Hello,
If I have a “widget” which is basically a page on my own website which can be included as an iFrame in other sites, will links back to my website from this widget count in terms of backlinks?
In other words, a link from such an iframe will count as a link from that other site to my own, or will it count as just an internal link?
Thank you
I’m pretty sure that Google does not count it as a link from the other site at all … neither the link embedded in the iframed page, nor the call from the other site to bring up the iframe.
I agree with Stevie D that the links will most likely not be credited as a link back to your site because the URL within the iFrame is a URL on your site and not a URL on the site with the widget.
Thanks. So what would be the best way to implement a widget from a SEO perspective that would also be easy for users to place on their websites? (I am taking about a widget that will display fresh content from my website)
I’ve done some widgets using javascript, but in that case I assume only the plain html link to my home page would be visible to the search engines since the links and everything else inside the widget is loaded using AJAX.
iframe is just like a JS code, google ignore it
If you want other sites to link back to your site, ask them to put a link to your site on theirs.
If you want them to share news and updates, you can do that with Javascript, <iframes> or a server-side language like PHP … and it’s only the last of those three that gives you bullet-proof accessible and SEO friendly code. If you want to use the cheap’n’cheerful option of a Javascript widget, how about a plain HTML link underneath the widget along the lines of “News supplied courtesy of zoom123.com”?
First things first, Google or any other search engine cannot crawl iframes, so discussing backlinks from it is utter waste of energy.
Thanks you.
Stevie D, Javascript with a plain html link under it is what I used before. Including the content with a server side script would be ideal, but I am afraid that this would limit the number of people that can use the widget on their own websites.
Is what Zorro D said correct? Search Engines do not crawl iFrames at all?
Yes it is true! Search engines can only crawl that which is easily accessible. They can’t decode the content in an iFrame or anything generated by javascript.
Yes, no doubt about that, and many people said search engines don’t like iFrame, it makes the scrawl work more difficult for robot.
The robots can crawl the content in an iFrame if they want, it is just a URL that they need to follow, but the fact is the URL is typically on another site, so since you are just retrieving and framing in content from another site the search engines do not count the content as part of your site. So most likely they do not crawl the iFrame content, but it is not an issue where they are unable to crawl it.