It should come as no surprise that having a widget or sidebar element on a news, blog or articles website is great for traffic and page views. Online outlets have been using them to boost readership, email-a-friend features and page views per session counts for years. But, did you know that they're also great for SEO?
Let's take a look at some examples and investigate the myriad of benefits "most popular" sections provide:
Slate.com
Slate's most popular widget isn't the best designed or most fully featured, but it provides the basic concept - display a list of stories from your site, ordered by a popularity metric. In this case, Slate's offering both "most emailed" (stories that have had lots of people use the "email a friend" feature) and "most read," which I'm assuming they calculate on raw page views.
Newsweek.com
Newsweek's widget has the clever slider at the bottom, allowing you to see popularity on a granular time scale from as little as 12 hours ago to as much as 7 days. If it were me, I'd increase the granularity option all the way up to the last 1-2 hours, just so bloggers can get their hands on the very freshest stuff. The "most viewed" vs. "most emailed" is smart, too, as is the opportunity to share the widget on your own website (which I've done below).
My only complaint is that all those beautiful links are contained in an object the search engines won't parse, and thus, Newsweek doesn't get any credit or juice from them. At the least, placing a straight HTML link below the object would be a smart way to increase link popularity in a natural and search engine approved way.
Yahoo! News
Yahoo! News does things a bit differently and features an entire page (linked to in the top, tabular menu) labeled "most popular" that lists the stories from the day getting the most attention. It's not a bad system, and I imagine that a lot of folks really enjoy having a full page of content that displays the most popular news, but losing the widget format means those stories don't enjoy the ability to tease right from another story page, one of the big draws of having the "most popular" widget.
NYTimes.com
The New York Times is putting a lot of the best practices together. Not only is their widget shown on the vertical sidebar half to three quarters of the way down the page (in a spot where the eye falls during or just after reading a story), it's got three tabs showing the most e-mailed, most searched and, in a move of sheer genius, most blogged. Bloggers love this stuff - it's a tab just for them, showing what they're talking about and what they think is important. Just as pandering in politics can win you elections, pandering to bloggers, particularly if you're a big media outfit, can win you blog links. Finally, NYTimes also a link off to the "complete list" for each section, so those heavily into the popular news can browse from there. Once you're there, you can then use a time sort feature to see stories from different time periods.
So, while the user benefits are pretty clear, why is this so great for SEO?
- Quick link juice - the links, so long as they're HTML links the engines can parse, send a flood of juice to the top stories, which are often the ones most likely to benefit from Google's temporal rankings push (for hot search terms) and the inclusion of "news results" in the SERPs.
- Helping to earn links - the most popular stories can convert someone who wasn't interested or had only a passing curiosity in one story into a fervent reader, and often inspire the sharing behavior. After all, if a story is "most e-mailed" or "most-blogged," there's a fair chance you'll email it or blog it, increasing the ROI for the site.
- Ongoing internal link juice for big stories - Having a most popular page that links to all the stories generating the most buzz for the last week or month continues to send link juice in to stories that are likely to attract the most searches.
- Opportunity to better know your audience - If you personally play around with and pay attention to your most popular stories on a day-to-day basis, the results can help you learn more about what your audience likes, what earns links, attention and sharing behavior. This can also help you generate stories and content for the future that will continue to leverage these strengths and earn greater links and traffic.
I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback and potential suggestions for how to leverage these features to even greater degrees.
The benefit of widgets is something I have talked about a long time and Rand is asking the right questions, like how does it help SEO? It does help SEO in several major ways even if there is no direct link benefits and I know this confuses alot of people, but there are several ways that increased traffic helps SEO, or more precisely, your rankings in search engines.
I will be speaking at PubCon about this very issue.
I do not believe that links are the future of Google assigning relevance and usefulness in regard to a search query. Language of the search query affects the ranking of results. Geo location data affects the ranking of results. Guess what? Just as geo and language are factors in what Google returns for a search query, so is... drumroll please... social and interaction metrics.
Does that sound kooky? Have I drank to much Google Kool-aid? No. I have just observed the industry.
Open Social is social data collection. iGoogle is interaction data. The path of a Google gadget is very clear (just to use one example).
The main reason people in SEO don't get widgets is because they do not understand the pluses of interaction. I often hear that the benefits of links in widgets in iframes is useless and valueless. If Google doesn't know about it how can it help our rankings?
I got bunches of answers for that (many have to do with user benefit but I know you want some more meat than "it helps users"), but I have limited time. Go to my PubCon session for deeper details, but here is one scenario that is often overlooked.
I make a Google gadget and embed it in a web page. It adds functionality and usefulness to my page. Whoopty doo, many say, the gadget is rendered in an iframe, no link value, no good, most think.
