Are you built for search engines? – Part I
Well? Are you? Meaning your site. Take a moment and think about it. If your site does not use Frames, Flash, Javascript, Image Maps, or Dynamic URLs, pat yourself on the back. You have a site that welcomes search engines with open arms.
Unfortunately for some of you there are some site design/set up issues that can make it very difficult for the search engines to list your web pages no matter how well you optimize and submit them. I’ve listed them here, before you get into optimization, to hopefully save you from trying to list a site that that will be very difficult to get listed. Almost everything can be fixed or worked with one way or another before you submit. The most common problems are sites that use:
• Frames
• Dynamic URLs
• Flash
• Image Maps for navigation
• Javascript for navigation
In Part I of this article, we’ll talk about Frames:
The problem is that search engines do not index framed sites very well. In fact, the search engines do such a poor job of indexing frames that I recommend redesigning your site without them if you want to get good listings in the search engines.
Now, if your site must use frames there are some tips I recommend you implement to make sure that you get the best listings you can even with frames.
The problem:
A frame is exactly what the name conveys – they are an HTML page that “frames” other HTML pages. Now, the problem arises when you go to submit. In most cases a framed site will only have one page you can submit, the home page. Since your site uses frames the home page actually has nothing that the search engine can use (i.e. page copy) to determine how to list your site. Why? Because your home page is actually a frameset which does not have any real content. Here’s an example that should help you see what we mean. Keep in mind this code is what the search engines see:
I can’t explain everything about frames here, but you should easily be able to see in the above example that their is no real content for the search engine to use to determine how to list your site. All that is there is HTML code. The result is a framed site will often not get listed at all, and if it does it will usually be listed very poorly.
The solution:
While the best solution is to get rid of your frames, I realize that can’t always be done. The next best thing you can do to improve your results is to use the:
</pre> <p>tag within your frameset. This tag was originally used for displaying content to people using older web browsers that did not support viewing frames. While just about all web browsers now support frames the noframes tag can still be used for content that will help your framed site get listed. In addition, you should also implement the best title tag and meta tags that you can.</p> <p><strong>Where it belongs:</strong></p> <p>The noframes tag belongs just before the frameset tag for your frameset, as you can see below in red:</p> <pre> <html> <head> </head> <frameset cols="150,*"> <frame name="contents" target="main"> <frame name="main"> <noframes> Your optimized page content gets added here.