Frame website design (Using frames in website design) is more difficult for search engines to effectively index your website. In fact, Inktomi and AltaVista flat-out refused to index your framed site in the early days of the search.
In contrast to non-framed Web pages, which typically only include one file, framed Web pages typically contain three or more files.
Typically, a framed Web page consists of one or more files for the main body content, one or more files for the navigation, and one main file that connects the other two or more files to form the Web page (the assembler frame).
The example below demonstrates how frames operate together to generate discrete pieces of a web page, which are then stitched together by the main assembler frame page. It illustrates a straightforward framed site. For a thorough explanation, move your mouse over the various elements of the image.
In this blog provided by SEO Agency, we’ll learn more about HTML and website frames, and how it’s related to indexing in Google.
Website Frames
An Overview of Frame Website Design
In the image above, the Main Frame (or assembler) is represented by one HTML file, followed by the Navigation Frame and the Content Frame (these need not be HTML files).
When someone visits your website, they are given the option to download the Main Frame (or assembler) into their Web browser. After reading the code in that file, their browser requests the second and third files from your server again. The visitor’s browser puts the page together after receiving the extra files.
The Main Frame (assembler) file, which is used to join the frames together, is also visible to search engine spiders when they access your framed Web page.
Unfortunately, SRC attributes rather than HREF attributes were used to construct the links from the main frame page (the stitching page) to the contained frame pages (the body and navigation pages).
Therefore, the content and navigation of your frame sites won’t be visible to search engines; just the code you employ to create them will.
When we Use <NOFRAMES> Tag?
Using Web Frames in Design
The <NOFRAMES> tag can be used as a solution, but doing so requires you to maintain two versions of your website—one distributed across your Content Files and the other contained in your Main Frame files. For any modification, you make to any text on your website, that requires twice-editing your content.
Google will follow the SRC attributes on your assembly page, but that’s bad news for you. Visitors to your page will view your content but not your site navigation because none of your navigation is present in your Content Frames (you pulled it all out to put it in your Navigation Frame).
A usability nightmare, that. There is a fix for this problem as well, but it complicates your website’s usability because it sends visitors who arrive at your content pages from search engine results to numerous assembler pages.
Workaround for the <NOFRAMES> Tag
The usage of the <NOFRAMES> tag is one technique to get around the issue. By refusing to follow the SRC links, the search engines are shown what they were missing by this tag. Basically, you duplicate the information from your body and navigation frames and paste it between <NOFRAMES> and </NOFRAMES> on the main frame page.
You can allow the spiders to see what a visitor to your site would see by placing your navigation and home page content in the <NOFRAMES> tag of your Main Frame website design. By including links to other content pages on your website, you are also allowing spiders to follow those links.
Unfortunately, because you’ve stored it in your Navigation File, your content pages don’t include any navigation. Therefore, your visitors will see your content but not any of your primary navigation links, forcing them to follow the links you’ve provided in your content or putting them at a dead end. Another problem is that many users of framed websites place their corporate identification content in one frame website design to keep it permanently at the top of the page.
If you do this, visitors from search engines who land on your content pages won’t be able to see your corporate branding elements (site name, header, and logo).
There is a solution for this problem as well, but it entails adding code to each of your content frame pages so that when users access one of your content frames straight from a search engine, they are redirected to your main frame page. All search engine visitors will be automatically forwarded to your home page if you only have one Main Frame page.
They won’t appreciate that, If you want your visitors to be redirected to the page they intended to view, you will need to create a separate Main Frame page for each page of your website.
Then, for each content page, you can use a different Java redirect script. If the MainFrame page did not load the content page, the script will restart the browser with the Main Frame page so that the visitor may view the navigation and content.
Simply deleting frame website design entirely will allow the search engines to index your content as it was meant to be seen by your users, improving user experience and reducing maintenance time.
