What if there are some cases where iFrame makes sense to use, will the content of that iFrame be indexed by the search engines?
Here is my response, and please correct me, or, open the discussion if anything is not very accurate:
1. If your template has an iFrame and its programming is in your control, first, try to consider an alternative architecture solution. 2. Let’s say you must have an iFrame; then there are a few things to consider:
A, If the HTML of the iFrame contains some navigational links, headlines, and the content worth to be indexed, then you really should include the URLs of the iFrame’s content in your Google Sitemap (talk to your lead, unless you are the lead), and make sure that the iFrame’s linked page’s URLs are under the sitemap path. B, If the HTML loaded by the iFrame is located on another server or a sub-domain of your site, you don’t have to include its URL into the sitemap, INSTEAD, provide an XML Sitemap on the other server (if it makes sense, and there is no alternative linked content on the parent page).C. Most iFrames contain ads or dynamic content controlled by client sided scripting, thus search engines usually don't index their contents to begin with. D. If you have editorial content worth indexing presented in iFrames, for example, custom editorial static decks, or, slides to the gallery, or so, the best way to get it indexed is to provide standard HTML pages as an alternative, but don’t forget to mark all pages loaded in iFrames as no indexable.
JUST IN CASE, for those who are not very familiar with different values of CONTENT attribute, value ROBOTS in the META tag
ROBOTS
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Robot allows us indicate to visiting crawlers if a document may be indexed, or used to harvest more links". It's normally put in the head section of the HTML document: "meta name="ROBOTS" content="INDEX, FOLLOW" ". What does this mean? You use this method if you have to use "meta" tag to tell robots to index or not to index the content of a page, and/or not scan it for links to follow. html head title iFrame content HTML page/title "meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" " "/head"The content of the robots META tag contains directives separated by commas:
INDEXNOINDEX - Tells the SE spider whether the page may be indexed or notFOLLOWNOFOLLOW - Tells the SE crawler whether it may follow links provided on the page or notALLNONE - ALL = INDEX, FOLLOW (default), NONE = NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW3. Only if that's no option, include iFrame URLs in your sitemaps, but make sure that those pages come with a link to the parent page if not loaded in an iFrame, so that search engine users don't land in a dead end.
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