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Frames
and Search Engines
Teacher: Sumantra
Roy
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, go to http://www.webreference.com/dev/frames/
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 browsers
which don't understand frames. 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.
About the teacher:
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/ For
more advice on how you can take your web site to the top of the
search engines, subscribe to his FREE newsletter by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/newsletter.htm
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