Client wants to distribute web content to dealers - iFrame?
-
I have a client who sells a product through a network of nationwide dealers. He wants to provide update-able content to these dealers so they can create sections on their websites dedicated to the product. For ex., www.dealer.com/product_XYZ. The client is thinking he'd like to provide an iframe solution to the dealers, so he can independently update the content that appears on their sites.
I know iFrames are old, but are there any SEO concerns I should know about? Another option is to distribute content via HTML that has a rel=canonical command as part of the code, but then he loses the ability to centrally update all the distributed content.
Are there other solutions he should consider?
Thanks --
-
Hi Keith,
I think it really depends how much you want to invest in technology and how much controll you have over the dealer websites.
Wish I had a better answer for you or more data to go on. There's been a test or two over the years that Google follows links through iFrames, but so little research has been done in this area it's almost impossible to give solid advice.
Typically SEOs avoid any sort of iframe because it's really not the best way to code content on your own site, but this seems to be a different situation. If controlling the content is important, in my opinion I don't see a huge problem using frames, but it's something you'd want to keep your eye on. My gut tells me everything should be fine, but if Google suddenly sees 100's of new frames all pointing to the same content, this might start to look a little strange.
I agree that the cross domain rel=canonical would be a nightmare in regards to keeping things consistent, and likely hard to implement.
Another option would be to use something like XML feeds, but my guess is this might be more technical investment than is warranted.
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
-
Duplicate content problem
Hi, i work in joomla and my site is www.in2town.co.uk I have been looking at moz tools and it is showing i have over 600 pages of duplicate content. The problem is shown below and i am not sure how to solve this, any help would be great, | Benidorm News http://www.in2town.co.uk/benidorm-news/Page-2 50 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-102 50 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-103 50 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-104 9 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-106 28 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-11 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-112 50 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-114 45 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-115 50 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-116 50 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-12 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-120 50 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-123 50 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-13 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-130 50 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-131 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-132 31 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-140 4 18 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-141 50 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-21 10 18 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-22 50 18 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-23 50 18 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-26 50 18 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-271 50 18 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-274 50 18 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-277 50 21 2 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-28 50 21 2 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-29 50 18 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-310 50 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-341 21 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-342 4 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-343 50 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-345 1 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-346 50 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-348 50 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-349 50 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-350 50 16 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-351 50 19 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/In2town/Page-82 24 1 0 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town 50 20 1 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-10 50 23 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-100 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-101 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-105 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-107 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-108 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-109 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-110 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-111 50 22 3 In2town http://www.in2town.co.uk/blog/in2town/Page-113 |
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Huge number of indexed pages with no content
Hi, We have accidentally had Google indexed lots os our pages with no useful content at all on them. The site in question is a directory site, where we have tags and we have cities. Some cities have suppliers for almost all the tags, but there are lots of cities, where we have suppliers for only a handful of tags. The problem occured, when we created a page for each cities, where we list the tags as links. Unfortunately, our programmer listed all the tags, so not only the ones, where we have businesses, offering their services, but all of them! We have 3,142 cities and 542 tags. I guess, that you can imagine the problem this caused! Now I know, that Google might simply ignore these empty pages and not crawl them again, but when I check a city (city site:domain) with only 40 providers, I still have 1,050 pages indexed. (Yes, we have some issues between the 550 and the 1050 as well, but first things first:)) These pages might not be crawled again, but will be clicked, and bounces and the whole user experience in itself will be terrible. My idea is, that I might use meta noindex for all of these empty pages and perhaps also have a 301 redirect from all the empty category pages, directly to the main page of the given city. Can this work the way I imagine? Any better solution to cut this really bad nightmare short? Thank you in advance. Andras
Technical SEO | | Dilbak0 -
Pages with content defined by querystring
I have a page that show traveltips: http://www.spies.dk/spanien/alcudia/rejsemalstips-liste This page shows all traveltips for Alcudia. Each traveltip also has its own url: http://www.spies.dk/spanien/alcudia/rejsemalstips?TravelTipsId=19767 ( 2 weeks ago i noticed the url http://www.spies.dk/spanien/alcudia/rejsemalstips show up in google webmaster tools as a 404 page, along with 100 of others urls to the subpage /rejsemalstips WITHOUT a querystring. With no querystring there is no content on the page and it goes 404. I need my technicians to redirect that page so it shows the list, but in the meantime i would like to block it in robots.txt But how do i block a page if it is called without a querystring?
Technical SEO | | alsvik0 -
Help With Joomla Duplicate Content
Need another set of eyes on my site from someone with Joomla experience. I'm running Joomla 2.5 (latest version) and SEOmoz is giving my duplicate content errors on a lot of my pages. I checked my sitemap, I checked my menus, and I checked my links, and I can't figure out how SEOmoz is finding the alternate paths to my content. Home page is: http://www.vipfishingcharters.com/ There's only one menu at the top. Take the first link "Dania Beach" under fishing charters for example. This generates the SEF url: http://www.vipfishingcharters.com/fishing-charters/broward-county/dania-beach-fishing-charters-and-fishing-boats.html Somehow SEOmoz (and presumably all other robots) are finding duplicate content at: http://www.vipfishingcharters.com/broward-county/dania-beach-fishing-charters-and-fishing-boats.html SEOmoz says the referrer is the homepage/root. The first URL is constructed using the menu aliases. The second one is constructed using the Joomla category and article alias. Where is it getting this and how can I stop it? <colgroup><col width="601"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | NoahC0 -
Duplicate Content Errors
Ok, old fat client developer new at SEO so I apologize if this is obvious. I have 4 errors in one of my campaigns. two are duplicate content and two are duplicate title. Here is the duplicate title error Rare Currency And Old Paper Money Values and Information.
Technical SEO | | Banknotes
http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/ Rare Currency And Old Paper Money Values and Information.
http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/Default.aspx So, my question is... What do I need to do to make this right? They are the same page. in my page load for default.aspx I have this: this.Title = "Rare Currency And Old Paper Money Values and Information."; And it occurs only once...0 -
Semantic Web and Schema
Is anyone from SEOmoz planning on writing anything about the Semantic Web and Schema and how they see it impacting SEO?
Technical SEO | | EricVallee340 -
Duplicate Content and Canonical use
We have a pagination issue, which the developers seem reluctant (or incapable) to fix whereby we have 3 of the same page (slightly differing URLs) coming up in different pages in the archived article index. The indexing convention was very poorly thought up by the developers and has left us with the same article on, for example, page 1, 2 and 3 of the article index, hence the duplications. Is this a clear cut case of using a canonical tag? Quite concerned this is going to have a negative impact on ranking, of course. Cheers Martin
Technical SEO | | Martin_S0 -
Duplicate content and tags
Hi, I have a blog on posterous that I'm trying to rank. SEOMoz tells me that I have duplicate content pretty much everywhere (4 articles written, 6 errors at the last crawl). The problem is that I tag my posts, and apparently SEOMoz thinks that it's duplicate content only because I don't have so many posts, so pages end up being very very similar. What can I do in these situations ?
Technical SEO | | ngw0