Problems 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 that I'll fill with keywords</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:</P>

<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 Doorway pages. 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.