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eMarketing Resources Frames or tables - or CSS: The layout of your website and the way it is created is another factor that can either boost or reduce your search engine success. Here at the APG site, I've decided to use a table-based layout, which is usually considered something both human visitors and search engines can appreciate. However, it is not the only method available and all of them have their pro's and con's. Tables You see, most search engines consider the text at the very top of the page to be more important than the one at the middle. This sounds a bit odd, but it's actually a very reasonable assumption. Take a look at some of the pages on this site for example; if you begin reading from the top, it won't take long before you've got a general idea about the contents of the page. But if you start from the middle, it will take on average substantially longer to determine what subject is being discussed. So, if your menu pushes the actual
content of your page downwards in your source code, the search engine
will have difficulty determining what your page is about, which
might cause your ranking to drop. However, fortunately there is
a solution to this problem that allows you to use tables, keep your
menu on the left and please the search engines at the same time.
If you plan to use tables, I recommend using the table trick. If you already have a site that uses frames, or if you just are determined to use them, it would be a good idea to implement a few website optimization tricks to prevent some of the most common problems. To begin with, use a <NOFRAMES> tag on your frameset page. In it, have a simplified version (less graphics, no Flash, no JavaScripts etc.) of the content page your frameset points to and links to all of your other content pages. By having a good NOFRAMES tag, you'll make it easier for the search engines that can't read framesets to index your pages. As an added bonus, the NOFRAMES tag enables those who are using browsers that can't read frames to access your site. However, there's another serious problem caused by frames that can't be solved with the NOFRAMES tag. Usually, a typical design that uses frames has the site navigation in one frame and the content in another. After submitting your content pages to the search engines, they will eventually be indexed and hopefully start receiving visitors. The trouble is that when someone arrives directly to one of the content pages, the navigation frame will not load. This can deter visitors from venturing further to your site and thus reduce the usefulness of the traffic sent to you by the search engines. While this is a difficult situation, there are things you can do to correct it. The simplest of them is to install the following JavaScript to all of your content pages:
As long as you remember to place the name of your frameset page into the script, you can get it to work simply by cut 'n pasting it to between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags in your HTML. However, as mentioned above, it would be best to spend some extra time and place the script in an external file instead. So, what will the script do? Quite simply, it'll check whether the frameset is loaded and if not, it will load it. This will give the visitors who arrive directly to your content pages the opportunity to see your navigation menu and thus browse your site. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, the script is not as good as it seems. If you point it to your entry frameset page, you'll notice that while it loads the navigation, it will also load your homepage. You've given the visitor a possibility to navigate your site, but in turn, you're redirecting him to a page that might be completely different from the one he found in the search engine. This is in my opinion better than doing nothing, but it is still a very unsatisfactory solution. Luckily, there are some more refined ways of handling the issue with JavaScript. They'll require a bit more effort and skill, but can deliver both the navigation menu and the correct page to the user at the same time. While these scripts have their own problems, such as not being 100% valid HTML code, they're far superior to any other solutions I've seen. So, if you're using frames and want to offer a satisfying experience to those of your users who arrive through the search engines, using them instead of that simple script I showed you is really the way to go. To sum it up, by implementing the above suggestions, you can create frame-based sites that get along with search engines a lot better than they would normally do. They won't be perfect, but what in this world really is? Cascading Style Sheets Even though it has many excellent properties, it feels like a CSS layout is a bit ahead of its time at the moment. While it is completely possible to implement, it will cause problems with older browsers, for example with Netscape Navigator 4. CSS is likely to ultimately become the layout method of choice, but for now it is still better to stick with tables. Avoid non-HTML filetypes Although the search engines are continuously becoming better in their task of finding and indexing information, most of them can't read .PDF (Acrobat), .DOC (Word) or .XLS (Excel) files. Google is ahead of the rest in this area, as it supports all of these filetypes. Another major player, FAST, is able to index .PDF's, but not Word or Excel documents. If you want your file to be found on the rest of the engines, you're going to have to stick with HTML. However, it must also be noted that even plain old HTML pages may cause trouble with search engines if they are generated dynamically, for example with a CGI script. There are several good ways of taking care of these problems without having to sacrifice the flexibility of generating HTML dynamically, but it's important to be aware that they do exist. Next, you need to be patient, you can't expect immediate results with free search engine placement. It can take anywhere from a lucky week to three months or more for a search engine to update the database after you submit keywords. E-mail: info@trafficonomy.com |
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