<iframe> Seo No No Or Seo Yay Yay?, Should I or Shouldn't I worry about ifra Options

[Bhavani Jampala]

Hi Jill et all,

Figured yall need a good question to start the morning off on a good note! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I'm designing a new site. I want to add the same <iframe> (width of 350 & height of 450)to all my pages.

Each page will have 2-3 screenfuls of optimized content. So this is how my page will look to the crawler.

1st screen - 2-3 lines of optimized content with a link. This is followed by a one line iframe code. To the human visitor this code will show up on the lower 2/3rds of the first screen.

2nd & 3rd screens - optimized text content.

So here's my $64,000 question:

I'm trying to optimize these pages the best I can. I really don't care whether the crawlers read the <iframe> or not since I think there is sufficient content before and after the 1 line <iframe> code.

Considering this...will the addition of the <iframe> code on my pages positively or negatively effect its ranking?

Everyone says the top half of the page is more imp. than the bottom half for crawlers. So even though it's only one line, would it be better for optimization to move the <iframe> code lower down the page? Or do you think its not such a big deal as its only a single line of code.

Are crawlers (especially googlebot) known to stop crawling or doing any other weird things on coming across an <iframe> code?

Any help is appreciated! :-)

Thanks for reading,
Bhavani

[Limin]

Bhavani

sorry, but I can't help you. I am, however, very interested in the answer to your question. As I have also wondered about the effect of the IFRAME tag on search engines.

So, is there anyone out there with a good answer?

[qwerty]

Sorry Bhavani. I didn't notice your post the first time around.

I'm not sure whether the iframe will hurt your rankings. I doubt it, but I don't have any evidence on that, so I can't give you a definitive answer. But I think that if you want the iframe positioned in a certain place, but you don't want the spider to see it right away, you could put the information before and after the frame into divs that you could position.

That way, the code for the iframe could be put at the end of your code, even though it would appear in the spot on the page you've chosen.

Hopefully, someone with more experience with iframes than I have will weigh in on the issue and tell you that what I'm suggesting is completely unnecessary (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Bill Slawski]

There really isn't much difference between frames and iframes. An iframe is a web page that is stuck within another webpage - as opposed to a frame page, which is two or more pages side by side on the same screen. Both are just alternative ways of displaying information from more than one page at the same time.

If your concern is mostly with optimizing the primary page regardless of the content of the page that appears in the iframe, then you should just optimize as if it were a page without an iframe. If you create a page with well formed html/CSS/javascript, etc., and you don't do anything to incur the wraith of a search engine, then you should be fine.

[awall19]

I do not think most search engines even look at the content of an Iframe since these are frequently used to deliver external content. I did a search for a Noam Chomsky book I had an ad for on a site that had one in an Iframe. Though google has cached the page since that item was posted, it did not find the words in that document in the page.

I doubt Iframes have any significant effect on any major search engine. The only spot where you could come into trouble is if you started adding so many random things to a page that the spirders could not quickly follow the links in and understand the goal of the page.

As stated earlier I think good code will cause nill effect by an Iframe on a search engine.

[XtendScott]

If the idea is to just make a portion of the page scrollable, and you would like it to be a portion of the page to be indexed, I would use a scrolling Div.

<div id="scroll" style="position:absolute; left:210; top:5; width:600; height:650; z-index:5; overflow: auto">

</div>

This is not for a complete html page but I guess a Server Side Include would work within the Div(I haven't done that yet).

Scott

[Bhavani Jampala]

Hey,

Looks like SEO works even on Forums! (i.e bumping up my post helped!) (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Thanks to Qwerty, bragadocchio, awall19 & XtendScott for your help in clarifying this question.

I took in all your suggestions and decided to go with two <iframe> per page since everyone agreed that it most likely won't cause any harm. (I'll try using the divs suggestion by Querty in my next domain which I'll be starting in a few days)

Thanks again guys,
Bhavani

[Denis A. Baldwin]

Hey,

Looks like SEO works even on Forums! (i.e bumping up my post helped!) (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Thanks to Qwerty, bragadocchio, awall19 & XtendScott for your help in clarifying this question.

