IFrames and Thin Content Worries
-
Hi everyone,
I've read a lot about the impact of iFrames on SEO lately -- articles like http://www.visibilitymagazine.com/how-do-iframes-affect-your-seo/ for example.
I understand that iFrames don't cause duplicate content or cloaked content issues, but what about thin content concerns?
Here's my scenario:
Our partner marketing team would like to use an iframe to pull content detailing how Partner A and my company collaborate from a portal the partners have access to. This would allow the partners to help manage their presence on our site directly.
The end result would be that Partner A's portal content would be added to Partner A's page on our website via an iFrame. This would happen about across at least 100 URLs.
Currently we have traditional partner pages, with unique HTML content. There's a little standalone value for queries involving the bigger partners' names + use case terms, but only in less than 10% of cases. So I'm concerned about those pages, but I'm more worried about the domain overall.
My main concern is that in the eyes of Google I'd be stripping a lot of content off the domain all at once, and then replacing it with these shell pages containing nothing (in terms of SEO) but meta, a headline, navigation links, and an iFrame.
If that's the case, would Google view those URLs as having thin content? And could that potentially impact the whole domain negatively? Or would Google understand that the page doesn't have content because of the iFrames and give us a pass?
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Andrew
-
Hi Andrew,
Re. your comment:
My main concern is that in the eyes of Google I'd be stripping a lot of content off the domain all at once, and then replacing it with these shell pages containing nothing (in terms of SEO) but meta, a headline, navigation links, and an iFrame.
... you are right to be concerned about this. It is going to look, as you say, like a very thin page with no value-add for anyone visiting, or Google.
If the pages served no real purpose to Google, you could always robots them out, but what is being suggested isn't a particularly good idea if you are still wanting them to rank in the SERPs.
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Delay release of content or fix after release
I am in the midst of moving my site to a new platform. As part of that I am reviewing each and every article for SEO - titles, URLs, content, formatting/structure, etc, etc. I have about 200 articles to move across and my eventual plan is to look at each article and update for these factors. I have all the old content moved across to the new server as-is (the old server is still the one to which my domain's DNS records point). At a high level I have two choice: Point DNS to the new server, which will expose the same content (which isn't particularly SEO-friendly) and then work through each article, fixing the various elements to make them more user friendly. Go through each article, fixing content, structure, etc and THEN update DNS to point to the new server. Obviously the second option adds time before I can switch across. I'd estimate it will take me a few weeks to get through the articles. Option 1 allows me to switch pretty soon and then start going through the articles and updating them. An important point here is the new articles already have new (SEO-friendly) URLs and titles on the new server. I have 301 redirections in place pointing from the old to new URLs. So, it's "only" the content of each article that will be changing on the new server, rather than the URLs, etc. So, I'd be interested in any suggestions on the best approach - move across to the new server now and then fix content or wait till all the content is done and then switch to the new server. Thanks. Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkWill0 -
I'm updating content that is out of date. What is the best way to handle if I want to keep old content as well?
So here is the situation. I'm working on a site that offers "Best Of" Top 10 list type content. They have a list that ranks very well but is out of date. They'd like to create a new list for 2014, but have the old list exist. Ideally the new list would replace the old list in search results. Here's what I'm thinking, but let me know if you think theres a better way to handle this: Put a "View New List" banner on the old page Make sure all internal links point to the new page Rel=canonical tag on the old list pointing to the new list Does this seem like a reasonable way to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jim_shook0 -
Keep older blog content indexed or no?
Our really old blog content still sees traffic, but engagement metrics aren't the best (little time on site), and as a result, traffic has gradually started to decrease. Should we de-index it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Duplicate page content query
Hi forum, For some reason I have recently received a large increase in my Duplicate Page Content issues. Currently it says I have over 7,000 duplicate page content errors! For example it says: Sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Content http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/gowns/news.html http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/news.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sterls
http://dikelli.com.au/gallery/dikelli/gowns/gowns/sale_gowns.html However there are no physical links to any of these page on my site and even when I look at my FTP files (I am using Dreamweaver) these directories and files do not exist. Can anyone please tell me why the SEOMOZ crawl is coming up with these errors and how to solve them?0 -
Making AJAX called content indexable
Hi, I've read a bit up on making AJAX called content indexable and there seems to be a number of options available, and the recommended methods seems to chaneg with time. My situation is this: On a product pages I have a list of reviews - of which I show the latest 10 reviews. The rest of the reviews are in a paginated format where if the user clicks a "next" button, the next set loads in the same page via AJAX. No ideally I would like all this content indexable as we have hundreds of reviews per product - but at the moment on the latest 10 reviews are indexed. So what is the best / simplest way of getting google to index all these reviews and associate them with this product page? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770 -
Category Content Duplication
Does indexing category archive page for a blog cause duplications? http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success After reading this article I am unsure.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Cross-Domain Canonical and duplicate content
Hi Mozfans! I'm working on seo for one of my new clients and it's a job site (i call the site: Site A).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
The thing is that the client has about 3 sites with the same Jobs on it. I'm pointing a duplicate content problem, only the thing is the jobs on the other sites must stay there. So the client doesn't want to remove them. There is a other (non ranking) reason why. Can i solve the duplicate content problem with a cross-domain canonical?
The client wants to rank well with the site i'm working on (Site A). Thanks! Rand did a whiteboard friday about Cross-Domain Canonical
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday0 -
Duplicate page content
Hi. I am getting error of having duplicate content on my website and pages its showing there are: www.mysitename.com www.mysitename.com/index.html As my best knowledge it only one page, I know this can be solved with some conical tag used in header, but do not know how. Can anyone please tell me about that code or any other way to get this solved. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinetraffic0