Optimising a Framed Site

Whether or not to use frames when building a site has been an argument for many web developers and designers, almost since frames were introduced. The result of using frames is that in most cases it makes the site easy to update and make changes to. Although, the use of scrollbars often gives an outdated and sometimes unprofessional appearance.

You can usually tell that a site is "framed" when the left-hand navigation bar stays still while the information in the center of the page scrolls. Alternatively, there might be a logo or some navigation at the top that stays still while the rest of the page scrolls.

Whenever frames are mentioned while discussing a website achieving a high ranking in the search engines or search engine optimisation, it is basically considered a lost cause. While search engines are capable of navigating the frames, the FRAMESETs are essentially empty pages leading to a dilution in the overall value of your site.

Here's a simple explanation as to why many framed sites fail to rank well on search engines that use spiders. If you look at the HTML code of a typical framed site, you will usually see the TITLE tag, the META tags, and then a FRAMESET tag — and that's about it! Usually what happens is that the spiders will go past most of this information and attempt to investigate the content, however, the problem is that the content is usually on another page and the search engines spiders must crawl through several other pages before they find it. The result is that the search engines will believe that there is very little content in proportion to the amount of pages in your site.

Do not despair! There is an HTML tag called the NOFRAMES tag, which, when used properly, gives the search engine spiders the information they need to index your page correctly. I believe it was designed to give frames-incapable browsers — early versions of browsers that cannot read or interpret the FRAMESET tags — the ability to "see" the information on a framed site.

Unfortunately, too many sites that utilise this NOFRAMES tag put the following words into it: "You are using a browser that does not support frames. Update your browser now to view this page." It might as well say we have no interest in being found in the search engines for relevant keywords regarding our site, because that will be the end result. It is essential that the right information be found when the spiders reach this point.