New "Goodies" At Google
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:
Put an attractive title which contains keywords
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
Go to our home page
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.