Search engines and frames!
Get your site indexed bythe search engines, byfollowing our search engine and frames hints and tips on your site.

How to get search engines to spider your framed site!

Many search engines have difficulty indexing framed sites (Excite, Inktomi, Go, Lycos), and because of this, Internet marketeers will advise you not to use frames.

Frames can help navigation of large sites though and hence they are prolific on the Internet. So to ensure the search engine spiders index your framed site correctly, follow these simple design tips.

In the frameset (index.html) page add the <NOFRAMES></NOFRAMES> tags.

Netscape recommend placing the <NOFRAMES> tag high up in the frameset after the first or second <FRAMES> tag reference.

Inside the NOFRAMES tags you can add any standard HTML page tags you like!

But don't!

Fancy formatting of this page will be wasted effort, and will only increase the filesize. There are very few browsers that cannot handle frames these days, so this page is just for the browser stragglers. Therefore, just allow the non-frames browser to display this page using default settings.

The main use of these tags is to inform people using older browsers, to update their browser. After all, if they can connect to the Internet, they can download a modern browser!

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So what do you put inside the NOFRAMES tag?

Below is the minimum information you need on your page, to get the maximum benefit from the search engines that come to spider your site. Cut and paste it if you wish, then just alter the information to suit.

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Keyword loaded title to BRIEFLY describe your site. Use 5 to 8 words. No more</TITLE>

<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keyword,keyword phrase"> <!-- Only use a few keywords, or one keyword phrase. These should be directly relevent to the overall site topic and must appear in the paragraphs below. Many of the larger engines are ignoring this tag because too many sites use keywords that have nothing to do with the page contents. -->

<NAME="description" CONTENT="Keyword loaded description of your site that will appear under your title in the search results. 25 words or less, any more will not be shown in the search results, so choose them wisely. ">

</HEAD>

(START YOUR FRAMESET IN HERE, DEFINE SOME OF THE FRAMES AS USUAL. NOW HERE'S THE NOFRAMES PART)

<NOFRAMES>

<BODY>

<H1>Add a keyword enhanced page heading here</H1>

<P>Add your keyword enhanced condensed description of your site in here. Include what your company/site does, your products and services and other relevent material. Try to condense the main points but ensure it is still readable. Summarise in the first (keyword rich) 25 words, then expand with more text.

<P>Add another couple of paragraphs if you like, expanding on the condensed first paragraph, include additional keywords but maintain readability. These for the people who may view this page.

<P>You are viewing this page because your browser is incapable of displaying frames. Please update your browser to see our site as it should be viewed.

<P>Contact details. Add this if you wish.
<P>Address
<P>Telephone Number

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<P>The following links are for search engines only, clicking them will only bring you back here!

<a href="yourpage.html">Keyword link text</a><a href="yourpage.html">Keyword link text</a><a href="yourpage.html">Keyword link text</a><a href="yourpage.html">Keyword link text</a><a href="yourpage.html">Keyword link text</a><a href="yourpage.html">Keyword link text</a>

</BODY>

</NOFRAMES>

(CLOSE ANY STILL OPEN FRAMESETS)

</HTML>

What does it do?

The above provides the search engine spider with everything it needs to index your site.

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  • It provides meta tags that describe your site, and supplies keywords for it to be searched against.
  • The keyword enriched title and opening paragraph verify your meta tags and provide content to the page, and gives any viewers 'quick hit' information about your site.
  • Later paragraphs expand on this information and also increase keyword weighting and relevency on the page.
  • You fulfill the primary goal of NOFRAMES by advising visitors to update their web browser.
  • You give them contact information (why turn down a chance for a sale?).
  • You give the search engine spiders links to other pages on your site, therefore the other site pages gets indexed
  • The link titles give viewers hints as to what they are missing!
  • The reason you tell them not to click the links, is because you're using a javascript on your other pages to stop people viewing pages outside of the frameset. Aren't you? If you think this doesn't matter, then you probably don't need frames. Get the javascript from our scripts pages.

If you're going to use frames, use the above to help the spiders index your site! Getting it right is the difference between a few and many visitors.

If you found this useful, there are more detailed tips on site promotion (that are just as relevant to framed sites), on our page promotion tips page. Additionally, there is even more information on how web designers promote client web sites", and, how to promote your site yourself, for free, in our business information pages. These are biased towards potential clients, but you'll pick up some great tips there too!

Please let us know if you found this useful.

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