Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How can I make sure Google is crawling a link from an iframe (video)?
-
Do they crawl backlinks from an iframe example from a Youtube video embedded in a blog post? TIA!
-
That test in no-way proves that the link passed PageRank.
I'm not sure about an href within an iframe, but equally I don't see any reason why you would do that?
-
So this test is not true:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-iframe-link-14558.html
What if there's an a href tag (can be seen through "inspect element") within the iframe embedded in a webpage?
-
Nope, they can't. Those links are within the iframe.
If you're trying to get link equity from embedded video, it'll need to be with crediting text links or images outside of the actual player, as overlays are done with JavaScript, which doesn't pass PageRank by all accounts.
-
We created videos that will be embedded to other sites and we have to take advantage of the backlinks.
Regarding Youtube videos, it was just another question if Google can crawl backlinks (the hyperlinked Youtube logo within a video embedded to an external site or webpage) of a Youtube page.
-
Not quite sure I understand... Are you trying to build links to the YouTube video on youtube.com? if so, an embed through an iframe does sort of count as a "link" to the video (i.e. it provides ranking equity), but only in the unique case of YouTube videos.
Or are you wondering if links in the descriptions/overlays will pass PageRank?
-
This is for link building, Ryan. Do you think Google will still follow the links from an iframe?
-
Ah, ya, since OP is asking about these videos after they're embedded in other sites maybe he means will this be like link building? Or maybe he's asking about view lift and popularity of the original video? OP, I think you'll need to clarify some to get a more precise answer.
-
I wrote that post, and it's now nearly three years out of date.
They have got better at crawling iframes since then, and now you can get a video indexed if it's embedded in an iframe.
However, I don't think this relates to the question specifically?
-
Google see iframes as basically "a window into other sites". As such, no, they don't crawl links in this way - however, they will likely then crawl the page which the iframe references, and thereby pick up any backlinks there.
I'm not quite sure how this might related to an embedded YouTube video, but YouTube videos are indexed instantly anyway once they're published because Google don't need to crawl YouTube (they have access to the database)
-
Thanks Ryan! These videos will be embedded in other websites.
-
This post is fairly extensive in regards to your question and should give you ideas even beyond what you're asking here, http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo but if you're looking for the highlight, this is still pretty applicable advice today:
Embed the content with HTML5 and JavaScript or Flash, but not an iframe
Unfortunately, Google are not very good at crawling iframes at the moment; so if you want videos to be indexed, you need to make sure you’re embedding content in an HTML5 player with Flash fallback, or a pure Flash player.
If the video is being embedded on your own site you can also create a transcription for it on the same page and then place the links in according spots. Cheers!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Adsbot crawling order confirmation pages?
Hi, We have had roughly 1000+ requests per 24 hours from Google-adsbot to our confirmation pages. This generates an error as the confirmation page cannot be viewed after closing or by anyone who didn't complete the order. How is google-adsbot finding pages to crawl that are not linked to anywhere on the site, in the sitemap or linked to anywhere else? Is there any harm in a google crawler receiving a higher percentage of errors - even though the pages are not supposed to be requested. Is there anything we can do to prevent the errors for the benefit of our network team and what are the possible risks of any measures we can take? This bot seems to be for evaluating the quality of landing pages used in for Adwords so why is it trying to access confirmation pages when they have not been set for any of our adverts? We included "Disallow: /confirmation" in the robots.txt but it has continued to request these pages, generating a 403 page and an error in the log files so it seems Adsbot doesn't follow robots.txt. Thanks in advance for any help, Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoeuroflorist0 -
My site shows 503 error to Google bot, but can see the site fine. Not indexing in Google. Help
Hi, This site is not indexed on Google at all. http://www.thethreehorseshoespub.co.uk Looking into it, it seems to be giving a 503 error to the google bot. I can see the site I have checked source code Checked robots Did have a sitemap param. but removed it for testing GWMT is showing 'unreachable' if I submit a site map or fetch Any ideas on how to remove this error? Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything?
Hi All, I recently started using Google Alerts more and more and while sites I support never appear there (not surprising) I recently noticed few very poor and low quality sites that do. This site for example appears quite a bit in its niche. So to my questions... What makes a site appear in Google Alerts? And does it mean anything? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Is Google indexing Mp3 audio and MIDI music files? Can that cause any duplicate problems?
Hello, I own virtualsheetmusic.com website and we have several thousands of media files (Mp3 and MIDI files) that potentially Google can index. If that's the case, I am wondering if that could cause any "duplicate" issues of some sort since many of such media files have exact file names or same meta information inside. Any thoughts about this issue are very welcome! Thank you in advance to anyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Links from new sites with no link juice
Hi Guys, Do backlinks from a bunch of new sites pass any value to our site? I've heard a lot from some "SEO experts" say that it is an effective link building strategy to build a bunch of new sites and link them to our main site. I highly doubt that... To me, a new site is a new site, which means it won't have any backlinks in the beginning (most likely), so a backlink from this site won't pass too much link juice. Right? In my humble opinion this is not a good strategy any more...if you build new sites for the sake of getting links. This is just wrong. But, if you do have some unique content and you want to share with others on that particular topic, then you can definitely create a blog and write content and start getting links. And over time, the domain authority will increase, then a backlink from this site will become more valuable? I am not a SEO expert myself, so I am eager to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | witmartmarketing0 -
Can I make 301 redirects on a Windows server (without access to IIS)?
Hey everyone, I've been trying to figure out a way to set up some 301 redirects to handle the broken links left behind after a site restructuring, but I can only ever find information on 2 methods that I can't use (as far as I can tell). The first method is to do some stuff with an htaccess file, but that looks like it only works on Linux-based servers. The method described for Windows servers is generally to install this IIS rewrite/redirect module and run that, but I don't think our web hosting company allows users to log directly into the server, so I wouldn't be able to use the IIS thing. Is there any other way to get a 301 redirect set up? And is this uncommon for a web hosting company to do, or do you all just run your sites on Linux-based servers or your own Windows machines? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrianAlpert780 -
"Jump to" Links in Google, how do you get them?
I have just seen yoast.com results in Google and noticed that nearly all the indexed pages show a "Jump to" link So instead of showing the full URL under the title tag, it shows these type of links yoast.com › SEO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters
yoast.com › Social Media
yoast.com › Analytics With the SEO, Social Media and Analytics all being clickable. How has he achieved this? And is it something to try and incorporate in my sites?0 -
Site wide footer links vs. single link for websites we design
I’ve been running a web design business for the past 5 years, 90% or more of the websites we build have a “web design by” link in the footer which links back to us using just our brand name or the full “web design by brand name” anchor text. I’m fully aware that site-wide footer links arent doing me much good in terms of SEO, but what Im curious to know is could they be hurting me? More specifically I’m wondering if I should do anything about the existing links or change my ways for all new projects, currently we’re still rolling them out with the site-wide footer links. I know that all other things being equal (1 link from 10 domains > 10 links from 1 domain) but is (1 link from 10 domains > 100 links from 10 domains)? I’ve got a lot of branded anchor text, which balances out my exact match and partial match keyword anchors from other link building nicely. Another thing to consider is that we host many of our clients which means there are quite a few on the same server with a shared IP. Should I? 1.) Go back into as many of the sites as I can and remove the link from all pages except the home page or a decent PA sub page- keeping a single link from the domain. 2.) Leave all the old stuff alone but start using the single link method on new sites. 3.) Scratch the site credit and just insert an exact-match anchor link in the body of the home page and hide with with CSS like my top competitor seems to be doing quite successfully. (kidding of course.... but my competitor really is doing this.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nbeske0
