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It seems likely that the interstitial is at least contributing to this pattern given the correlation during your test and given the fact that Google has specifically noted that they view interstitial pop-ups (at least certain implementations) as detrimental to the user experience. It is also possible that it isn't the interstitial itself that is raising a red flag as a ranking signal, but some other related issue (for instance, if the interstitial causes a significant page load delay, higher bounce rate, or if there is some rendering issue caused by the implementation of the pop-up). As you note, if the interstitial is the issue, I would have expected it to affect mobile primarily and desktop less so - so the fact that the result is the opposite is surprising and may indicate a different cause for the traffic dips. I assume that you have compared this data not just WoW but YoY and are certain that the pattern isn't seasonal. We do know, however, that Google is starting to move in the direction of mobile first in how they rank sites, making the mobile index and experience their primary source for rankings of both mobile and desktop versions. In any case I would recommend testing a version of your pop-up which is not of a type that Google would consider "intrusive" (see this post for more detail: http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-rolling-mobile-intrusive-interstitials-penalty-yesterday-267408) or adding a trigger to it (so for instance, don't show the popup immediately but only if the user scrolls a certain percentage of the page, or remains on the page for a set period of time).

Hello! I would suspect the homepage drop was unrelated to the login page changes. As Michael says, it was probably just a coincidence!

Something could have been "created" 100 years ago, but only "Published" for the first time last month. I think datePublished is what you should use for articles, blog posts, etc... dateModified is also important for when you update the page to show it's fresh and needs to be re crawled and rendered. I wouldn't show any of them on the front end, though some people do prefer to see the Date Last Modified or Original Publish Date somewhere so they know if it's still relevant. It depends on the type of content you're publishing and if the topic moves quickly. If you want to provide the markup to search engines without showing it on the front end use JSON-LD.

Hey there, Those links are absolutely considered as back links by Google and are able to accumulate PR / link juice, as long as they are FOLLOW. It doesn't make a difference if they're indexed or not. Hope it helps. Cheers, Martin

My Respect very good answer

Hi Martin, thanks for sharing the article and for the tips on what to check! I need that article right now to help me calm down

Possibly. Internal links and their anchor text can certainly give Google a priority on what the page is about, and which preferred landing page you want to rank. However, there can be more to it as well. How much does the sub-page 'talk' about the keyword? What is its content like? Do you have any canonical issues? How about the homepage, how much content is on there about the keyword. You could be cannibalising efforts by having a number of pages all talking about the same thing. Content is quite often just as 'confusing' to Google as the internal links.

I think it is not necessary to redirect the duplicate domain, just a faster way 2 show that the content is on the original only. Depending on the topic and competitors, changing the title can make a huge difference and that pretty quickly...

I used to write title tags that contained the proper keywords.  I used to be a keyword stuffer. More recently, I have started trying to write title tags with my main keyword on the left but the remainder of the title tag has been written to present a value proposition, share something interesting or simply elicit the click.   These types of title tags will not blast your page to the top of the SERPs, but I believe that if you do a good job, your page will slowly and steadily climb the SERPs to a position where it is competitive. I also try to make the description as interesting and clickable as possible.  I think that google places more importance on how visitors react with your listing in the SERPs and if you can deliver what will hold them if they click into your website.

Thanks, Kristen!

Great, glad to hear it's working now!

Yes. It got indexed and started showing a different page title too. I am confused to figure out what causing this error. If it's not keyword cannibalization, then I must look into internal linking, which is way bigger than this. So just wanna confirm the chances of keyword cannibalization in our case. Any more steps to ignore keyword cannibalization?

Hi, Thanks all for the answers. All pages got indexed but meta descriptions or title tags are not yet reflecting in search results. I'll give some more time. Coz can't do anything more

Hey I know this is a few months old, but definitely agree with Martin above. It is not 100% necessary to have your brand name in the Meta Title of every single page on your website, but is good to have in there if it fits within the title's 60-70 characters. One of the best strategies with on-site SEO is to have a specific keyword phrase you would like the page to rank for in mind when creating or editing it. The Meta Title is very influential in rankings and it is definitely important to keep that in mind when writing them for your pages. There are some more on-site search engine optimization techniques and tips at https://seo-kansas-city.com/2017/04/18/what-are-the-best-on-site-seo-techniques/, and also at http://backlinko.com/on-page-seo. Hope these resources help and best of success!