Can I use Frames with Search Engine Visibility

Can I use Frames with Search Engine Visibility?

Because search engines cannot read and crawl the body contents and links of Websites that are built with frames, framed Websites usually don't score high in search engine rankings. If your website uses frames, the page should include a Noframes tag that will provide alternate content for search spiders and browsers that do not support frames.

The Noframes tag may contain a simple message and a link to a no-frame alternate Website. Or, the tag can contain the entire HTML code, including links and body content, for the alternate Website. The latter option secures that visiting search spiders can crawl the entire Website, including all in- and external Website links.

See below for an example of frameset content. In this case, the frameset points to three frames: Header, FrameOne, FrameTwo:

<html>
<head>
<title>Site Title</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-style-type" content="text/css">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html">
<meta name="description" content="Site description;">
<meta name="keywords" content="keywords">
<frameset> border="0" rows="100,*">
<frame name="header" noresize src="Header.htm">
<frameset cols="100,8*">
<frame name="navigation" noresize src="FrameOne.htm">
<frame name="content" noresize src="FrameTwo.htm">
</frameset>
</frameset>
</html>

The Noframes Solution

An alternative to omitting frames is to add a Noframes tag to the master frameset page. While spiders cannot crawl framed websites, they can read the contents of a Noframes tag. The Noframes tag enables the website developer to create an alternate no-frame version of a framed website. When a search engine — or browser that cannot read frames — comes across a framed Website, it will instead read or display the contents of the Noframes tag.

The Noframes tag may contain a simple message and a link to a no-frame alternate Website. Or, the tag can contain the entire HTML code, including links and body content, for the alternate Website. The latter option secures that visiting search spiders can crawl the Website in its entirety, including all in- and external Website links.

Placing the Noframes Tag

The Noframes tag should be placed inside the Frameset tag. See example below.

<html>
<head>
<title>Site Title </title>
<meta http-equiv="content-style-type" content="text/css">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html">
<meta name="description" content="Site description">
<meta name="keywords" content="keywords">
<frameset> border="0" rows="100,*">
<frame name="header" noresize src="Header.htm">
<frameset cols="100,8*">
<frame name="navigation" noresize src="FrameOne.htm">
<frame name="content" noresize src="FrameTwo.htm">
<noframes>
<body>
<h1>Page headline</h1>
<p>Page body</p>
</body>
</noframes>
</frameset>
</frameset>
</html>

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