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My company's website runs through a PyroCMS install that was very expensive to build, but downright impossible to maintain. Also, it was built on a platform that did not use tags so the SEO of our blog is very poor.

I have built a replica of the blog on Wordpress and will be iframe-ing it into the Pyro install on the blog page. They are both hosted on the same server and the wordpress install is within the Pyro install.

My question is this: What do I need to do in order to enhance the SEO with the iFrame? Is there a better way to do this that I didn't think of? Basically, there are some good articles being written andI'd like the niche-ness of the topics to get move up on page rank.

Thoughts? Thanks.

~joe

Joe Fedorowicz
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  • Sounds like a really painful job. While a crawler may read an iframe, it probably won't pass the pagerank across, especially not backwards (eg from iframe to parent). Perhaps set up a dedicated subdomain for the blog, and link to the main site from there. Won't do anything for PR for the main site, but at least the WP side of things will be set up properly (not hacked together). You should also remind your company that sometimes you have to call it quits on a system that doesn't work. The original cost is irrelevant if it's not bringing value to the company. – Christian Nov 28 '12 at 21:58
  • Or, if at all possible, it would be better for the Wordpress install to be sitting in a subfolder, eg `/blog/`. If you can do that, the Pagerank from WP will apply to the main domain. Don't know enough about pyro to tell if this is possible or not. – Christian Nov 28 '12 at 22:02

3 Answers3

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It seems like you've got quite a bit on your plate with this website.

I recently (less then a month ago) signed up a client who's site is built on an equally difficult and very ancient platform. What we did is set up the blog as a page extension www.url.com/blog. The blog was on the WordPress platform and had all of our plugins added in as well (I can send you to a list of these if you would like). Doing it this way has multiple benefits of which the main are:

  1. The blogs PR values is associated to the main index's authority.
  2. Your index gets credit for all of the content being written on the blog.

The clients site I was telling you about, is already on page 2 for a few of their keywords (even though the site itself is no good). Obviously I would like to state that it isn't due to the blog that they are ranking, but it is a key feature as Google wants to see your site growing in pages with relevant, unique, shareable content.

Don't forget about social media and backlinks! Let me know if you have any other questions and please stay away from iFrames for many, many reasons...

Andrei Buiciuc
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Using iFrames will hinder your SEO efforts. Same goes for duplicate content (though dupe content may not apply in this case; I'd need more info). If I were you, I would not pursue this strategy.

vtacreative
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I've seen iframed content get indexed as if it was really part of the page it was in, but yuor creating a massive battle for yourself.

One of the biggest issues of using iframes is that every page of your blog will look like it is on the same URL. Have a go. Move around the blog and check the address bar. No change.

This means people cannot bookmark, link to or return to a specific page on your blog. A really bad user experience as well as crippling your ability to acquire natural links to your blog pages.

There are further issues but that should be enough to mean do not use an iframe for a blog.

Answer: to enhance SEO for the iframe, don't use it.

Why do you feel you need an iframe in the first place. Is it to wrap the websites design around the blog. If that's the case, update the blogs template so it naturally looks like the rest of your website.

If it's because you don't like the domain the blog is on. Move it.

Tony McCreath
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