Optimizing Your Frames Site for Search Engines
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In the last two articles, “Optimizing Your Flash Site for Search Engines,” and “Optimizing Your JavaScript Site for Search Engines,” we covered two specific types of web languages that make it difficult, if not impossible, for search engines to effectively crawl and index these types of websites. In this article, I’m going to cover another type of search engine unfriendly site: frames.
Because of the way frames pages are designed, search engine spiders have a very difficult time crawling these sites. Frames use client-side code, or code that is executed by the browser on a visitor’s computer, instead of executed at the server. While some search engines do okay with client-side code, for the most part, search engine spiders have a difficult time with it. Most search engine spiders completely disregard client-side coding. So if this code is required to view the proper format and layout of a page, then you can see why spiders may get “confused” with understanding a page that relies solely upon client-side code. Frames are a good example of this.
Frames sites were huge in the late ‘90’s. Frames made it easier for a webmaster to create a website from a template, or to change content of a website without having to alter navigation panes, while keeping every page within the exact design and layout of the site he or she intended. Even with the popularity of frames, it took web browsers some time to be able to render frames sites. Now, frames sites are being replaced by sites utilizing external style sheets with divisions to replace frames. However, you will still encounter frames-based websites, even if they’ve lost popularity with the web design community as a whole. CSS is still relatively a new idea to some, and others don’t want anything to do with it. It’s these webmasters who may find the learning curve of CSS too steep to tackle, or simply like the way frames make it easier for them to maintain their websites. Whatever the reason to use frames, they are slowly disappearing into obscurity. However, until the day comes when frames-based sites are not a viable option for any website owners, SEOs must consider the possibility of having to optimize those sites from time to time.
Ideally, the best way to present your website to search engine spiders is to remove it from frames entirely, but if a site must absolutely remain in frames, there are a few things you can do to help a search engine access your site.
Next: Basic Elements of Frames >>
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