Can Pages Within a Frameset Rank High in Google?

[egomaniac]

I am optimizing a site for a client. The site was originally built (by another designer) using a frameset to encase all of the interior pages. The purpose of this frameset is to enable an exit popup once the user leaves the site from any page. The frameset serves no other purpose - looking at the site, you wouldn't know that it is framed.

In optimizing the site, I originally was planning to get rid of the frameset as I have always read that frames are bad for SEO. However I have noticed that Google indexes all of the target pages within this site. So I started thinking, "Hey, maybe Google is so cool that I won't need to get rid of the frameset".

I have free reign to optimize all of the interior target pages - Title Tags, H1, H2 Tags, Body text, etc. And I plan to link between pages using descriptive text links with the keyword phrase in them. In other words these pages will be exactly the same as if the frameset were never there.

So my question is this: Will optimized pages linked from within a frameset rank equally as high as pages linked off of a standard domain root page?

[indigojo]

Get rid of them completely, we did, at considerable expense. Switching to server side includes has paid dividends, theres now no way to get into our site now without all of the branding intact and its paid off with Google, sessions, revenue the lot. FRAMES AAAAAHHH!!

[Robert Charlton]

>>Will optimized pages linked from within a frameset rank equally as high as pages linked off of a standard domain root page?<<

I'd just done a search where the framed page ranks higher than our optimized frameset... both targeted for the same terms, with the frameset more focused. Can't comment on "equally," but this example suggests... on Google at any rate... that framed pages can do OK.

That said, if the only purpose of the frameset is for an exit pop-up, I'd get rid of the frames.

[egomaniac]

Thanks Robert & indigojo.

Thanks for the example Robert. That gives some proof to what I am looking for.

Here's another thought from a PR analysis point of view. The root index page of the site is the frameset. The root index page is getting all of the inbound PR (because inbound links are pointing only at the domain root - there are no inbound links directly to interior pages).

The frameset root index page is then passing on all incoming PR to the target page of frameset, which in this case is the visible "home page" of the site.

I am wondering how much if any PR loss there is (If any) due to the PageRank dampening factor as the PR is passed from the frameset to its single interior target?