As Google has new “penalties” and ad blockers associated with pop up ads, we want to make sure we know how changes from Google will affect rank. Last month, we looked at intro pops and found that they were not a negative factor. In fact, most test pages with intro pops on them rose in rank. We also found that while intro pops are not a negative factor, we don’t think we can rely on them as a positive factor ninja hack by placing keywords in the text of the popup.
To make sure we cover all the bases, this test series looks at exit pops.
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Transcription Below
We looked at intro pops and what we found there is we felt pretty good that they aren’t harming you and that comes from Google’s recent ad blocking browser and they also had that interstitial penalty they said if your pop up takes up x percent of the screen, they are going to penalize you. We found out that wasn’t true. What we found was that it is possible that having an intro pop could help you with having content on it. It worked two times where the into pop that has the keyword on it moved to number one, one time it didn’t move. Basically, we were looking at, there could be some other factors there, we were not sure if it is necessarily the intro pop but at the minimum, it is not harming. So then we wanted to look at the exit pop which is essentially the same concept but maybe Google is just honing in on intro pops maybe it pops in general but kind of just being thorough, we wanted to do both ways.
In this test, we are setting up an exit pop with just text and no keyword and then we are setting it up with just the target keyword in it. So we are setting it up both ways, one is just the pop itself be a positive or negative factor then can we maybe get a keyword in there and get a little boost. The results on this with the no keyword, to of the tests remain in the number three spot, they didn’t move. One test actually fell to the number four spot. With that kind of results, we are not comfortable with saying that it is a negative factor. There is a lot going on there, I would call that a nothing. It is more likely that one dropped because of being ignored and there was an algoshift. When algoshift happens, test pages moved when they have no other factors in play or impacting them.
But then on the next one where we’ve got the keyword in the exit pop, all three of the tests moved to number one. So if you are scoring at home, essentially that is 6 pop tests with the keyword on it and 5 of the 6 moved it up to number 1 which means that pops are probably an opportunity to get a keyword in there. If you are running a pop and there is an opportunity to put a keyword in there, it might be worth exploring. I do not think it is going to harm you but it actually has the possibility of impacting your rank. It is kind of crazy that it happened many times that it moved up. I do not think it is going to harm you and I do not think you should get rid of them because it hurts rank. It is actually an opportunity. I would experiment with it cause 5 out of 6 is a pretty decent number of something happening.
Dori: That is really good. I can see thing with partial exact match type of stuff. Different uses around that because they are counting it and reading it and giving some sort of credit to it.
The thing you want to be careful of course is that is probably going to your html so that is going to count as keywords or variations within your html. You do not want to go buck wild because that could throw off your page.