Welcome Page - Forbes.com

[SEO5Team]

Would love the group's opinion on the Forbes.com welcome page

(http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml) redirects to the actual home page after 20 seconds.

• SEO implications for this tactic?
• Does it impact the home page rankings? (Positive/Negative)

Any input is appreciated.

[SoleGraphics]

From a UX perspective, having an interstitial like that can turn off many visitors, especially if it's coming off a search result. They're expecting to get to an article about whatever they just searched, and instead they see a thought of the day plus an ad. While it generates revenue for the domain, it can have a longer term effect of diminishing return or regular visitors.

There was a great article here a couple years ago, identifying customer satisfaction as a primary SEO factor. http://moz.com/blog/seo-satisfaction

[Ron_McCabe]

I agree...these pages are totally annoying and I tend to go away when I see these. Are you running something like Crazyegg to see how users are reacting to this?  Have you tried an A/B test to see how users engage with your page with and without this page?  I don't think your issue is SEO it is Conversion. This is purely an opinion without test data.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi,

I think it is really annoying. I had to click on the site button twice and when I got there not only was I not happy to hear the music start blasting from a advertisement video that lasts a minute and a half but also one that I did not choose to play.

Forbes is a great magazine but it's really sometimes not worth taking the time to click the button because it's so annoying.

My two cents.

All the best,

Tom

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[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Don't think they have any SEO issues though of this as still all links will point at the right URL from both social as the rest of the web. They seem to do a weird redirect back to the interstitial page and as they still seem to rank pretty well I doubt they see SEO issues on their side.