frames

[phoenix06007]

can a website that is made in frames be optimised?

[bradbox]

Let me respond with a different question:

"Do you really need to use frames?"

Users have found them confusing, and ensuring all frames are loaded can be difficult.

[jimbeetle]

can a website that is made in frames be optimised?

Sure, in many ways optimizing a framed content page is easier than a regular page. When using frames much of the overhead such as navigation, footers and whatever else is offloaded onto pages in different frames. Therefor, the content stands alone, shouting "This is what I am about." As there's no extraneous information for an SE to see, well-written, visitor- and search engine-friendly copy tends to stand out more. Search engines love being able to know what a page is about without having to mess about too much.

There are some drawbacks to using frames. As bradbox pointed out, some visitors do find them confusing. If not well though out visitors might not be able to bookmark individual content pages or send a link to an individual page to a friend. By far the biggest concerns are making sure that the individual content pages are all spiderable and that, when a content page URL is requested, it will open in its proper frameset.

But there are solutions out there for everything. I actually rue the day I changed a framed site to standalone pages. Both visitors and the SEs loved the content pages; they were very light, fast loading, no frills, all content. I finally succumbed to the "Ooh, you use frames?" crowd and watched my rankings and traffic plummet. It literally took years of work to recover.

My bottom line advice today would be: The best bet would probably be to design light-weight, standalone pages from the start. If you do want to use frames be sure to first identify the problems and have things in place to take care of them.

[seomax]

are framed inner pages url be counted in SE or term of traffic and pr

[bradbox]

Originally Posted by jimbeetle

My bottom line advice today would be: The best bet would probably be to design light-weight, standalone pages from the start. If you do want to use frames be sure to first identify the problems and have things in place to take care of them.

Definitely agree. Nowadays there are new techniques such as Master Pages and even #include pages to avoid needing to use frames.

[JohnW]

Sometimes using frames is a key to optimization strategy, for example, for content that needs to be in many places without causing duplicate content problems for the pages that it appears on. You can take the repeated content and put it on a blocked page, then call it up with iframe - this lets you have the content in as many places as desired without it really being there.

Also, for general use:
Jimbeetle offers valuable tips worth reading a 2nd time. One thing to add is that if you use frame pages, since they can get indexed and found on their own, you need to add some scripting on them that will call up the site navigation etc. so that when a user finds it directly it will be fully functional.