Search Engine Optimisation for Frames Websites
There have been many a time when I have come across websites being designed using “Frames” and I have had many questions from clients and workshop attendees this regarding. “Frames” were a great way of designing websites about 10 years ago when Search Engines could not read the “content” of the sites itself and only the Meta Tags. Since then, a lot of water has flown under the bridge…
Now that Search Engines can read the “content” of your site, “Frames” are one of the worst method to use in HTML as they do not show the content of the site to Search Engine spiders who feed on it in order to Index your site’s content.
There is not a massive amount of information on the web about “Frames “as not many people really care about them anymore but if you have a “Frames” website and that your day job does not involve being head down in Web optimisation this post is for you. This concise literature review should help you understand what “Frames” are, how to check if your business’ site is built with them, why they are everything but not best practice for Search Engine Optimisation and what to do about it.
What are Frames?
“Framing”, according to Wikipedia, is a method of displaying multiple HTML documents on one page. Each “Frame” displays a different HTML document. For instance, if your website is www.mywebsite.com the page you land on would be displaying more than one “HTML” page: one could be a navigation menu, and another one the content of your welcome page for instance. Now, if you display more than one page on a page, how will a Search Engine know what page you are talking about? (this will be discussed below)
As most web professionals would agree, “Frames” are an old-school HTML technique. Although they now are not as commonplace as they once were (around 2000), they are still out there. I often see them being used in Small and Medium Business’s “brochure” websites designed in the late 1990s, early 2000. I even designed a website in “Frames” myself in 2000!
How does Google index sites with Frames?
This is not from me but from Google Webmaster Help Centre on Frames directly
Google supports frames to the extent that it can. Frames can cause problems for search engines because they don’t correspond to the conceptual model of the web. In this model, one page displays only one URL. Pages that use frames display several URLs (one for each frame) within a single page. If Google determines that a user’s query matches the page as a whole, it will return the entire frame set. However, if the user’s query matches an individual frame within the larger frame set, Google returns only the relevant frame. In this case, the entire frame set of the page will not appear.
How do I know if my website has been designed in Frames?
- The easiest way is to look at the website url (www.mysite.com) - does your website URL change when you click on different categories? For instance, if you click on the “About us” or “Tariffs” button, the URL should become www.mysite.com/about-us.html or www.mystie.com/tariffs.html respectively (or something similar). If the URL remains www.mysite.com then there is a large chance your site has been built with “Frames”
- To verify this, go and view the Source Code. If you seem <frameset> tags it means your site is most probably in “Frames”
- You can also check the Document Type Definition in the Source Code. Any good webdesigner would have a document type at the top of all her HTML files. The DTD of a site designed in “Frames” should resembles this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
Now, if you have no DTD at the top of the Source Code, it does not mean that your website is not designed in “Frames”. It however could mean that you should source a new webdesigner. Believe me or not, I have seen websites designed by “webdesigners” without DTD!! According to HTML standards, each HTML document requires a document type declaration (DTD or DOCTYPE). The “DOCTYPE” begins the HTML document and tells a validator which version of HTML o use in checking the document’s syntax. An HTML validator is an online tool that checks your Web page or site to make sure all of the HTML code meets standard specifications.
Frames and Search Engine Optimisation
Using “Frames” is commonly seen by Search Engine Professional to be detrimental to your search engine ranking and is notoriously difficult to promote. Any good Web professional would know that and will therefore use better techniques. Let me explain the reason behind this:
The two most important factors in Search Engine Optimisation are:
- Structured, quality, keyword-rich content visible to Search Engine spiders
- Quality and relevant inbound links to corresponding pages on your website
Websites designed in “Frames”
- Do not make the source code (HTML) of your pages content available to anyone to see (this includes the Search Engine Spiders) but only always the same source code content (generally the navigation bar which remains the same) even though your eye sees a different content (eg: the About Us page etc). All the hard work you have put in copy-writing will not be picked up by Search Engines simply because they cannot “see it”! Now, this is rather concerning when you think that the latest statistics reveal that 97% of online purchases started with a Search Engine.
- Do not allow other websites to link to a specific page on your site - very concerning as well as inbound links (backlinks) to your site are one of the single most important aspect in getting better Search Engine rankings.
