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I am using various online services to create pages for our site and would like to use iframes for including pages in each other (for example header and footer blocks). I have a lot of blocks of content that I need to repeat across landing pages so using this mechanism is convenient. Will this cause a problem for search engines visiting our site or for our ranking? Thanks B

b20000
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4 Answers4

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Yes, of course. Try to avoid using iframes as much as possible.

In your case you may use, include or require functions. For example, if you use PHP:

<?php include('header.html') ?>

Update

If you cannot use PHP or alternatives, consider including HTML inside HTML

Community
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seferov
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  • the problem is that we like the visual editor we're using (unbounce.com) and I haven't found any alternative yet. Since the editor doesn't support PHP we don't really have another mechanism of including pages into each other. – b20000 Feb 24 '12 at 11:47
  • again, I can't use PHP on this particular service I'm using. – b20000 Feb 24 '12 at 11:50
  • @b20000 take the update of answer into consideration, if you cannot use PHP – seferov Feb 24 '12 at 11:59
  • @b20000 if you like the way you're doing it now, your question really becomes "Will we be able to live with this" and I'm not sure other people will be able to answer that for you. – Mr Lister Feb 24 '12 at 12:03
  • @MrLister we don't like it but it is the only solution we have right now if we want to continue using the service. – b20000 Feb 24 '12 at 13:33
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It certainly won't help your page in the SEO stakes. It shouldn't penalise you for the iframe per se but you will have a lot of your page content ignored by google. If the iframed content contains your header and footer links, google will ignore them which is a big no no.

Is this practice widespread in existing pages?

If the site runs on a number of html files with iframes and you have no way to use php you might be best served by simply putting the header and footer html in the static html and doing a large scale find and replace whenever you need to change the header or footer.

You are working within the constraints of quite old techniques and competing with people who are able to SEO their sites using modern techniques so if SEO is that important you should sort out the way you build pages or do it the long, hard way.

Sam Parmenter
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Yes, the search engines essentially ignore what's inside them. That's unfortunate especially if you have keyword rich content within the iframe. Additionally the overall page will have less content in the eyes of the search engines. Always try to serve up the content you want searched in the presentation layer. Avoid placing text, links, images etc. in the behavior layer as that too is hidden from search engines.

SEOmoz's blogs are a good place to learn http://www.seomoz.org/blog

CodeCore
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While not optimal iframes can be used to serve up link heavy or SEO irrelevant content keeping the primary page lighter and more search engine structured, in other words, less diluted.

If the portions of your site in the iframe are essential to navigation or search engine spidering they should be avoided at all costs.

It is also important to note that if you do use iframes for content you should block the search engine from spidering those pages by using a robots.txt. Even if your pages are w3 validated they will appear broken to visotrs landing there via a SERP since the page will only include a small portion of the site markup.

chrisrth
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