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Hypothetical Situation: I have a small obscure website called "miniatureBoltsInCarburetors.com" which provides content about the miniature bolts which hold a carburetor together as well as some general related automotive information. My site also has a single page which allows someone to find the missing bolt in their carburetor, and while no one will access this page directly from my website, one billion other popular automotive sites have embedded this single page in their website using an iframe, yet not included a link back to my site.

I recognize that this question is related to SEO which is considered off topic, however, all of the many SEO related forums discuss the marketing steps one could take, and not the programming steps or strategies, and hope others will allow this question to be answered here.

I wish my site "miniatureBoltsInCarburetors.com" to be ranked high for general automotive searches. What could I do to allow the 3rd party sites which include an iframe back to my site to improve my ranking? Could using JavaScript in the iframe to create a link on the parent page provide any value? What about when my server renders the page, use PHP to get the referring URL from $_SERVER, and include it in the content?

user1032531
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4 Answers4

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I am providing a solution here. Not sure if this is what you want though.

In your page which is used by other websites in iframe you can put below Javascript. This javascript checks if the webpage is opened inside an iframe or directly in browser.

So using this check when you see it is opened in an iframe. On click on something navigate to your website.

// This works in all browsers

function inIframe () {
    try {
        return window.self !== window.top;
    } catch () {
        return true;
    }
}

Also for your reference you can check the below URL. How to prevent my site page to be loaded via 3rd party site frame of iFrame

Hope it helps.

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A Paul
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  • This would indicate whether my site is being viewed via an iframe, but what is done to improve the situation based on that knowledge? – user1032531 Feb 05 '14 at 19:51
  • So, my point is, once you understand the page is opened in an iframe, once user click to find a missing bot redirect them to your page then let them search. This will increase your traffic. – A Paul Feb 06 '14 at 01:15
  • I don't want to redirect them. They are including an iframe to my site because it makes their site better address the needs to their users, and I am okay with that. I just want to get a little credit in Google's eyes that I provide content relative to their business. – user1032531 Feb 06 '14 at 02:00
  • I understand your point. But iframes are not guaranteed crawled as part of the website where your iframe exists. If you want to get good hits the only way is to open your application and that can happen if you redirect them to your website. You can probably do another thing before doing this, just add google analytics in your page which open in the iframe. by this you will understand the hit ratio to your website and decide if you want to navigate to your website. – A Paul Feb 06 '14 at 03:10
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Iframes are seen seperate pages by Google. Your approach may end up being penalized due to being sourced from untrusted site. According to Google Webmaster Support

Frames can cause problems for search engines because they don't correspond to the conceptual model of the web. Google tries to associate framed content with the page containing the frames, but we don't guarantee that we will.

One of the best approaches to rank higher for a specific keyword is, make multiple related sites. In your case a 3-4 paged site about carburetors, bolts, other things your primary site contain would do it. These mini sites will be more intense about the subject due to less page count. Of course they should contain unique articles on each page. Then link from mini websites to primary websites and you can see the dramatic change.

In fact, the thing you are trying to do was a tactic to rank competitors down worked occasionally a few years ago. Now, it is still a risk.

Kuzgun
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  • I agree that content on the iframe may not (lately, it seems more open to debate) contribute to the ranking of the parent page. That is not my intent, however, and I am trying to see what could be done to improve the ranking of my site which is just the source of the iframes. – user1032531 Feb 05 '14 at 19:46
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I see. You don't want to mess up the page for your own site, but you want to do something with all the uncredited embeddings.

The solution is fairly simple:

  1. Create a copy of the page.
  2. Switch your site to use the copy.
  3. Amend the version that countless other sites are embedding, so that there is a small link back to you. Or, add an iframe blocker script that will load your site.

If the page is active (ie user interacts with it to find the missing bolt) you could include a sales message with the response encouraging the user to visit your site.

I think that your goal is getting your link onto these other sites long enough to get indexed by Google before it is noticed by the people doing the embedding, so it's a bit of a balancing act.

I see conflicting advice about how Google indexes iframes. You should use a PageRank checker to see if the existing iframe page url has PageRank, and compare it to the page that you embed it on.

Paul Gregory
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  • Thanks Paul, I do think you understand my question. The site is dynamic, so the direct image way won't work, but maybe the other. Let me give it a bit of thought. – user1032531 Feb 06 '14 at 02:02
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I dont Think you need to worry ,.

Google bot does seem to crawl through Iframes ,but the Web-Page Containing that Iframe is not Credited for that Content ..
In other Words,, Page-Ranking of that particular Web-Page do not Change due to Contents from Iframe .

is IFrame crawled by Google?
Do robots crawl iframes?

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spetzz
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  • My objective is not to improve the ranking of the parent page containing the iframe, but to improve the ranking of the domain which sources the content for the iframe. – user1032531 Feb 05 '14 at 19:48