Event websites are more than digital brochures - they're living, breathing hubs that drive discovery, engagement and conversions. But not all content on your site is created equal.

One of the biggest choices event marketing teams face is whether to keep content native (built directly into your site) or use embeds and iframes to display it from elsewhere.

At ASP, we always encourage clients to keep their most valuable content native. Here's why - and when an embed might actually be the right call.

• Native content – Content that lives on your website, managed in your CMS. Think exhibitor lists, speaker bios, agendas, news posts.
   
• Embedded content – Content that's pulled in from another platform, often via a code snippet. Think YouTube videos, social media feeds, or ticketing widgets.
   
• iFrame content – A type of embed that literally places a "window" to another website inside your page. Google treats it as if there's nothing there.
   

1. SEO and Discoverability

Native content is visible to search engines, which means it can rank on Google and bring new visitors to your site.

Put your exhibitor directory on your own site and you capture that traffic. If you put it in an iframe, Google sees an empty box.

2. Control and Domain Authority

Your event website is your domain. The more quality content it holds, the stronger your site becomes.

Native content builds authority for you. Embeds and iframes build authority for the third party's site, not yours.

3. User Experience and Performance

Native content integrates seamlessly with your design, is mobile-friendly, and works with accessibility tools like screen readers and keyboard navigation. It maintains your visual identity and messaging tone throughout the user journey.

Iframes often break design consistency, behave differently, and frustrate users. They can also slow down your site significantly, especially when multiple embeds compete for resources.

4. Technical Performance

Native content contributes to better Core Web Vitals – Google's page experience signals that affect your search rankings.

Embeds often cause layout shifts as they load, hurting your performance scores. Native content is also more secure, eliminating the risk of mixed content warnings when third-party embeds don't use HTTPS properly.

5. Data Ownership and Business Intelligence

With native content, you own all the attendee behaviour data. You can see exactly how people interact with your exhibitor listings, which speakers generate the most interest, and where attendees drop off in your agenda. This data is invaluable for improving future events and understanding your audience.

Embedded content often provides little to no analytics visibility, leaving you blind to crucial user behavior patterns.

6. Long-Term Value and Marketing Opportunities

Native content continues to pay dividends: it can be linked internally, reused in marketing campaigns, and analysed in your own analytics. It also creates natural opportunities for email capture through native forms and makes cross-selling related events or services much easier.

Embeds and iframes rarely give you that visibility or conversion potential.

Yes - used in the right places, embeds can add value.

• YouTube videos – Great for highlight reels or speaker interviews. They save you from hosting large video files yourself, and the videos can rank on YouTube as well as your site (expanding event discoverability).
• Eventbrite or ticketing widgets – Acceptable where you need secure payments and instant syncing (especially for smaller events). It may sit on another domain, but it reduces friction for attendees.
• Social media feeds – Keep your site looking fresh with live updates from your community.
• Interactive maps – Third-party mapping solutions often provide functionality that would be costly to build natively.

These are cases where the external platform brings something specialist (hosting, interactivity, live content) that makes sense to embed.

Using third-party event tech doesn't mean sacrificing the benefits of native content. With proper integrations, you can collect and manage data in specialist platforms - and still display it natively on your event website.

For Example: Many ASP clients use Sessionboard to manage speaker and agenda submissions. Through our integration, that data flows directly into the ASP platform and displays natively in the seminar module allowing you full control of what content you display, how it looks and where you want it across the whole event site. 

Result: Organisers keep the efficiency and workflow benefits of their chosen tools while still building SEO, domain authority and long-term value on their own site.

That's why integrations matter: they ensure your site is the single source of truth for attendees, while you remain free to use the best tools behind the scenes.

 

While embeds have their place, over-relying on them can seriously undermine your event website's effectiveness. So before you embed that exhibitor directory or speaker list, consider what you might be giving up. Here are the key risks every event organiser should understand:"

• Duplicate content – If the same embed code appears on multiple sites, Google can struggle to know which page is the "source."
• No SEO value – Especially with iframes, where Google doesn't see any real content on your site.
• Lost data – Actions inside an iframe are hard to track, so you lose visibility of what attendees are doing.
• Dependence on third parties – If their platform goes down, so does the content on your site.
• Performance issues – Multiple embeds can significantly slow page load times and hurt your Core Web Vitals scores.
• Accessibility barriers – Embedded content often doesn't work properly with assistive technologies.

From our experience, the most vital content on an event site is exhibitors, speakers, and seminars. This is the information attendees search for and engage with most. That's why it must be integrated natively.

• Your agenda should sit on your site, not an external one.
• Your exhibitor profiles should drive traffic to your domain, not someone else's.
• Your speaker content should build your site authority, not another platform's.

Put simply: don't give away your most valuable content.

If you're currently using embedded content for key information, transitioning to native doesn't have to be overwhelming. Start with your most important content - usually exhibitors and speakers - and migrate gradually. Yes, native content requires more ongoing management, but the control and long-term benefits far outweigh the additional effort.

With modern integrations, you can often maintain your existing workflows while still displaying content natively on your site.

• Use native content for your event's core: agendas, exhibitors, speakers, news. It strengthens your site, builds SEO, improves performance, and keeps the value where it belongs — with you.
• Use embeds sparingly, for rich media or specialist tools like videos, ticketing, or interactive maps where the third-party platform adds genuine value.
• Avoid iframes for written content - they deliver no SEO benefit, hurt performance, and weaken your site's long-term value.

And remember: with integrations, you don't have to choose. You can use the best event tech out there while still displaying the content natively on your site.

Your event website is your digital home. Make sure the content inside it is working for you, not someone else.

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We've just launched a major upgrade to our integrations framework, making it easier than ever to keep your content native while still using your favourite event tech tools. With hundreds of pre-built integrations and real-time data flows, you can now display exhibitor directories, speaker profiles, and agendas natively on your site - while seamlessly connecting to Salesforce, HubSpot, Sessionboard and other best-in-class platforms.

Get the best of both worlds: Native content that builds your SEO and domain authority, plus the powerful tools you already love working behind the scenes.

Contact us today for a free consultation, or request a demo to see how our integration framework can transform your event website strategy.