Client wants to distribute web content to dealers - iFrame?

[540SEO]

I have a client who sells a product through a network of nationwide dealers. He wants to provide update-able content to these dealers so they can create sections on their websites dedicated to the product. For ex., www.dealer.com/product_XYZ. The client is thinking he'd like to provide an iframe solution to the dealers, so he can independently update the content that appears on their sites.

I know iFrames are old, but are there any SEO concerns I should know about? Another option is to distribute content via HTML that has a rel=canonical command as part of the code, but then he loses the ability to centrally update all the distributed content.

Are there other solutions he should consider?

Thanks --

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Keith,

I think it really depends how much you want to invest in technology and how much controll you have over the dealer websites.

Wish I had a better answer for you or more data to go on. There's been a test or two over the years that Google follows links through iFrames, but so little research has been done in this area it's almost impossible to give solid advice.

Typically SEOs avoid any sort of iframe because it's really not the best way to code content on your own site, but this seems to be a different situation. If controlling the content is important, in my opinion I don't see a huge problem using frames, but it's something you'd want to keep your eye on. My gut tells me everything should be fine, but if Google suddenly sees 100's of new frames all pointing to the same content, this might start to look a little strange.

I agree that the cross domain rel=canonical would be a nightmare in regards to keeping things consistent, and likely hard to implement.

Another option would be to use something like XML feeds, but my guess is this might be more technical investment than is warranted.