idealmike
Level X3
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I just got done talking to my friend about using iframes on his site and when too many is too many and how you should correctly use them. He had some questions about using iframes on his site which I tried to answer in simple basic terms he'd be able to understand. Here I have created a small guide on how to correctly use iframes on your site and how they can effect your SEO. It's just one of those things we all come across and wonder from time to time so hopefully this will prove to be useful to you!
Iframes - What's an iframe?
Despite what the name of an iframe might make you think, iframes aren't the latest Apple gadget! They are a website element you use on your website that are as old as websites themselves. But the real question to ask is; what do iframes have to do with SEO and can using them negatively effect your SEO score? So just in case you was ever wondering about them, we'll break them down in this FAQ and explain some do's and don't when it comes to using them. You may have clicked on a hyperlink on some website which seemed to open another webpage within that webpage without actually leaving that page. To put it in simple laymans terms, it's a page that's been framed within a page. Iframe is actually an abbreviation for "Inline Frame". Iframes are an HTML syntax that lets you embed content from another site on your own site without having to send that user to that other site. It's a very simple concept but when it comes to SEO it raises some questions about it's usage on your site. Let's look at them each below.
Does Using Iframes Create Duplicate Content on Your Site?
In short no. That's because those iframes are simply referencing the content and not duplicating it. When a search engine crawls your page and sees the iframe tag it will know where the original source of that content is from that iframe tag. Search engine robots are clever enough to know that the content is being hosted in an iframe and not placed on your site and will not count it as duplicated content.
Is it Considered "Cloaking" to Use an Iframe?
"Cloaking" is a black hat SEO method which shows different content to Search Engines than you show to your actual websites visitors/readers. Obviously doing that is a bad idea and give you a first class ticket to penaltyville. But as said, Search Engines are able to recognize the source of that iframe is not your content because of the iframe tag.
How Can Iframes Affect Your SEO?
We've shown how using iframes shouldn't have a negative effect on your SEO but are there any reasons when using iframes will positively effect your SEO? In a nutshell, not really no. Search Engines can see that the content within them is from another place so your page wont receive any SEO benefit from them. So they don't really help or hinder your SERP ranking. It's like that first love you had in school, the relationship never existed apart from in your mind only. Now if you was using iframes on your site only on each page and those pages never had any other unique content on them, that wouldn't really do you any favours in the long run and would probably affect your ranking.
When To Use and Not Use Iframes?
Considering how iframes can't have either a positive or a negative effect on your SERP ranking, when is a good time to use them and or not use them? You only really want to use an iframe when you want to show useful, relevant content from another source without it being counted as duplicated content. As an example of what I mean is, you could put in iframe on your site to embed a YouTube video or a map or even show a PDF file. You could use an iframe in a submission form too but iframes make it a little more tricker to track your conversions using Analytics. You wouldn't want to put too many iframes on your site in one page either. Especially if they wasn't surrounded by tons of unique content. Only use them when absolutely necessary.
So When Not to Use Iframes?
You don't really want to put an iframe on a page that you want to rank high for such as your homepage or some other important page. You wont rank for the content on that page in that iframe in any way so they wont help your SERP ranking one iota. You wouldn't want to use just iframes on your site either. Don't put them on pages with no other content on them. That's just bad practice.
How to Correctly Add an Iframe?
Iframes are incredibly simple to add to your website, all you need to do is insert the iframe tag and then put the URL of the page you want to show in that iframe. Basic iframe code: which is very basic iframe code but you can get advanced as well and change the width and height or add a scroll bar to it too. Obviously, I'm not going to go into great detail about that here as you can find that online in much more detail on other sites. This was just a quick overview with some popular or frequently asked questions about using iframes on your site and how they can affect your SEO. I hope you find it useful!
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