5 tips to use Interstitials without negatively impacting your SEO

by Durga | Sep 9, 2021

Post Views: 76

Nowadays interstitial advertisements have become the most popular advertisement format. Marketers started using them more often because of their high impression rate to increase CTR and revenue. Using the best practices while implementing interstitials, really do magnetize the customers. Let’s take a closer look.

What are interstitials?

Interstitials are pop-up content that appears before or after loading an expected content page. They usually appear at natural transition points to display advertisements or offers, age queries or information about the use of cookies and other information that are available to promote their services on the website.

Intrusive interstitials are spammy and non-responsive pop-ups that lower the page experience on your website. Therefore, Google considers pages with intrusive interstitials as not mobile-friendly and enforces penalties to websites providing a bad user experience to the users.

Let us check the intrusive interstitials that are penalised by Google:

Interstitials that are penalized by google

A semi-transparent pop-up that blocks the contents of the webpage

Standalone full-screen interstitials forcing the users to scroll up to see the content.

Deceptive content blocking interstitials that block all the content of a website.

So, if your site is riddled with intrusive interstitials that ruin the user experience then your page is liable to be penalised.

5 tips to use interstitials without affecting your rankings

Here are the five best practices that can help to make your interstitials effective without impacting your SEO rankings and boost search traffic.

1. Consider timed pop-ups

If it is necessary to continue to use interstitials then try to redesign them as less intrusive as possible. The primary thing you can change is the timing of every interstitial. Instead of displaying a pop-up every time a user accesses your site, plan it to show up at the scheduled time when the user finishes reading the content. Also, limit the display time of the pop-up such that it automatically closes after three seconds of inactivity. These timed interstitial ads are only as effective as your content.

2. Understand which interstitials are not be used

The term interstitial broadly means banners, pop-ups, modals and overlays that come up on web pages. They are usually categorized into informational and promotional ads. These interstitials can be useful, but some may cause user experience issues and affect how search engines crawl a website, but all interstitials are not intrusive. John Mueller advises that the interstitials triggered by exit intent, that don’t appear over the main content blocking the users to access the information are still allowed and these are possibly not targeted by penalty.

3. Interstitials on the desktop are still permitted

Some webmasters have come up with a solution with regards to the interstitial penalty, which is to retain intrusive pop-ups in the desktop version and hide them on all mobile platforms. There are many website plugins wherein they allow you to display intrusive pop-ups on specific platforms. However, it is better to turn away from using them since it lowers the user experience but if you cannot then look for other alternatives excluding intrusive pop-ups.

4. Use pop-ups on sources other than Google search results

Another option is to put pop-ups in web pages that can be accessed through sources other than Google search results. Note that incorporating one or two interstitials is ok, but filling the site with numerous pop-ups will eventually get your site penalized.

5. Check out for gray area interstitials

Google devalues the sites with too many intrusive advertising formats that are negatively impacting the overall experience of the users. So, you should avoid including ads such as classic interstitial ads, splash ads, new window pop-ups, and other intrusive ads that easily redirect visitors when clicking on them or difficult to close pop-ups. Avoid these grey areas to offer a positive user experience that will boost your rankings in search results.

Conclusion

Google’s objective is to make the websites more accessible and usable especially for mobile users. Therefore, if your popups serve a purpose then they will add value for the user but there are certain types of interstitials that are not tolerated by Google and might negatively impact your SEO. So, understand which interstitials are accepted.

If you are concerned about your website’s SEO or rankings, check out our SEO Strategy and Services. Our leading digital marketing agency is a one-stop solution for your multiple problems. Contact us today to get a quote on our SEO Services.

Durga

About The Author…

Durga has a master’s degree in engineering. Technological advances in digital space interest her a lot. Digital marketing is her forte and she passionately follows latest trends in the digital marketing space. She has written many trending articles on various social media platforms. Her areas of interest include SEO Optimization, structured data, SMM, Keywords research and analysis etc. She is focused, resourceful and dedicated.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or place an order. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or mailing address.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs) To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you) To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs) To process transactions Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature To send periodic emails The email address you provide for order processing, will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart, understand and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders by contacting customer service. Google Analytics We use Google Analytics on our sites for anonymous reporting of site usage and for advertising on the site. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Registration

The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. Logging in using social networking credentials If you log-in to our sites using a Facebook log-in, you are granting permission to Facebook to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian identity. You can also use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. This will also allow us and Facebook to share your, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a Google log-in, you grant permission to Google to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth, sex and location which we will then use to form a Guardian identity. You may use your picture from Google as part of your profile. This also allows us to share your networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Google account settings. If you remove the Guardian from your Google settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a twitter log-in, we receive your avatar (the small picture that appears next to your tweets) and twitter username.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Updating your personal information

We offer a ‘My details’ page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site – simply click on the ‘My details’ link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.