Avoid Pitfalls with Frames
While frames make Web site designing
and navigation of a site a bit easier, they wreak havoc on
your Web site's ranking in the search engines for two reasons:
1. Half of the search engines cannot read
the content contained in frames.
2. Frames increase the file size, the
number of total words that make up the Web site, and thereby
can decrease keyword weight.
These non-frames capable search engines
view the Web site just as if you were viewing your site with
an outdated browser. This is evidenced by the large numbers
of search engines that return listings like this:
Used-PCs.com
is your webstore for Used PCs and PC parts.
This web page uses frames; You'll need Netscape or IE 2.0
or better to view them.
98% http://www.used-pcs.com/
(Size 1.3K)
What happened here??!?? This is how this
great company that sells used Pentiums, and operates an otherwise
high-quality Web site is listed in one particular search engine.
How come? Simple, the search engine's spider couldn't read
frames. Therefore, it only read the contents of the <NOFRAMES>
tag - and it wasn't very compelling. This information is returned
to browsers that are not frames capable instead of just returning
a jumbled page. Unfortunately, the text in the <NOFRAMES>
tag is often instructions to the reader that they need a frames
capable browser to view the site properly.
So, how do you overcome this problem?
First, if at all possible, do not design your Web site with
frames. In my opinion, only very large, very complex sites
with many menu options and levels truly need frames.
If you insist on using frames, take measures
to ensure that your page can be indexed by the major search
engine's spiders. You can accomplish this by carefully using
the <NOFRAMES> tag. Also, don't forget effective site
titles and meta tags. Just because you're using frames doesn't
mean you should leave out other essential elements of the
page design.
It's really quite simple. You must create
an alternate Web page within the <NOFRAMES> tag such
that search engines have something to index. Compose a complete
HTML Web page between the <NOFRAMES> and its end tag,
the </NOFRAMES> tags and make sure you include the NOFRAMES
tag immediately below the very first frameset tag, because,
as always, you want the keyword rich text to appear as close
to the top of the page as possible like so:
<FRAMESET COLS="125,*" border="0">
<NOFRAMES>
<BODY>
<H1>I'll start the content in my
NOFRAMES tag with a header tag</H1>
<P>In the copy you can include all
the text and HTML that would otherwise make up your Web site.
Here's a link to another page, maybe one that would make up
another frame:
<A HREF="http://www.yourcompany.com/otherpage.htm">Click
to link to another page</A>
<P>
And here's some more text for the search
engines to index
</BODY>
</NOFRAMES>
<FRAME SRC="html/lftmenu.htm"
NAME="frame517420" MARGINWIDTH=3 SCROLLING=NO NORESIZE>
<FRAME SRC="html/main.html"
NAME="main" SCROLLING=YES>
</frameset>
The preferred method is to include all
the information from the other framed pages on this new, separate
page contained in the <NOFRAMES> tag. When you design
this new Web page within the <NOFRAMES> tag, make sure
you include links to other pages in your site so that the
search engine can Spider to those pages and index them as
well.
Make sure <NOFRAMES> follows the
<FRAMESET> tag. Moving it up higher in the page such
as in the <HEAD> section could make your wording more
prominent to the search engine but would be incompatible with
some browsers.
Since the extra tags to set up frames
may dilute the density of keywords versus other words on the
page, you should definitely consider creating optimized static
HTML pages as an alternative for engines and browsers that
do not support frames. These pages would not use frames at
all, but would serve as pointers to your main site that uses
frames. This solution can provide the best of both worlds.
About Article.
This article is copyrighted and has been
reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers
of WebPosition Gold.
FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO industry with the
introduction of the first product to track your rankings on
the major search engines and to help you improve those rankings.
A free
trial of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web
site.
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