Consider this. Google collects data in many ways. Googles goal is to provide it's users with the absolute best results for the users query and it is using data to determine what results it provides. We tend to think that the data Google uses to make such decisions is collected by search functions (click through rates, time spent on page before returning to Google, etc.). Google is using many more factors than search related data to determine RELEVANCY.
Relevant results for queries depend on a far greater set of data than simple search data can provide. Factors such as where a site is hosted is used to determine geographical relevancy and the language of a site is used to determine relevancy for language specific queries. These are not search metrics, yet they are used for determining relevancy.
Back to gadgets. Google needed a way to measure social and interaction data. They call it data but we call it Open Social. They call it data but we call it iGoogle. They call it data but we call it Google gadgets.
The current vibe about gadgets is the exact same scenario that exsisted around Google maps before the one box results were shown otop of just about every geo related query. Why on earth, everyone thunk, should I care about maps.google.com? I see no benefit most people said.
Then one day they started to introduce the local results into Google results and then everyone fell over themselves to get there business listings verified and set up.
Widgets are the same thing.
Okay, now let us consider how gadget information and interaction can be determined by Google and how that data can be used for ranking results.
A simple example would be a Google gadget. The interaction points (places where Google can collect data) are more than most people think.
Every time someone installs a Google gadget Google knows. Every time a user displays a Google gadget Google knows. Every time someone interacts with a Google gadget Google knows. Every time someone deletes a Google gadget Google knows. That is alot of data.
But that is just Google gadgets you might be thinking. None of the gadgets that Rand mentioned are Google gadgets.
Hmmm. How do I explain how relevancy, and therefore usefullness, and therefore ranking are determined by Google?
I think a good way is the word "fart". The Google algorithm knows not what a fart is. The Google algorithm has never, not even once smelt a fart nor heard a fart or snickered at a fart. Yet it ranks, in order of relevance, 28,700,000 results based on their usefulness to a user.
It includes, by the way, several video results. Video results are another example of where links don't mean much but views do ("views", oops, I mean "interactions"). Video results can be ranked far above other things (webpages) which have much more links.
The only way in which Google knows what a fart is is not through smelling, hearing, or snickering. It knows only user interaction. It knows only data. A while ago much of the data that Google used was links. The determination of what constituted a useful result for "the bodily function of passing intestinal gas (flatus) via the anus" was solely determined by links. This is clearly not true anymore.
Fart relevancy is now determined by other things.
One of those pieces of info will be gadgets. Gadgets are little bitty bits of functionality that are a moveable feast. They also are information and Google is doin the whole "sorting the worlds information" thing.
If a fart gadget is determined to be useful to a user then Google will be presenting it to a user. Many of Googles most highly praised (by users) features are gadgets. Videos, One boxes, related searches, universal results, etc. are all user interaction based gadgets in their results.
I have spent too much time on this and I have to many gadgets to build for our clients, so let me just say this...
Google is using more data than search related data to rank websites. They will continue to do so.
Let us say that these gadgets in an iframe are a black hole to Google. The interaction taking place with that page is not a black hole. There are indications that that page is valuable.
Just as Google has never smelt a fart yet still knows what it is, so to can Google determine the usefulness of pages with these "black holes" (gadgets in iframes) on them.
Hmmm. I wonder if I put a Google gadget on my webpage which shows Google how many times my page is interacted with helps my rankings?
If you want more widgets and SEO, go to PubCon :)
Never in the history of written language has a fart been so eloquently presented as example.
I do fart good :)
Fart well. Not good.
Maybe he means "I do a fart good" like "Milk does a body good."
Brilliant reply mate. That is the longest reply I've ever seen on YOUmoz.
Well, this just made my decisions on which sessions to go to at PubCon a little easier :) Can't wait!
Sorry to reply over a year after the post - but from my interpretation of this post this fart example assumes that the widget etc is driving traffic and people are actively interacting with the fart - which is not always the case.
Eg SEOMoz's videos... people play them, but it's not driving traffic to the hostsite, and Google aren't monitoring ISP's to see if people are playing them. The main SEO benefit is the link outside of the iframe.
It is very hard to convince a webmaster to install a widget that will drive traffic AWAY from their site to the widget owners site, so most widget have info and a link outside of the Iframe(thats my understanding anyway)
Or have I missed the whole point and Google can actually tell if there was an interaction, say... they know when I play one of Rand's Whiteboard Friday videos?
Cheers, not expecting a response (but would be nice) - just doing some research into a link building/iframe/widget problem.
Excellent site Rand/SEOMoz crew - you should be proud.
I like the 'most dugg' widget for large sites as well - e.g. Chicago Tribune.
I was about to say the same thing Will.
I especially like The Onion's implementation, where the links go directly to the article instead of their digg.com page.
They've also added a "most unpopular" tab, which is another smart SEO move.
