When it
comes to framed sites and the effect that the use of frames by a site has on its
search engine ranking, there are two schools of thought. Some people say that
framed sites, if done properly, have no problems in getting good rankings in the
search engines. Others claim that if search engine optimization is important to
you, never use frames.
In my
opinion, the truth lies somewhere in between. Yes, the use of frames does throw
up a few issues when it comes to getting good rankings in the search engines
which don't understand frames. Hence, when you are designing a new site, I would
recommend that you avoid using frames, unless you have a specific reason for
doing so. However, if you already have a site which uses frames, all is not
lost. You can still get good rankings in the search engines even though you have
used frames. Furthermore, using frames also has its own advantages when it comes
to search engine placement, as we shall later on. This article assumes that you
have a working knowledge of frames. For more information on frames, click here.
In case
your site uses frames, the key to getting good rankings lies in using the
NOFRAMES tag. The NOFRAMES tag is intended to help framed web sites display some
content for those people who are using non frames enabled browsers. The search
engines which don't understand frames also look at the NOFRAMES tag. Hence, if
you are using frames, you need to add content to the NOFRAMES tag.
What you
should do is to add a complete web page within the NOFRAMES tag. Ensure that
this page repeats the important keywords for your site a number of times. Also,
in order to ensure that the content within the NOFRAMES tag is as prominent as
possible to the search engines, you should put the NOFRAMES tag right after the
FRAMESET tag. However, don't put the NOFRAMES before the FRAMESET tag. If you do
that, Internet Explorer will display your site correctly but Netscape will
display the content present in the NOFRAMES tag, rather than the content present
within the frames. Furthermore, you should also place a link to the page
containing your navigation links in the NOFRAMES tag. This ensures that the
search engines are able to spider the internal pages in your site.
Here's
what the source code of your page might look like:
<html>
<head>
<title>Put
an attractive title which contains keywords</title>
<meta
name="description" content="Put an attractive description which
also contains keywords">
<meta
name="keywords" content="Your target keywords separated by
commas">
</head>
<frameset
border="0" cols="150,75%">
<noframes>
<body>
<h1>Heading
containing keywords</h1>
<p>Here,
you should add a lot of content and should repeat your keywords a number of
times.
<p>More
keyword rich text for the search engines.
<a href="left.html">Link
to page containing navigation links</a>
</body>
</noframes>
<frame
src="left.html" name="left" scrolling="no"
noresize>
<frame
src="main.html" name="main" scrolling="auto">
</frameset>
</html>
One
problem that occurs when you use frames is that the search engines may often
display one of the internal pages in your site in response to a query. If this
internal page does not contain a link to the home page of your site, the user
will be unable to navigate through your entire site. The solution, of course, is
to add a link to the home page from that internal page. When the visitor clicks
on that link, she is brought within the context of the frames.
However,
simply adding a link to the home page presents yet another problem. If the
visitor had already been viewing that page within the context of the frames and
then clicks on the link to the home page, a new set of frames will be created in
addition to the frames already being used. In order to solve this problem, you
have to use the TARGET = "_top" command in the link, i.e. the HTML
code for the link would be something like
<a href="index.html"
TARGET = "_top">Go to our home page</a>
Wrapping
things up:
As I
mentioned earlier, there is also an advantage to using frames. Since most
Internet users are now using frames enabled browsers, it means that not many
people are going to know what's present in your NOFRAMES tag. This allows you
the repeat your keywords a few more times in the NOFRAMES than what you could
have done if you were writing a page which humans would also see (of course,
don't repeat the keywords too many times - that can cause your web site to be
penalized for spamming). You can also avoid using tables, graphics etc. which
you would otherwise need to use if humans would also view that page. However, it
is debatable whether this small advantage is sufficient to justify using frames.
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the
most respected search engine positioning specialists on the Internet. To have
Sumantra's company place your site at the top of the search engines, go to
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/