Baron BMW Blog on iFrames and Facebook
Here is a car dealer blog but it is attached to their website using an iFrame. This presents a few problems, but overall Baron is doing nifty stuff and using Facebook well too so far.
With the iFrame, you diminish your SEO influence. An iFrame is like a box inside a room. It’s its own room, but secluded from everything around it. You can link to the blog’s main page, but from an SEO standpoint you are really linking to a box you can not see inside. A search engine knows it is there, but can not see the contents.
You can link to a page within the blog but then you loose the website shell meant to surround it, so you forgo the visitor experience you initially set out for. Additionally, when you link from the blog, visitors remain in the iFrame unless you insert the parent syntax within the frame tag.
target="_parent"
Another issue is that not all systems and browser support frames. Most today do, with the exception of mobile devices, and most blogs naturally do well on a mobile device. With the iFrame you risk mobile visitors not being able to access your blog at all.
From what I can tell, this blogs looks quite new. It has a few posts and the blogger is clearly sharing himself in addition to the dealership. This is good. Although you must be conscientious of what you publish. The NINJA post pushes the bubble. It will appeal to some, but could throw off others still important to the dealership. There is a threshold for everything, including dealer blogs.
Their facebook group has 53 members, including me. I just became a fan. I look forward to seeing how FB shapes the auto industry. I like what Baron is doing off the bat.
Comments
2 Comments on Baron BMW Blog on iFrames and Facebook
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Theresa Du Bois on
Thu, 11th Jun 2009 8:40 am
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Ryan G on
Tue, 16th Jun 2009 11:31 pm
Great article! I too struggle with the iFrame debate. I have some set up on hoselton.com… It enables me to have a lot of control over our web site and update content quickly (versus having our web provider do it), but I too have been concerned about SEO.
My school of thought is that a well built site will perform great on the search engines, which TK’s SEO team (our web provider) does a great job with. There is much you can do to dominate the first page, but you can’t win every SEO battle… user functionality is obviously the most important aspect of a site. That being said, SEO comes an extremely close second!
On another note… my “Hoselton Auto Mall” Facebook page is up to 49 fans. Social marketing is a much longer term approach than most dealership marketing activities, but I believe it will pay off in the end. Marketing today is so much of a spider web… you need to branch in more directions than ever and be thinking ahead at all times. In the dealer world, it’s not just about this month’s end anymore. 
Theresa I like your perspective. You seem to have a good mindset for this type of marketing. I hope more dealers start seeing it like you do.
I signed up for your mailing list so I can check it out but I do not see placement of your blog or facebook groups on your site. Am I missing it or are they just not there?
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