Now, I often hear my clients tell me the following about their Frames website:
… I have a “Frames” website and I can show you that it has been Indexed in Google. When I search for it on Google I find it in the first pages…
That is correct, the index.html page (the first page you land on when you access the website eg: www.mywebsite.com) has most probably been indexed but all the other pages most probably haven’t. You can check which pages of your websites have been indexed by Google using this command: site:www.mywebsite.com - you will soon see that if you click on every single one of them you will most probably never reach your content’s pages… Whatever your web developper tells you, your “Package” page offering all those great Unique Selling Point of your Bed and Breakfast is never going to be indexed in Google and will therefore never show when a potential client searches for it. Not only that page, but your whole site if that client does not use the keywords in your page title (read below).
Other business owners also tell me :
… but when we type our main keywords (often found in the page title - which is the same one throughout all the site by the way … first SEO mistake) our site does appear on Google - so what are you talking about Fabie?…
That is correct. The site ranks for these keywords. Let me tell you why. Imagine you own the “PLUM BEACH Bed & Breakfast” in Plum Beach
- www.plumbeachbedandbreakfast.com.au
- Website Title: Plum Beach Bed and Breakfast
- Keywords typed in Google Search Box: Bed and Breakfast in Plum Beach
Now, can you see a pattern in the dot points above? I purposely called the town “Plum Beach” as it is not a very competitive name and what are the chanced of there being more than one “Plum Beach” towns on this planet? This is the case of small tourism areas in Australia as well.
Once can affirm that it is totally normal in a non-competitive environment that the rankings on Google are going to be relatively high for these key terms as long as your competitors haven’t yet realised they could be making much more money by maximising their online presence.
The high rankings in Google are most probably merely due to the fact that:
- The keywords are in the URL
- The keywords are in the Page Title tag
Now, if you are happy with your website being visible ONLY on your page title keywords, having a very low Google Page Rank, not being visible to all the rest of people searching for you on different terms and not getting inbound links to relevant pages because it is simply technically impossible with “Frames”, well that’s fine …
Once all your competitors have implemented an SEO strategy and are ranking higher than you on Google and that you drop off the Search Engine Results Page radar and lose 50% of your bookings to your competitors, well, that suddenly becomes a radically different story and you might want to re-think your web strategy…
SEO Workarounds for “Frames” websites
What do I do for my webpage to still get indexed with Frames? Unless a webpage which used frames contains relevant content in the <noframes> tag, it is unlikely to get indexed. What is even worse is if this page does get indexed and your web users find you through a search engine, they will usually be taken to one of the pages within the “Frame”. This page will probably be a content page with no navigation (as navigation is normally contained in a separate “Frame”) and, therefore, there is unfortunately no way for the user to move to any other page on the site! Is that what you would really like when you have put a lot of effort in marketing your site?
As you would have guessed, there is not much literature on how to optimise framed sites as they are becoming extinct. Any knowledgeable webdesigner will tell you that “table-less CSS” is the way to go and that “Frames” have been history for a while now. With all the SEO issues associated to them it is now cheaper to get your site re-coded than to try and play around at getting your “Frames” to be SEO friendly!
However, what you can do is use the <noframes> tag. The <noframes> tags displays text for browsers that do not handle “Frames”. Putting your “content” pages text in the <noframes> tag (if used adequately) will also let search engine spiders know what your site is about! However, the <noframes> tag goes inside the <frameset> element. This is worth mentioning as I have seen more than one website where the <noframes> tag was outside the <frameset>, which is basically pointless!
How can I learn more?
Very good illustrated example of proper use of Frames by one of the web gurus: Danny Sullivan
Frames explained by the World Wide Web Consortium (international web standards body)
How to get a Framed website indexed by Search Engines?
Google Analytics for Frames Websites
I hope this review has been useful to you and your small and medium business and that you now have a better knowledge of “Frames”. I have been wanting to write this post for a while now as I have come across too many ill-informed consumers. Thanks for reading until the end and I welcome your comments and suggestions!
December 27th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Frames are definately a thing of the past. I used them previously but now they are not the best way to optimise your site. I agree with Fabienne on this topic.
Scott Wintle
Graphic/Web Designer
February 12th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
[...] validated :-( One of the websites was done using Frames and you can read my blog article about frames search engine optimisation should you wish to gain a bit more knowledge on the matter. We also discussed inbound links and how [...]