We love iframes

What you may have noticed if you have spent any time with us is that we love iframes.

That is not to say that we think they are beyond reproach but we do think that interactive 3D content works generally well in iframes.

What are iframes ?

So iframes are effectively a means of embedding content directly into another site. The page that is hosting the iframe doesn't really have anything to do with the content. It is like running an application within an html page and this has real advantages ( and also a few disadvantages). Lets have a quick look at some of them. Mostly viewed from an SEO perspective.

Disadvantages

1. Content Isolation: Content within an iframe is loaded from a separate source. When Google crawls your webpage, it typically treats that iframe as a "black box" unless it crawls the iframe's source directly. Even then, the content is seen as belonging to the iframe's URL, not your page. Therefore, any rich content, keywords, or media within the iframe won’t help your page rank higher because it’s not considered part of the embedding page's content.

   
   

2. Crawlability Issues: Sometimes, the iframe content might not be crawlable at all, depending on the settings on the source page (e.g., robots.txt blocking or "noindex" tags). In these cases, Google won’t see the content at all, meaning it's invisible to the search engine in terms of SEO benefit.

   
   

3. Link Equity: If the content within the iframe has links to other pages, that link equity (or "SEO juice") stays with the iframe’s source, not with your page. If those links were on your page instead of within the iframe, you’d receive some SEO benefit from them.

1. User Experience (UX): Google values UX highly when ranking sites, including metrics like time on page and engagement. While iframes themselves don’t harm UX, poorly optimized iframes (slow to load, poor mobile experience, etc.) can hurt engagement, leading to a decrease in SEO performance. Also, content within an iframe may not be as engaging or interactive as if it were directly part of the page.

We don't see "content isolation" as a problem because it is outweighed from the benefit you gain from Google seeing the time-on-site. Good content wherever it comes from is rewarded. Number 2 can be partially solved by using structured data (see below). Link equity isn't an issue because we were never looking for it anyway and the user experience issue of poorly optimised content can easily be mitigated if you are in control of the content.

Advantages

1. Embedding Rich Content (Like Videos or Tools): Google does acknowledge and reward user engagement with rich media content. If you’re embedding a video or an interactive tool in an iframe that enhances the user experience, it could lead to longer time-on-page, more shares, or conversions. These are indirect ranking factors that can help boost your SEO. However, make sure the page provides a good description of the iframe content, and add metadata like titles or descriptions.

   
   

2. Providing Context on the Parent Page: You can mitigate the negative SEO effects of using an iframe by offering clear, relevant text around the iframe. This ensures that search engines understand the context and purpose of the iframe content. Google can then associate this surrounding content with relevant searches.

   
   

3. Structured Data: Even if the iframe content isn’t indexed, using structured data (e.g., schema.org) on your main page can help search engines understand the iframe's content indirectly. For example, if you're embedding a product configurator, you could add structured data related to the product, even if the iframe itself isn't crawled.

   
   

4. Fallback or Alt Content: Some developers provide a fallback or alternate content for users who can't view iframes (for accessibility or security reasons). This alternate content, which is indexable, can provide SEO value while still keeping the iframe for users who can interact with it.

Taking these advantages as a starting point we believe that we use a strategy for iframes (with 3D interactive content) that takes full advantage of the good points and mitigates as much as possible the bad.

Our strategy

Firstly make sure that the metadata (titles and descriptions) for the iframe are optimised. They can carry an enormous amount of information about the iframe content so we take our time with it also taking into account targeted keywords.

The real deal breaker is using structured data to describe the iframe content and to allow Google to present this content in search results.

We developed a bit of JSON code that demonstrates what we mean:

In this example we have got a 3D laptop configurator running within an iframe on a web page.

By adding structured data, we are increasing the chances of the page appearing in rich search results (such as rich snippets, knowledge graphs, or product carousels).

There are other schema types that could be considered such as HowTo if the 3D interactive content is guiding the user through a step by step process.

Whatever the content there is huge potential in matching the content to schema that allows Google to present the content of the iframe in an interesting and enticing way.