Overlay / modal for product pages - bad or good for SEO?

[Arnaud_Fo]

Hi all,

I am considering using full overlays/modals for an e-commerce site for all our product pages (category/listing pages will be "normal", the product page will come over the listing page as an overlay/modal when you click on the product). Those “product overlays” will also be accessible directly with own URL (if need to be linked to for ex.).

All the literature I find out there treats overlays and modals as “marketing” ones (ads, sign-ups, etc.) and is generally critical to overlays when it comes to SEO, while also saying that an overlay that has to do with good UX should not hurt the SEO of our site.

What do you think? Will all product pages as overlays be considered as good UX by the search engines and therefore not be negatively impacted, SEO speaking? Or should we stay clear of overlays and create “normal” product pages?

Thanks in advance!

Arnaud

NB: The reason we want to create those overlays are for design and UX purposes, and try to increase our conversion rate.

[Arnaud_Fo]

Hi James,

Thanks for your answer and feedback! Very interesting to know that you are using a similar solution yourself.

I agree that Google should be able to recognise them as part to providing product info, or enhancing UX, was simply unsure if that is really the case, or if Google would not regard them as carrying as much SEO value as if they had been "normal" product pages.

Both yours and Tom's response comfort me into trying the product pages as overlays, it will be nice to try something a little bit different and test if we improve on conversion as a consequence.

Regarding overlays/modals as marketing tools hurting SEO, what I was trying to say is that all the literature or cases I could find on the Internet was about overlays and modals as marketing tools - but could not find any relevant case dealing with overlays/modals as UX tools only. Therefore all the literature I could find generally considered overlays/modals as negative for SEO (since the assumption was that they were a marketing ploy). Hope this clarifies my thinking... (for ex., this WBF https://moz.com/blog/popups-seo-whiteboard-friday , or this case https://edgylabs.com/3-rules-seo-friendly-modal-windows/ , or again this case focussing on mobile https://www.keylimetoolbox.com/seo/mobile-site-use-overlays-know-issues-google-organic-search/ ).

Thanks again for taking the time to answer!

[Arnaud_Fo]

Hey Tom,

Thanks for the great answer.

Yes, as you point out and I have also experienced this on other sites, I find it very difficult to rank properly product pages when they regard products which are also available on other sites/competitors (the site in our case now operates within the sport industry). This is also why we tried to think innovatively around the product pages, and focus on UX (with SEO taking the backseat, this time).

I'll try to come up with a smart intern linking strategy in order to make the product overlays easily accessible, yes.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer in such a detailed fashion. In addition, your opinion reinforces what I was thinking myself (which is always great, hehe).

Wishing you a good weekend when it comes!

[TomRayner]

Hey Arnaud

I think is is definitely worth testing for UX and CRO purposes, and I don't think you'll do your pages "harm", from an SEO POV.

If the overlays appear onclick when in the category, and the rest of the category page is readable and crawlabe, it shouldn't cause any problems.

What's great is that you've already considered how you could rank those individual products themselves by giving them their own URL. Those might struggle a bit though if the URLs are not linked to directly from within the product category silo, or elsewhere on the site.

However, I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. Unless you have a specific product type that sells very well and has significant search volume itself, I'd wager that most of your inbound organic traffic would best be served by the category pages anyway (IE, if searching for blue widgets, the category shows all the widgets you have, not just one type). That itself is more likely to match the user intent of those people entering your sites.

I would just ensure that you nail the tech and onsite aspects of those category pages - and the rest should be fine.