One great way of using Ion-built content is to enhance existing web pages. Simply embed your Ion content to add opportunities for interaction and engagement. Ion Interactive offers many micro-experience templates that are geared towards this use case. Of course, you can easily build your own as well.
An important consideration when implementing Ion content via embeds is its impact on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While search engines value visitor-tailored content, ranking scores depend on various technical factors. To better understand these nuances, we spoke with Thorsten Becker, Head of SEO Strategy at UDG United Digital Group Germany, an MSQ company.
Below, he answers frequently asked questions about SEO and embedded content.
Is it advisable to provide a host page that only holds embedded Ion content?
No, to achieve a good ranking by search engines, the parent page needs to hold all keyword-relevant content. Embeds should support the content that is on the parent page.
Is there a minimum amount of content that should be on the parent page?
Search engines don’t prescribe a minimum number of characters or words. It rather depends on the information the page claims to provide. So if it’s a complex topic that is being discussed, more content would be expected in order to fully cover its many facets. On the other hand, if a page is set to provide someone’s contact information, the page would probably not contain large amounts of text.
Search engines are good at evaluating the quality of the content displayed and at judging how the content compares to other pages available online showing similar content. This includes the presence of relevant keywords. Context, as mentioned before, is an important factor to determine what information needs to be available on the page for a good ranking.
How does the hierarchy of the content on a page affect the ranking? Can all keywords be in the footer?
Generally, what is displayed at the top of a page is also at the top of a page’s source code, which is the information a search engine is going to read. Therefore, hierarchy does play a role. Keyword-relevant data should be placed as high as possible on the page, above images, Ion embeds, or let alone advertisements. An embed should not sit at the very top or be the first element that is loading when the parent page is opened.
In the source code, headers should be marked starting with <h1>, followed by the first paragraph and so on for a search engine’s easy semantic analysis. A seasoned developer can add relevant information to a page’s source code and adjust the rendering of the page to meet such hierarchical requirements while the page itself might display differently. However, such tricks are not recommended and might also not serve the user experience.
What can be done to clearly show how an Ion embed and the parent page belong together?
UDG/MSQ recommends using all options available to optimize the HTML of the embedded page to describe what it is and what it contains. Microdata can be included in the page’s source code to provide as much information as possible to a search engine for evaluation. On the parent page, all Open Graph tags can be used to authenticate the information on offer and show its integrity.
With a parent page at text.com and an Ion embed at the subdomain word.text.com, for example, does a search engine recognize that the author is the same?
Search engines understand CNAME records and can see who owns the webspace that provides the information. It is definitely advisable for an organization to publish content at a subdomain mapped to the organization rather than embed content published at an unrelated domain. However, note that a search engine also sees where the embedded content is hosted and if this server is the same as the one that hosts the parent page.
Would a less SEO-optimized embed negatively impact the parent page’s ranking?
No, the parent page is solely rated based on its own optimization. So if that host page is top ranked then a lesser ranked embed won’t decrease this. Nonetheless, ideally the embed should add quality as search engines do evaluate it and would flag disreputable content which can devalue the parent page.
It is important to note, however, that the load speed of the embed will impact the parent page’s score. Search engines value an optimal user experience highly. It’s a little less clear cut with regard to the impact of embeds that are not 100 percent responsive.
What are indicators for an acceptable page speed?
Google, for example, still shows their speed percentages in segments coloured in green, orange, and red. However, in the background they’ve revised how page speed is determined. It is advisable to review the following parameters as a speed that falls within the green bracket might still not be ideal: First contentful paint; largest contentful paint; time to interactivity; total blocking time. All these parameters need to have a high points score for the page load speed to be considered good.
Additionally, UDG/MSQ recommends comparing the page load speed with those of pages by one’s main competitors. The goal should be for pages to be at least as fast or better.
The metric Time to Interactive was mentioned. What impact does lazy loading have?
Lazy loading is another script the page needs to execute upon load. This can add to the page load speed if the script is not lean and fast loading. It can additionally help to add information for search engines to the script that describe its purpose and how it’s working.
Lazy loading is a useful feature if the page contains large amounts of data, like large images. If this is not the case, removing the script can enhance page load time.
How might embeds add value to a parent page?
Visual information is an important factor that embeds can provide. Also, interactive content such as calculators and assessments can add value as they tend to increase metrics like Time on Page. If a visitor uses the Chrome browser, Google can also track the number of clicks on the page. While clicks within the embed are attributed to the embed page, it is still possible to add a conversion point on the host page. This could for example be an anchor link that leads to an embedded element further along on the page. In this case, scroll depth would also positively impact the page’s score.
Furthermore, such interactive content can reduce the Back to SERP rate, a metric by which search engines rate the quality and usefulness of web pages.
What metrics are important in order to increase a parent’s page ranking?
Firstly, it’s important to remember that different analytic tools measure things differently. When using a standard solution, Bounce Rate is important. Time on Page was mentioned above. In modern solutions it is possible to set markers on the page to measure scroll depth and how many elements are being clicked.
In Google Analytics 4 (GA4), UDG/MSQ recommends checking the search console ranking as well as the search console Click-Through-Rate (CTR), in other words the number of clicks from the search engine to the web page. Both these values need to be high for a good ranking. In the analytics tool, Bounce Rate, Scroll-Through-Rate, and page interactivity are good indicators. Note that these metrics need to be manually set up in GA4.
SEO guidelines are constantly changing. How frequently should content builders review and revise their web pages?
How long the cache version of a page is supposed to be saved is set in its HTTP header. Oftentimes, this is left at ‘indefinitely’ which might be fine for pages that deal with topics for which there are very few updates, for example the origin of dinosaurs. However, most modern pages don’t fall into this category so the cache settings should be adjusted to shorter timeframes. This means that search engines will crawl the page more frequently. Which in turn means that pages should be reviewed and updated every 6-8 months, ideally. If there are news to share, then updates need to happen even more frequently as freshness of content is key.
Updating a page’s last edit date should be the minimum and ensuring that product names are up to date. Rewriting the text would be ideal. It is important that this is done by a human editor as search engines detect AI-generated text and will rate it differently. Sprucing up pages with embedded interactive content could also be a good way to enhance existing content.
As a side note: In today’s times of large language models it is generally advisable to consider the provided content in depth as it will become input for AI tools such as ChatGPT as well.
The new “AI Search” is troubling many marketers. What needs to be considered when optimizing content for this?
Fundamentally, AI bots are crawling the web in a similar fashion to Google and other search engines. They, too, analyse the text content of web pages. However, a special effort should be made to provide factual and textually accurate content as well as presenting the chosen topic as holistically as possible. This doesn’t mean adding as many details to the same page as possible. The content can be provided on several pages but it should be well structured and it should ideally consider all facets of the chosen topic, or the specialist’s perspective. If the correct semantic HTML elements are used, enriched with microdata, the web page should perform well.
Any conclusive remarks on the topic of SEO and embeds?
Embeds can add to a page if used correctly. It is important to remember that the embed remains its own page and that its content does not immediately impact the parent page’s ranking. Some aspects need to be considered, like the position of the embed on the parent page, how fast the server is that delivers the embed, and to ensure that the embed enriches and supplements the content of the parent page beyond keyword-relevant content.
If you have any questions about the information shared above or feel a key question about SEO and embedded Ion content was not covered, please don’t hesitate to reach out to [email protected].
