The INTco.biz Search Engine FAQ
Search Engines and Frames
A web directory, purporting to provide search engine optimisation advice, recently stated "Search engine software can't read the page content of websites that use frames ........."
Sorry, but this is wrong! Completely incorrect information!
It is a fact that Frames has received a bad press in terms of search engine performance. But the fault is not Frames. It is the fact of lack of attention to detail in the coding of the main frames page.
In some cases this may be due to lack of knowledge - but in others it's plain lazyness !
How often, in search engine results, have you seen the term "This website has been designed in frames but your browser does not support them".
This is the <noframes> area of a Frames website - and such a statement simply tells you that no attention has been paid to the importance of this area for both search engine and accessibility purposes.
There are two main issues with frames sites:
- The need to ensure that search engine spiders can find their way inside the site to index all the other pages
- The fact that Frames contents pages will generally be presented in search engines as "orphan" pages, i.e. pages which do not have navigational features on them which enable people to find their way into the full website.
With proper awareness, both of these issues can be overcome and Frames based sites can function well in search engine results.
Web developers tend not to be using Frames as a main design feature of today's websites. However, a variation of Frames, known as inline frames - or iframes - is being fairly extensively used. With iframes spidering is not such a big issue, but orphan pages is probably a greater issue - but only if there is no attention paid to this issue.
Want assistance in making your frames site search engine friendly? Contact INTco.biz - we can help.