I took in all your suggestions and decided to go with two <iframe> per page since everyone agreed that it most likely won't cause any harm. (I'll try using the divs suggestion by Querty in my next domain which I'll be starting in a few days)

Thanks again guys,
Bhavani

Does this still apply when it comes to iFrames?

I'm using them to display RSS content on one of my sites (to help our SEO) and I'm hearing conflicting information on whether googlebot (and other search engines) can read them.

Thanks for any feedback on this!

Denis

[qwerty]

Welcome, Denis.

You found one old thread to resuscitate. I haven't done the iFrame thing in a long time, but I think the content of the frame will be indexed as appearing on its own page (the one that's called to bring the iFrame onto another page).

If your intention is to display RSS content, that's not likely to help your rankings whether the engines associate the content with the page it appears on or the page it's coming from. We're talking about content that's likely to be identical to content on many other pages across the web.

[train99]

I use Iframes on my website to hold my opt in box. This allows people to subscribe without being directed away from the page they are on. The iframe line is encoded with java so search engines ignore it.

I also use Iframes without the java coding. These are indexed by google as a seperate page.

Based on my tests of having RSS feeds in my pages, the only benefit is to the person who created the feed. This confirms Bob's comments.

A second issue - if pages are made up of mostly RSS generated content, they are almost certainly depreciated by search engines. I don't know if this is a duplicate content filter, or something else, but there does seem to be something going on here.

I've been redesigning my train website. I am considering putting RSS feeds with links to trains on eBay under the articles so visitors can get pricing information and I can get some affiliate commissions. Each page will have a 200-500 word article about a specific train, and then the eBay listings.

I built a few test pages and will test having the RSS feeds served by javascript so they are invisible to search engines and by parsing them with PHP so they are visible to spiders. This will give me information about whether the search engines are docking the page due to the RSS feed.

A second consideration is the outbound link. Right now a search on google for lionel 810 brings up two eBay listings then two pages on my site. From looking at other terms this is repeated for all pages except my pages with lots of links from outside sites. (None of these are competitive terms, but over hundreds of pages I do get some traffic.) I don't know at this point the effect of having links to eBay in my pages will have on the results.

I wouldn't use an iframe to display them.

[piskie]

Just as in Frames, Iframes have a No Frames function.
Instead of the NOFRAMES Tag, just paste the Text Copy Content from your Iframe file ibetween the iframes tags and put a noindex robots meta into the Iframe File to prevent duplication penalties.

[Jill]

Just as in Frames, Iframes have a No Frames function.

Ok, I'm confused.

The noframes function with frames is to place the content you WANT indexed into an easily indexable area. But what you're saying:

Instead of the NOFRAMES Tag, just paste the Text Copy Content from your Iframe file ibetween the iframes tags and put a noindex robots meta into the Iframe File to prevent duplication penalties.

Sounds the opposite. That will make the content NOT get indexed.

Or am I reading this incorrectly?

[piskie]

Between the Iframe tag, nothing will display unles the browser does not support frames. If we therefore put the text copy that is contained in the Iframe (include) file between the Iframe tag, it is exactly the same as the NOFRAMES tag content in traditional frames.

See Here
Iframes Code
Put your Copy Text where the "Your user agent.... " Statement is.

You can also use appropriate Heading Tags etc

This pasted content will not be displayed on a frames supporting browser, but will be retrieved by a Bot. However, the Bot will also follow the link to the Iframe (include) file. This produces duplication and the likelyhood of Dupe Penalty of some sort. However if you make the Iframe (include) File NOINDEX, that will be avoided. On the few occassions that I have been forced to use Iframes, I put ALL the Iframe (include) files into one directory and protected the directory using robots.txt

[torka]

This produces duplication and the likelyhood of Dupe Penalty of some sort.

Except that there's no duplicate content penalty. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

There's a filter, but that's not the same thing as a penalty...

--Torka (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[piskie]

The duplication penalty is likely to end up with all but one of the Duplicates being excluded (I count exclusion as a penalty). If that leaves the Iframe include file as the only Indexed File, then that is not ideal as it could end up displaying as an orphaned frame page file in the SERPS. This orphaned file with no structure or navigation should NOT be allowed to apear in the SERPS and it can so easily be avoided.