Frames

Is your website built using frames?
One way to check, is to click on the links in your navigation & look at the address bar, does this change from www.yourwebsite.com to www.yourwebsite.com/about-us.htm for example? If not, then this is a sign that your site may be using frames.

To be sure, view your source code (click "view" in your browser tool bar, then "page source") and press control & F to bring up the "find" box, then type "frameset". If you find frameset in the code, then your site is using frames.

Using frames allows data from various pages to be displayed within the same browser window. There are various reasons a web designer may decide to use frames from a design perspective - but they're a big problem if you want people to find your website on the search engines.
Frames make the content of websites virtually invisible to search engines, as when the bots crawl the site they cannot see the content, so most of the content within frame based websites is never crawled.

Aside from content, getting back links to relevant pages of your site (known as deep back linking) is also extremely important in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO). It can boost your site to gain links to individual pages within your site, but with frames this becomes a lot harder. Why? Because people linking to your site won't know the individual URL to link to, and may simply choose not to link to you at all.

So what can you do if you already have a site based on frames? The best option is to get your site redesigned. This will also help to avoid usability issues which stem from the use of frames and can often deter visitors from visiting your site. Having a well-designed, search engine friendly site won't just improve your search engine rankings; it'll also help improve conversions once the visitors are there.

If your site is built using frames - or any other obstacle to search engine traffic, speak to us about re-designing your website to be more search engine (and user) friendly.