ARTICLES FOR WEBMASTERS
Why Frames are Deadly in SEO
Chances are, if you've done much work as a webmaster, you know a little
bit about frames. As the name indicates, a frame page is an HTML
code that frames other pages. It looks quite nifty on a website,
and, once you have the coding down pat, it isn't that difficult to set
up. So what's the problem?
The problem, at least from a search engine's point of view, is that
there's nothing there to see, and certainly nothing to index.
That nifty little code you used to create the webpage is the only thing
the search engine will see. From a spider's point of view,
there's nothing there. There's just some code; no real content.
There are ways to work around the problem, such as, for example, using
the <noframes> tag. But by the time you've created content
for the <noframes> tag, you might as well have created the entire
site without the frames to begin with. In the long run, it would
have been easier. Instead of creating site + <noframes>
content, you could have simply created a website without frames, and
saved yourself the trouble.
And the question arises: is it really worth it? Granted, frames
look nifty and are fun to play around with. But ninety-nine times
out of a hundred, there is some other way of working your webpage so
that the frames aren't really necessary.
If frames are necessary, then create optimized content for your
<noframes> tag that search engines will be able to read and
index. Pay close attention to your TITLE and META tags, since
these and the <noframes> tag are the only things search engines
will be able to use. It's much more work than creating a straight
HTML site would be, and your site will probably never rank as high as
it would if it were straight HTML.
If you have the option, avoid frames. They simply aren't worth
the extra effort required for good SEO.
Recent articles:
|