A site widget is a component that is added to a website to improve functionality. These widgets are actually a small part of a different website within another website, similar to an iframe. We want to share with you what you need to know about widgets, how they affect your website, and their effect on SEO for your website. Keep reading to learn more about site widgets:
What is the Point of Having any Widget?
The main goal for widgets is their viral effect in increasing traffic to the site the widget is for. In other words, you want to use widgets in link building. If you are going to have a widget, you should get some SEO link benefit out of it, in addition to its viral benefit. But with the increased use of widgets on social networks, it is important to build SEO friendly widgets. For example, with a Facebook widget you get viral benefit, so facebook widgets are ok for your site.
iFrames and Widgets
If you are not familiar with iframes, they are an HTML element that is an individual component of an HTML document. HTML documents are composed of a tree of HTML elements and other nodes, such as text nodes. Each element can have attributes specified. Elements can also have content, including other elements and text. HTML elements represent semantics, or meaning. For example, the title element represents the title of the document. The iframe code will add very slight increase in load time (page size) to your site online some javascript based widgets.
As we previously mentioned, widgets are similar to iframes. Content within a widget is not part of that website; it is part of another website. A search engine will not be looking at the content of the widget as an “on-page factor” but for the parent url that holds a widget. So if search engines can read it, you lose control of keyword density and content of your site. If search engines can read it, you get no value for it, so the only one who benefits is the original website. Also, the content could and probably would not be counted in your favor as search engines will probably classify it as duplicate content. This, of course, is taking into consideration that they give your site credit for the content. If you were to copy and paste the content from the iframe directly on your site, so you would get credit for it and then you’d have issues with duplicate content.
What is Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content is content that appears on the internet in more than one place. This is a problem because when there are more than one piece of identical content on the internet, it is difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query.
Here are 3 of the biggest issues with duplicate content:
- Search engines don’t know which version(s) to include/exclude from their indices
- Search engines don’t know whether to direct the link metrics trust, authority, anchor text, link juice, etc. to one page or keep it separated between multiple versions
- Search engines don’t know which version(s) to rank for query results
When duplicate content is present, site owners suffer rankings and traffic losses, and search engines provide less relevant results.
Example of How Widgets Benefit Parent Sites
Recently MyPigeonForge.com asked businesses in Pigeon Forge to add a widget to their sites about local events. They claim this will boost SEO score for the sites their widget is posted on. This will boost SEO for MyPigeonForge.com but not so much the other sites the widget is posted on. If you post this widget on your site, you will effect many aspects of SEO. You could affect your page size, keyword density, word count, and much more if the search spider can read it. The content from this widget and widgets like it takes away all your control of on-site SEO for every page you place it on. However, MyPigeonForge.com gets back links from related sites to help them with SEO. The other issue is you are linking to a site that if the user from your site clicks they are directed to a site with every competitor you have and can effect conversion.
Learn More About Site Widgets
Now you know more about site widgets and how they affect SEO. Need help navigating these complicated topics? Reach out to us and set up a meeting to talk about your digital marketing strategy!
