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Some time ago some gentlemens abused framed sites possibilities and got penalised. There is still legitimate use of NOFRAMES tags. It is not automatically spotted as spam.
A framed site still can legitimatly get pretty decent listings.
There is 2 rules :
1 make sure you have decent NOFRAMES content on any frameset.
2 make sure framed pages open in the right frameset, providing visitors with all they need to see the rest.
If you have any question about the technical aspect, please consult the site search tool first. There is a lot about it in the database.
More importantly, treat your framed content pages like standalone pages with appropriate titles, etc., and provide a navigation option for users who reach that page directly. On some sites I use a javascript to load the frameset if a user reaches an unframed content page. The content pages can actually do well, most likely because they often lack the navigation and boilerplate content that the "complete" page must carry.
Could be in handy generic javascript coding [webmasterworld.com]
The framed pages did very well in the search engines. The key is to have navigation of the framed pages as well as the frameset, this helps the bots index your intire site.
On a side note the script works great on keeping sites from framing you. It sees the wrong type of frameset and loads a new one!
Let's say you represent 20 apparel manufacturers. Each one of them have an online catalog for their distributors. The manufacturers brands are well known so brand name searching is a consideration in the structure.
For discussion sake, I will name the manufacturers a, b, c, etc. Before I go any further, I would never suggest anything more than 2 frames. The scenarios would typically be; left navigation, right content, or top navigation, bottom content. I'm going to use a left nav/right content for this scenario.
Before developing any of the framesets, you need to have a well thought out directory structure. For this example we are going domain/sub/ and no further with pages containing content. Images and other supporting files will go further. Okay, I have manufacturer "a", I'm going to give them their own sub-directory...
domain/a/
Within that sub-directory, I will have other subs called...
domain/a/css/
domain/a/images/
domain/a/javascript/
domain/a/navigation/
Then I will have my main content pages in the sub-directory itself...
domain/a/index.htm
domain/a/main.htm
domain/a/about.htm
domain/a/contact.htm
domain/a/faq.htm
The index.htm is my main frameset. The main.htm is my main frameset content page. The left frameset will be populated with a left.htm navigation from the a/navigation/ sub.
My "a" manufacturers distributor home page will fill the right content frame on load along with the left navigation which usually contains links to the other manufactuers catalogs.
I will take the about.htm content and rework that with some new content and add that to the noframes tag. If there are any users left out there who have a browser that does not support frames, this addresses that issue and also provides content for indexing spiders.
I will also include bottom navigation for those pages within the manufacturers sub-directory. This is done to insure that the pages can stand alone and that a user can make it back into a frameset with one click.
I should point out that the left navigation frame is very important in this structure. It contains links to each of the manufacturers framesets. They might look like this...
domain/a/index.htm
domain/b/index.htm
domain/c/index.htm etc...
I do use absolute URL paths for all navigation elements, its habit now. All links are appropriately named and theme targeted.
You repeat this process for each manufacturer. You will end up with many framesets depending on the number of items you are going to segment. Some may say that you've created a nightmare, but, if you do it correctly, it can turn into a dream!
Last but not least, I would not recommend framesets for main root level pages. There should be a static site powering the framesets. All power pages go at the root level...
domain/index.htm
domain/contact.htm
domain/faq.htm etc...
domain/a.htm
domain/b.htm
domain/c.htm
You'll need to be sure that you provide a directory page (or site map) for your visitors. This would be a page that categorizes the manufacturers and gives a brief description of the content and a link to the main frameset. Those framesets and all pages within the structure need to be linked logically and without error.
<edit>Typos</edit>
[edited by: pageoneresults at 6:19 am (utc) on Nov. 21, 2002]
can you explain to us in the same amazing explantion how you would that to your example...?
In a page that should be framed:
1) it the top.location is the same as the document.location, we are broken, so we will forward to index.html?target=thispage.html
In the index page:
1) Dynamically write your frameset:
a) <Script>...document.writeln("<frameset...
b) Read in the parameter passed (target) and write this into the relevant frame command
2) Non-dynamics also
a) <Noscript><frameset... with default pages and details
