{"id":206086,"date":"2021-04-29T06:56:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T22:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/?p=206086"},"modified":"2023-06-01T16:21:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T08:21:49","slug":"intrusive-interstitials-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seo-hacker.com\/intrusive-interstitials-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"What are Intrusive Interstitials and How do they Affect SEO?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"intrusive<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Was there ever a time where you click on a website then right before you are able to scroll for the content that you need or select the product you want to purchase, there\u2019s this big pesky pop-up that suddenly blocks your entire screen. Annoying right? We\u2019ve all been there at least once and if it\u2019s annoying to us SEOs and website owners, you can be sure that\u2019s annoying to any other user as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

These pop-ups are called Intrusive Interstitials and they may be the reason why your website is not reaching it\u2019s full ranking potential.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Intrusive interstitials are one of the signals included in Google\u2019s Page Experience update<\/a>. It might be new for those who just started in SEO but intrusive interstitials is actually something Google has been looking at for years already and it might be pulling down your rankings unknowingly.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this post, I\u2019ll dive deeper into intrusive interstitials to not just to help you prepare for the upcoming page experience update but also to improve your website\u2019s overall UX and avoid any negative effects of these on your rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n

What are intrusive interstitials?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Intrusive interstitials<\/a> are similar to how pop-up ads work but the difference is, they block most, if not all, content of a single webpage whether it\u2019s immediately after a user enters from the search results or a different page or triggered by an action of a user on the page . It is a type of interruption marketing<\/a> which can get higher click through rates but can also annoy users a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uses of interstitials may vary. It can be for newsletters, push notifications, ads, surveys, contact forms, and leads. There are times that they are beneficial to users but more often than not, it ruins the user experience on a website.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How do intrusive interstitials affect SEO?<\/span><\/h2>\n

If you have intrusive interstitials on your website, it might be pulling down your rankings more than you expect. To give a little bit of a background, let\u2019s go back to 2014 when Google started labeling websites as \u201cmobile-friendly\u201d<\/a> in the search results. Because of the continuous rise of mobile searches that started overtaking desktop searches in some countries that time, Google wanted to make sure websites prioritize having optimized versions for mobile phones.<\/span><\/p>\n

In August 2016, Google published an article about helping users easily access content on mobile and in January 2017<\/a>, they updated this post announcing that pages where content is not easily accessible to users will be ranked lower. This specifically targeted intrusive interstitials on mobile where there is a lot less space to work. Nothing was said about interstitials on desktop but we can safely assume that there is also a penalty for them but not as painful as in mobile.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Google, here are examples of situations where interstitials are deemed intrusive and makes it difficult for users to access content:<\/span><\/p>\n