Help needed with Widgets and Iframe for SEO
- SEO |
We have recently launched some energy and finance related widgets for my website and the uptake has been very positive.
The problem is the widgets are in an iFrame. Now being a bit of a newbie to the technical side and have only just found out that the SEO benefit of iFrames is zero - which is not what i'm after.
So what i'm looking to do is to re-write the widget and make it SEO friendly.
I tried one change which failed (listed below) and i'm about to try something else (also listed below.)
What i'm hoping is that someone can advise on if there is a better way we haven't thought of - or if you think the path we're going down is the right one.
What we can't do is have a line of text outside the widgets as this is not something our users are looking to do.
1) Our first change was to try and make the widget part of people's pages and not an iFrame. To do this we used document.write, which succeeded and made the widget part of people's pages, but...
The problem with this strategy is that we were doing document.write and as the HTML elements were now part of the page some of the sites sidebar and header properties were clashing with the CSS of our widgets which was making them look awful and affecting peoples pages.
We were unable to override this as there is nothing like CSS style = none, what we did try was to redefine styles with the HTML tag style ""
This then led to further problems as there were issues with line height and when line height changes were made other parts of client pages started messing up due to padding.
So we went back to the iFrames and the drawing board and have come up with the below idea:
2) The second idea is to put in a tracker. The tracker is nothing but a 1x1 pixel transparent image that links back to our homepage.
I have read recently that Google have no problem with this strategy (it's used by Statscounter and Digitalpoint.)
The 1x1 pixel image is done as document.write and the rest of the widget is still in iFrame.
The tracker will give us the backlink and the links will go to our homepage. With the tracker we just track the country visitors come from, we don't record IP or anything else. We can add one line in the footer explaining this - or we could also say it's for security reasons.
So this is where we are - i'd be grateful to hear your ideas on this.
Are we being stupid, can this work/ Is there a more elegant and effective solution?
Thanks for your time and any advice you can offer.
The problem is the widgets are in an iFrame. Now being a bit of a newbie to the technical side and have only just found out that the SEO benefit of iFrames is zero - which is not what i'm after.
So what i'm looking to do is to re-write the widget and make it SEO friendly.
I tried one change which failed (listed below) and i'm about to try something else (also listed below.)
What i'm hoping is that someone can advise on if there is a better way we haven't thought of - or if you think the path we're going down is the right one.
What we can't do is have a line of text outside the widgets as this is not something our users are looking to do.
1) Our first change was to try and make the widget part of people's pages and not an iFrame. To do this we used document.write, which succeeded and made the widget part of people's pages, but...
The problem with this strategy is that we were doing document.write and as the HTML elements were now part of the page some of the sites sidebar and header properties were clashing with the CSS of our widgets which was making them look awful and affecting peoples pages.
We were unable to override this as there is nothing like CSS style = none, what we did try was to redefine styles with the HTML tag style ""
This then led to further problems as there were issues with line height and when line height changes were made other parts of client pages started messing up due to padding.
So we went back to the iFrames and the drawing board and have come up with the below idea:
2) The second idea is to put in a tracker. The tracker is nothing but a 1x1 pixel transparent image that links back to our homepage.
I have read recently that Google have no problem with this strategy (it's used by Statscounter and Digitalpoint.)
The 1x1 pixel image is done as document.write and the rest of the widget is still in iFrame.
The tracker will give us the backlink and the links will go to our homepage. With the tracker we just track the country visitors come from, we don't record IP or anything else. We can add one line in the footer explaining this - or we could also say it's for security reasons.
So this is where we are - i'd be grateful to hear your ideas on this.
Are we being stupid, can this work/ Is there a more elegant and effective solution?
Thanks for your time and any advice you can offer.