By
Cassandra Tabora
Internet Marketing Specialist
Websites are a vehicle for
information. You can bookmark or print your favorite news article or even that
best-ever chocolate cake recipe. But what happens when you go to a website
where all you can seem to bookmark is the home page or print only a section of
the web page?
This is just one of the many
problems that occur when a website is designed in what are called
"frames." Using frames is a web design technique that splits a
single browser window into horizontal or vertical sections. It is a convenient
method for repeating navigation options on every page. Unfortunately, frames
hurt search engine visibility.
- Search engines including
Excite and Lycos cannot recognize sites that use frames.
- Search engines that do
recognize them often send the searcher to a page that stands alone with no
navigation or to the navigation frame itself, ultimately trapping
inexperienced web surfers on the page.
- Besides bookmarking,
frames also make printing awkward; users must first click inside the frame
they want to print.
Case Study:
While still using the frames
technique, one company we worked with made an effort to optimize every page on
their website. They utilized appropriate meta tags and page titles to enhance
their search engine listings in hopes of increasing their rankings.
We monitored their search
engine rankings in 15 major search engines for seven keywords. In May of 2001,
they had only 30 out of 105 appearances for these search terms. After a site
re-design to remove frames, they shot to 94 of 105. Of those:
- 55 top 10 rankings
- 22 top 30 rankings
- 7 top 50 rankings
- 10 top 100 rankings
In de-framing sites, another
navigation technique that avoids the use of frames is server-side include
files. These use HTML code fragments for any content that appears on every
page in the site.
Does your website use frames?
Contact Dynamics Online for more information on how
we can help optimize your website for maximum searchability and usability.
