No popular websites use frames and neither should you. Yes, they provide some
degree of navigational ease and yes there are workarounds but search engines
simply cannot properly crawl framed sites. In addition, visitors can’t bookmark any
interior pages of your site or link to them. There are some that still beat this dead
horse but framed sites simply have too many negatives to contend with. Don’t do it.
Same goes for sites whose entire home page is a Flash movie. How many times
have YOU actually watched a Flash movie when arriving on a home page? If you are
like most, you’ve clicked “Skip Intro” as quickly as possible. We are all busy and to
wait for a gratuitous Flash movie to download is downright annoying – especially
each and every time we visit the site. The only people who care about Flash are
Adobe, the Flash developer that you paid, and the CEO or Marketing Director who
enjoys it for the coolness factor. Google can index Flash somewhat successfully, but
this doesn’t mean it’s going to boost your page ranking or increase sales.
If you must use Flash, confine it to a small location on your page or provide a link to
it. Flash movies that take up the entire web page do have their uses but the home
page is not one of them. If you do use Flash on a page, make sure to add the
following code:
<NOEMBED>My keyword-rich content</NOEMBED>
Pay Attention To Your Dynamic Page URLs
Many sites today display content dynamically from a database. Common examples
include search engines on a site that return directory pages, product pages,
shopping cart pages, or news articles. Some content management software also
produces pages with dynamic URLs. All dynamic pages can be identified by the “?”
symbol in the URL, such as
http://www.mysite.com/products.php?id=1&style=a
Google can crawl and index dynamic pages as long as you don’t have more than 2
parameters in the URL (the example above has two parameters separated by the “&”
symbol). Even so, Google may not spider your dynamic pages for some time.
Spiders do not want to get caught in a loop of trying to index hundreds of thousands
of potential pages.
Google will not follow links that contain session IDs embedded in them.
degree of navigational ease and yes there are workarounds but search engines
simply cannot properly crawl framed sites. In addition, visitors can’t bookmark any
interior pages of your site or link to them. There are some that still beat this dead
horse but framed sites simply have too many negatives to contend with. Don’t do it.
Same goes for sites whose entire home page is a Flash movie. How many times
have YOU actually watched a Flash movie when arriving on a home page? If you are
like most, you’ve clicked “Skip Intro” as quickly as possible. We are all busy and to
wait for a gratuitous Flash movie to download is downright annoying – especially
each and every time we visit the site. The only people who care about Flash are
Adobe, the Flash developer that you paid, and the CEO or Marketing Director who
enjoys it for the coolness factor. Google can index Flash somewhat successfully, but
this doesn’t mean it’s going to boost your page ranking or increase sales.
If you must use Flash, confine it to a small location on your page or provide a link to
it. Flash movies that take up the entire web page do have their uses but the home
page is not one of them. If you do use Flash on a page, make sure to add the
following code:
<NOEMBED>My keyword-rich content</NOEMBED>
Pay Attention To Your Dynamic Page URLs
Many sites today display content dynamically from a database. Common examples
include search engines on a site that return directory pages, product pages,
shopping cart pages, or news articles. Some content management software also
produces pages with dynamic URLs. All dynamic pages can be identified by the “?”
symbol in the URL, such as
http://www.mysite.com/products.php?id=1&style=a
Google can crawl and index dynamic pages as long as you don’t have more than 2
parameters in the URL (the example above has two parameters separated by the “&”
symbol). Even so, Google may not spider your dynamic pages for some time.
Spiders do not want to get caught in a loop of trying to index hundreds of thousands
of potential pages.
Google will not follow links that contain session IDs embedded in them.
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