Forum Moderators: phranque
In a recent case the customer has a very large and well designed (usability and good looking) frames site that they have spent a ton of money on. How would you proceed in this case to optimize for Google?
Not sure wether this is ethical but i did it anyway.
Hope that helps.
:)
1. Deframe the site
2. Create several optimized pages and express-submit those
3. Optimize existing pages (if you're just focusing on Google, remember that Google spiders framed pages)
4. Use the NOFRAMES tag heavily
5. Tell them it will cost a lot less if they deframe it first
Be sure that you don't trap visitors in your framed content (when Google sends them to the content frame). Either reload the page inside the frame using Javascript, or provide a navigation link that will load the frames if the user clicks on it.
Went to have another look at a framed company site that I've been watching for a couple of years (and *coff* *coff* slagging off fairly regularly because of the frames)..... and found the whole site was now indexed by G, despite the no frames tag not being used.
I went over it with a fine tooth comb, and couldn't find an unframed sitemap or anything to indicate that the designers had done anything to help G along.
Perhaps frames aren't quite the bogeyman they used to be?
NB: as rogerd says, very important to codethe pages so that the frames are restored when G takes you to an internal page.. most of the pages on this site had been done, but a few pages were still orphaned.
It's odd, Google seems to deprecate no frames content but treats the default frameset pages as separate pages that can appear in serps by themselves, even the page in a left/nav frame. I think Inktomi and Fast can better read it and treat frameset document and default framed pages as one which means you can pack an awful lot into your 'home' page as a result- no frames tag, plus however many default framed pages there are.
Have never had a problem with pages not being found/spidered. Initially made a big site map linkded to from no frames area but all but Fast ignored it as all my links are plain html.
Frames are limiting in a design sense definitely esp. if you want to avoid ugly scroll bars in left frame and I sometimes wonder if could be doing better without them but so far can't really complain.
www.widgits.com/index.htm (Main Frameset)
www.widgets.com/blue-widgets/index.htm (Frameset)
www.widgets.com/red-widgets/index.htm (Frameset)
I also made sure that content pages were able to stand on their own without the frameset. I included links to each of the sub-directory framesets in the bottom navigation element.
If you can break the home page out of framesets, I think you'll be that much further ahead. Then take your main categories and make a sub-directory for each one along with a frameset for each one. Link to all of the individual framesets from the home page.
Most people will make one frameset and then call all pages into that one frameset. I like working with multiple framesets and treating each one as a separate entity within the entire structure of the site. It works!
Personally I don't like frames. Always unanswered questions, and a lot of work. But some clients insist - baahhh.
How does G handles those f***, 'always welcome' frames? Don't understand my logs concerning this - maybe not enough frame sites.
Focus is listing for keywords /-phrases. Obvious :-)
Thanks for hints.
