20 replies to this topic

[garyhall]

That said, these are only a few pages of your site, and are not intended to rank highly in the search engines. 

Ah yes, that is the catch. I want my sites to rank high and I can't
see where frames is going to help me. BTW, I do understand the
problem of long documents, however I will use PDF files for this.

Thanks

Warm regards,

Gary

[ranch]

Hi Gary,

I wasn't aiming at starting a lengthy discussuion on whether to use frames or not. SEO-wise I'm sure frames are not an advantage, but on the other hand, so far nobody has been able to convince me (facts please), that they're a disadvantage either. That is if you know how to overcome the technical obstacles that frames certainly do pose. The question is: Why should searchengines dislike frames as long as they get some good content and a nice site to spider?

IMO using frames is mostly a design-issue. You can accomplish things that to my poor knowledge would be difficult without frames. Say you have a map in a lefthand fixed frame and a lengthy copy with a scrollbar in the righthand frame. As the map stays put you can reference locations on the map anywhere from the copy. The user can see the map all the time as he scrolls down the righthand frame. Or you can use the fixed frame for displaying slideshows relevant to some point in the copy.

In my site (now in beta-release), about a small island in Denmark, these are exactly the benefits I cherish. Visit any of the subpages to see what I mean. Slideshow = "More pictures".

Scottie points out that

A real problem is that often frames hide that additional content because people overlook the internal scroll bar.

I don't agree to that as long as the scrolling frame is the rightmost frame.

So, use frames for special purposes only, but don't fear they will severely hurt your rankings. My old (frames) site gets tons of traffic, even though it's build poorly from a technical point of view. The new site is expected to do even better. Other SEO-issues like the title-tag, copy and incoming links are a lot more important. And you don't need tricks to get high rankings with frames. Just do things right.

Henrik

[Scottie]

Great points, Henrik!

It all boils down to knowing what you are doing and having the ability to do it well.

I would never tell people any specific technology should be avoided- there are very good uses for flash and frames and dhtml and javascript and anything else you can think of. The key is knowing how to use them effectively and knowing when other solutions would be more efficient.

[Jill]

Split off the last post to its own thread.

[Aesopian]

Regarding the use of frames, I refer you to the study titled Are frames ever appropriate?

Personally, I don't like how frames work, and have yet to have a situation where I need them, though I admit they can be used well in particular situations.

[ranch]

The study mentioned has a noteworthy conclusion:

Interestingly, the participants had rather strong preferences towards the ... framed layouts

The study is based on quite a small number of participants (20), but the results are extremely significant. Assuming the study is conducted scientifically correct the conclusion will therefore hold true for internet users in general.

I too find it quite annoying when I have to scroll all the way up to see the menu.

As mentioned in the article too, frames of course must be used in a proper way, which regretably is true for very, very few of the millions of sites using frames.

The frames are not the problem, it's the people using them.