The benefits look similar to those you can get with 'Related Stories' widgets...
Is it possible to see a negative affect to rankings by implementing 'Popular story' or 'Related stories' widgets? When would the implementation of these widgets be adverse to an SEO strategy? Is there a link structure that might be incompatible with them?
Would we want to sculpt those links by keyword? For example, if I am targeting 'SEO' I would 'follow' all related/popular links that included the term 'SEO' while the other stories/links would be nofollowed. Would that fall under the 'over-optimized' category and force a site to lose rank?
:)
That would be an interesting test.
Sounds like a test is in order!
I would do it but I don't know how to start, what to measure, how to measure it, etc. I'm just a simple PPC guy trying to understand SEO a little bit more because the conversion lift I have seen from PPC/SEO working together is quite tremendous!
If I can communicate and collaborate better with SEOs as a PPC guy, then we can accomplish a lot more. :)
In any case, whoever decides to test this - let me know if I can help!
A very good point; whilein general these 'most popular' widgets are useful, and if popularity is measured by either page views, most emailed or most blogged you are going to be onto the freshest material going (obviously the fresher the better).
However keeping the content of the widgets relevant to the terms you are targetting must be difficult, and while I don't think it could have a massive negative impact, it certainly seems like it could easily not do you any favours...
I agree with Marty. Anybody doing any testing?
hi i wonder whether widgets can also bring SEO benefits to those who use them on their websites for the sole sake of having syndicated content as added value content. So going more to the point, i would like to know whether using news widgets from NYtimes or newsweek on a related keyword niche website would make that website appear to googlebot as if fresh content was being used regularly.
I like the "pandering to bloggers" point. Pandering seems to be the move of the moment!
USAToday and MSNBC offer some cool story widgets, but most of the news widgets online don't generate any link juice because of how they're coded. I wrote a post back in May on the anatomy of SEO frindly widgets.
Thanks Rand for the quick answer!
But still, there must be a clever way to get all the links to the "most popular pages" visible to Google Bot & Friends...
I have a FSBO Real Estate website. So if I had this kind of widget, the "popular stories" would be replaced by individual listings with direct urls. Those are all already in the index, but I'd like to give them more "power"... Giving them direct links from other websites seems like the best solution.
However, this brings me an other question : If I happen to find a way to get over this and manage to get direct links to my 10 listings + one to my main website, does it really have a lot more "seo-value" that if I have only one link to my main site?
In other words, does a website with 11 links (on the same page) to mine really gives me more value than a website with 1 link? Could this be interpreted as "overkill-linking" by the bots?
Probably not, but still...
Rand are SEO benefits same from Sites that offer a widget service to promote your own site comparable to creating your own custom made widget?
I think that's going to depend on how they're linking to you. A lot of those services use different types of redirects that won't benefit you from the SEO front. Of course, as I'm sure you know a straight href or 301 redirect is optimal.
i've actually been able to track thru a refresh tag redirect..
https://www.martinbowlingloveszima.blogspot.com
Really?! That's pretty interesting..
I have been pushing my company to develop widgets for these exact SEO benefits.
Problem with those widgets most of the time is that the easiest way to build and share them is by programming them using javascript embeds...
However, those javascript embeds won't bring you any juice.
Building a wordpress plugin allows you to do it using PHP going over this barrier, but this get's you to develop and duplicate for different platforms...
What do you think would be the best way to build and share a widget while keeping the html juice flowing?
Well, you could do the widget in Javascript, then build the "most popular" pages like NYTimes and use those to direct the link juice. Sort of a "best of both worlds" system.
We created a Google Gadget which got feeds from our categorized news (1500+ tag/category pages all with RSS feeds).
We had categories like "industry player one" news, then we emailed industry player one and said "hey, here's this awesome thing you can put on your site and it will display news just about you.
The news links weren't SEO friendly but we did put a non spammy "gadget by us" link at the bottom.
I didn't create the gadget myself but I think Google Gadgets makes it pretty easy.
benifits are there but question is how we are going to use it, i saw some website which are overkilling then and trying to show too many, i love newer version of bloger as they give you copmlete controle over you widgets, thanks for sharing
Just brainstorming...
If I have content in a iframe included on another website, does that "iframe inclusion" count as a link to my site?
If, for example I had :
<iframe src="https://duproprio.com/top10.php" etc="bla bla"></iframe><br /><a href="https://duproprio.com" title="bla bla">Brought to you by DuProprio.com</a>
Would that setup pass juice to both those urls?
Just asking because Iframes seem to be the 2nd easy to way create portable widgets after javascript...
Thanks!
Sadly, links in iFrames are considered by the engines to belong to the page they're from, not the page they're on, so that wouldn't really flow juice in the way you're hoping. You'd need s straight HTML setup that would resolve on the page.