Optimizing Your Frames Site for Search Engines - Is There a Solution?
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If you are using frames, you’re probably thinking, “Great. My whole site is in frames; so now what?” Besides the obvious fact of remodeling the site so as not to use frames, are you just out of luck? Many of you developed your site in frames for a reason, and chances are you’d like to keep it that way.
Well, there are several things you can do to help a search engine robot determine the content of your pages, and what navigation links to follow.
1. Content and the use of the <noframes> tag
When older browsers couldn’t render frames pages, back when frames sites were relatively new, what did webmasters do then? They most likely used the <noframes> tag to alert people to update their browsers to be able to read frames, right? Generally, sandwiched between the <noframes> tags was a line that read something like this: “Your browser doesn’t support frames, which is why you’re seeing this message…” as show in the source code of the frameset, like the example in Figure-4.
Figure 4
Either people updated their browser to one that could read frames, or those people moved on to non-frames sites. But surely those webmasters came up with a way to keep those folks in their website, even if their browsers couldn’t render frames? You bet they did.
We don’t have this problem today, as 99% of browsers can render frames sites well. I believe the original purpose of the <noframes> tag has almost been lost. You didn’t want people to have to leave your website in search of a more browser-friendly site. So you had to have content for the non-frames visitor to see.
In SEO, we have to treat search engine spiders like people who can’t or won’t update their browsers. Since you don’t want them to move on to another site, you will have to properly use the <noframes> tag. Alerting people to get a new version of their browser was not the original reason the <noframes> tag existed. By leaving the “This site must be viewed with a frames-capable browser” line in there, the only content the spider would have to index your site is exactly “This site must be viewed with a frames-capable browser,” which is not really what you want.
Figure 5
What you need to do is put your discernable content in between your <noframes> tags, like the example of the source code shown in Figure-5. By placing your important content in between your <noframes> tags, you provide the search engines with spider food and a true description to spiders what your site is about.
Next: Navigation and the NOFRAMES Tag >>
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