Understanding Embedding

The infographic below has been embedded on this page. That means that it doesn’t really live on this page.

If this is a new concept for you, it might be hard to understand, so here’s an explanation. Usually if you see an infographic at this blog, we made it. We’ve uploaded it to the website and placed it in the blog post. Those infographics live here.

The infographic below, from TechWyse, lives at techwyse.com. They made it, and they shared a special embedding code, which I will show you after the infographic. (Go ahead and read the infographic, by the way. It’s chock full of good information.)

[ Source TechWyse Internet Marketing ]

Here’s the code:

The part that says “a href” tells your browser to go over the Techwyse, where the infographic lives, and bring the image over to show to you. The “img src” part tells the browser where to find the picture — over at techwyse.com. It’s not on our page at all, even though it looks that way. You can click through and get the embed code yourself if you like, and share it on your own website.

You can often find embed codes at social media, Google maps, and other people’s websites. If you want to share something, look around for “embed” or “<>” and copy the code. Paste it into your html code at the spot where you want to embed the content and Bob’s your uncle.

When you embed a YouTube video or a Slideshare presentation, it’s the same thing. The video or slideshow continues to live back where you found it, and it is merely shown to visitors at your page.

Embedding items has some advantages:

• It doesn’t take up your bandwidth. It doesn’t take up storage space at your website, which can be a serious advantage, especially with large files.
• You don’t have to worry about copyright. If an embed code is provided, the creator wants you to share it.
• It isn’t duplicate content. That’s not really an issue with images or videos (yet) anyway, but when you embed something, it’s not really on your website. You’re sharing, not copying.

There’s always a downside, though. Embedded items don’t give you any SEO benefits. They give benefits to the people who’ve shared it with you. They deserve it, after all. This means that embedding a video or an infographic every day might endear you to your visitors, but you’ll have to add your own text for the search engines to consider that original content. Same with RSS feeds — however great the content in that feed, Google doesn’t give you credit for it.

Of course, you can also create your own infographics and provide embed code for your visitors. If you use WordPress, there’s a plugin for that. If you don’t care to use a plugin, try Siege Media’s Embed Code Generator.  Then reach out to publishers you think will want to share your content. We’ve published a number of good infographics because someone offered them to us and we felt that our readers would enjoy them as much as we did.