Almost two years ago I published a post titled ‘How to get Mailchimp Subscriber Popup working in WordPress‘. That has been one of my most visited posts however things have changed and it’s important to know the danger of using a pop-up email marketing subscribe form, whether Mailchimp, Aweber, Constant Contact or any other EDM service, on your website.
What has a pop-up subscribe form got to do with SEO?
Most readers of this blog are concerned with optimizing their websites to rank as well as possible with the various search engines such as Google and Bing. This of course is termed SEO. Adding a pop-up subscribe form can immediately adversely affect your ranking in the various search engines.
It’s been obvious for many years that Google would start to rate popups as being a negative usability factor; Google has generally been very good at considering usability factors when determining PageRank and website ranking scores (such as WCAG). What is odd is that it’s taken so long for Google to specifically mention the adverse usability, and subsequent ranking downgrade, of webpages with pop-ups.
When will Google start to downgrade my website if I use a pop-up?
A couple of months back Google noted that from January 2017 “where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly”. Google are referring to mobile content however there is no doubt that this change will affect all Google search results.
There are many other ways to add subscribe forms to your website. It just is no longer worthwhile using the Mailchimp, or any other, pop-up subscribe form.
ami says
November 9, 2016 at 8:31 pmThank you very much for sharing this news. I understand now why new websites are not using pop ups subscribe forms.
Ms. Frugal Asian Finance says
September 8, 2017 at 1:14 pmI did not know this. I was about to install a popup signup form on my new blog. This is super helpful. Thank you!
Tricia says
August 12, 2018 at 9:22 pmInteresting perspective. I’ve had a popup subscribe box on my website for quite awhile because “that’s what you’re supposed to do.” Going to take it down now and see how it effects my Google ranking.
For what it’s worth, my husband always complained about the pop-up subscription form, but I figured that was just him giving me a hard time. 🙂 Maybe he was onto something after all!
Tricia
The Crusher says
December 15, 2018 at 12:58 amGreat news! I’ve never used popups, as I can’t stand them. I find them rude. :o)