think that popups negatively affect the user perception and their experience towards a brand. It was found in a study that more than 75% of US users are annoyed to open pop-ups. Moreover, when pop-ups display on a mobile when user accessing something online on a website then most of the users will prefer to leave that website entirely instead of closing the pop-ups and using that particular website.
Google has implemented some new policies as pop-ups impact the user experience so much. According to these policies, if any website breaks the rules during using pop-ups in their website then they will be penalized. These policies are:
Pop-up should not cover main content to website
It cannot cover the entire page of the website
Should not appear at the top of the website that forcing the visitors to scroll down to find content of the website
By breaking the rules of pop-ups made by Google you will impact your organic search ranking and also lowers your quality score. It also makes the online advertising more costly.
Most of the businesses searching that Google actually penalize the website with pop-ups or it is just a myth. Its answer is maybe. It depends on the way in which pop-ups are used by a particular website. Even if you fully optimize your pop-ups then it does not mean that you can use pop-up in your entire page of website. In this case, users close the window and navigate to some other website. You are required to make sure that pop-ups on your website are not intrusive to the users if you want to get your website in the list of Google search engine result pages and visitors to stick on your website for longer time. Remember that Google also penalize pop-ups on mobile webpages which are intrusive to the online readers. Google only wants that the content which is served to the audience through various websites should easily accessible no matter what device the users are using to browse the website to access content.
The search methods of Google and other search engines are consistently changing. Nowadays, the traffic from mobile devices are greater than the traffic originated from desktops. With the huge growth in mobile traffic, Google also included the ranking factor that focuses on providing the better mobile experience to the user. The mobile devices are uses various methods for search like local search and voice search.
Google has updated some mobile guidelines which describe what and which pop-ups are acceptable on mobile device and which are not so that content can be easily accessible on mobile phones. The basic rule is that pop-ups and other interstitials should not be intrusive for the readers. This is only applicable for the mobile webpages.
The pop-ups impact the loading time of a website. Due to use of pop-ups in the website, the loading time of a website is increases due to slow loading speed. Pop-up scripts and assets enhance all over time of web page loading time. It can have a significant impact if there is sue of heavy visuals. Google does not like the website that take too much time in loading the web page. There is a tool for webmaster with which they can evaluate as well as optimize the loading speed of a website.
Now, the question is how much does a loading time of a website affect the ranking in Google search engine results? The answer is a lot. From the SEO viewpoint, it has a major impact on the ranking and may lower your position in search results.
The pop-ups are one of the most favourite tools for the marketers as they can use it on their website for publicity and advertisement of your product and services. In a survey it is also found that it provides a bad user experience and more than 85% of users hate it. Sometimes, people also leave the website due to become frustrate with these pop-ups.
The next question which most of the people think is that why pop-ups affect SEO. The answer is Google always consider the users behavioural factors while ranking the website in search engine results. If your users are annoyed by pop-ups that they decide to leave the website immediately or shorten their visit on the website then it’s may could negatively impact your SEO. It does not necessary that pop-up have always direct impact on your SEO.
Pop-ups does not have any impact on the bounce rate of the website. The bounce rate is one of the interesting factors as it is the simplest way to determine the impact of pop-ups on the user experience. In case, if users are annoyed to leave a website then the bounce rate of a website increases which also impact your ranking in SERPs. It does not affect the average sessions duration i.e. the average time a visitor stays on a website. Visitors only stays on a website for a longer time on which they feel comfortable and found some valuable and useful information. So, it is said that bounce rate or session duration does not impacted from pop-ups either positively or negatively. The appropriate pop-ups can reduce the bounce rate or enhance the average session duration on a website. it helps in improving the navigation experience.
