duplicate content concerns

[jessicalydias]

I'm working on seo for a company with a flash frames site and an html site. I am currently working on a non frames html site as well to completely do away with frames. However, frames are necessary for the flash site, so I need two pages of content. One with the navigation and one without. Will this definitely have a negative effect on rankings? And if so, is there any way around it?

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

[Jeff Martin]

Using frames can hinder a site's ability to rank well. You say that frames are necessary for the Flash site. Are saying this because you want to use one file for the navigation and have that as a frame on each page? There are other solutions if thats the case.

[jessicalydias]

Thanks for the prompt response. Designers are currently working on a new Flash navigation to avoid using frames, but the HTML non frames site will be implemented before the Flash site. Either way, to have a complete non Flash site will still require pages with the same content, but of course one with a Flash navigation and the other with an HTML navigation.

I'm debating suggesting to just retire the Flash site altogether, but it is one aspect of the site that distinguishes it from others.

[Jeff Martin]

I would avoid an all Flash site. The best practice is to have flash elements. I advise against a Flash navigation unless there is some functionality which is crucial that cannot be done by usign CSS. A Flash navigation or embedded content in Flash will of no value from an SEO perspective. I do have clients that have flash navigations and headers that do rank because we have proper footer links throughout the site and their content is normal text and they rank well for competitive terms.

It was unclear why you would still need to use frames. If your site is static then I would recommend going over to .shtml extensions to allow for server side includes. This way you dont use frames and have one file for your navigation that is used throught the site.

[Marcia]

If you use SSI (or PHP includes) add a file handler to .htaccess to allow the current file extensions (htm or html) to be parsed for SSI (or PHP). That way you won't have to have new file extensions for all the site's pages.