FAQ: SEO & Syndication for Channel Partners
Posted in Content Syndication on February 7, 2012
What is SEO and how does syndicated content affect it?
SEO stands for search engine optimization and refers to all the things you can do on the internet to raise the quality and indexability of a website’s individual pages. SEO is organized into two categories — on-page and off-page. On-page refers to all the things you can control on your website, including content, images, code, meta data, keywords, etc. Off-page refers all the things you can do outside of your website, including building links back to your website from other sites, social media efforts and other third party interactions. Syndicated content is part of on-page SEO and it may or may not affect your website’s pages depending on the content your vendors choose to push through.
Overall, syndicated content has the ability to positively affect your search rankings over time if placed on a page by itself. Likewise, placing syndicated content on a new page will not negatively affect any of your existing pages’ rankings. For more information, see SharedVue’s Search Engine Statement.
Some SEO experts place paid search (like Google Adwords) as a third category. SharedVue is currently experimenting with paid search programs and syndicated content.
Will placing SharedVue syndicated content on a new page on my website affect my search engine rankings negatively?
No. Google ranks pages on your website on an individual basis. In fact, SharedVue recommends you add a completely new page when you add syndicated content to your website. This eliminates the risk of deleting content that already ranks well in searches. The syndicated content will receive its own ranking for your website and as long as you do not edit or change any existing pages, you will retain your SERP rankings.
Does syndicated content help improve my current search engine rankings?
If vendors have enabled their SharedVue syndicated showcases with varying content sets, keywords and partner information, your new syndicated page may rank high in SERPs (search engine results pages). Since Google ranks pages on an individual basis for any given search term, the syndicated content will not affect your other product, solution or service page rankings.
How does placing syndicated content on an existing page of my website affect that page’s rank?
Any time you change the content of an existing page, whether it’s text, an image or anything else, the page is indexed differently. Adding new content to an existing page, syndicated or otherwise, on your website may affect that page’s rank. That’s why it is always a good idea to place syndicated content on a new page on your site, and link to it from an existing product or solution page.
Is there any way to place syndicated content on an existing page on my website without affecting that page’s search engine rankings?
No. Adding new or modifying existing content always changes search engine indexing. The best way to place content on an existing page of your website without affecting its current page ranking is by using SharedVue’s “basic implementation” method. This method embeds content on your website using an iFrame. Search engines do not guarantee support for iFrames because they don’t adhere to Web standards (each page should displays only one URL).
Pages that use iFrames display several URLs (one for each frame) within a single page. However, this does not guarantee your page isn’t affected by the content. The best way to implemented syndicated content is to place it on a new page.
What if I don’t want search engines to index SharedVue syndicated content?
If you wish to place a SharedVue Vendor Showcase on your website without affecting search rankings, you can simply link to the syndicated page with a “nofollow” link. Nofollow links allow you to add entire pages of content without search engines being able to index them. If you add a SharedVue Vendor Showcase to your website and want to guarantee only your existing pages are visited by search bots, be sure that every link to the showcase is a “nofollow” link.
Additionally, you can add the <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”> tag to the header of your syndicated page. Using either of both of these methods will ensure visitors to your website are receiving the most updated, relevant information without search engines indexing the content.
How do I make sure my syndicated content is being indexed by search engines?
Search engines are able to index any of SharedVue’s server-side (preferred method) and CMS plugin implementations. This is because these methods literally embed the content directly into the coding of your website. Using SharedVue’s basic method simply frames the content on your website and does not place it into the code. Thus, search engines are not able to index it. If your vendor showcase is enabled with SEO content, it is recommended you use one of these methods.
What can I do to improve the SEO of my website?
Aside from adding a vendor showcase with SEO content, there are several things search engines recommend you do to improve page rank. Google has great resources available in their Webmaster Tools.
