Maximize Your Frames For Ultimate Search Engine Performance!
By Martin Lemieux
Posted Tuesday, July 20, 2004
A few years back, the "next big thing" to be was utilizing frames within your design. They would prove to be esthetically great for a design since a user wouldn't have to scroll down anymore, they could scroll though information within a window in the design.
Even the big boys of the industry tested and implemented frames right away but there was a big problem.... Search engines don't find the crutial information you want them too and here's why...
Let's say you have a page set up with 4 frames, one for the top header, one for the buttons on the left, one for the bottom and the last for the information in the middle.
For a search engine to look at one page, it would have to recognize and crawl through four pages of information just to piece together one layed-out page of your web site.
When it comes to better search engine performance, you want all search engines to find your crutial information as quickly as possible but with frames they literally have to go through a maze just to find one aspect of your business.
So if you are using frames within your design, here's the next logical step, either:
1) Re-design your site without using frames
2) Add more information built into your frames
Number 1 is pretty straight forward and I think you know what to do if you choose number 1.
Number 2 on the other hand gets a little tricky...
Assuming that you know enough about frames and that you haven't allowed users the ability to scoll down every frame, let's start to implement more information within your frames.
NOTE: For already established web sites, you want to find out what frames have been indexed 1st and which ones haven't. The ones that have been indexed 1st are the ones you will add more links to.
Aside from that, what you want to do is pre-determine and select a frame that visitors CANNOT scroll up/down or side to side. Doing this will ensure that only search engines can see your information and not the user who might wonder what in the world you are doing.
Now that you have a specific frame selected, you'll want to look at all and only your pages that have all your text information within them. You will also want to pre-determine ONE "key Phrase" that best describes each page. Ex. If I had a page about "Affordable Web Design" called: "web-design.html", I will want to write that down somewhere and keep it handy for the next step.
Take a moment to go through all your information and write down a descriptive "key phrase" and the "URL" for each page of information within your site.
Are you done? Good, let's now add this list to your site...
Going back to the "Frame" that you selected to work on, I want you to add each "Key Phrase" underneath the information that people will see. You can make it all a list of just bullet point, doesn't matter, no one will know it's there except you.
It may look something like this:
Affordable Web Design (linking to "web-design.html)
Graphic Design (linking to "graphic-services.html)
Print Ad Design (linking to "print-design.html)
Whatever you have within your site that has information, you want to add it to the frame you selected to work on.
Don't forget to test out your frame within different screen sizes as well. Sometimes if you add these links in a frame right under the cut off point, someone else with a larger screen may start to see all the links you added. Make sure to add your link phrases far down enough so that your visitors don't accidentally stumble upon them.
Once your finished adding your info, upload your new page and wait for search engines to come back to your site and find your newly found infostructure.
Please remember that search engines are getting smarter and smarter by the update, utilizing spam tactics such as key word dumping and cloaking are frowned upon and can get you banned. This tactic in it's simplicity is a way to provide search engines a road map to all your crutial key phrases and information. This is in no way a method to trick search engines nor would I even endorse such a method.
Best Of Luck To Ya!
About the Author
Martin Lemieux
Smartads - President
Affordable Web Design & Web Advertising
(http://www.smartads.info) /(http://www.smartads.ca)
Eye Catching Print Design
(http://www.3dimentionaldesign.com)
--
Marketing Tools
(http://www.smartads.info) / (http://www.thewebclinic.com)
