Using frames is the single worst thing you can do to your website if you care about SEO and search engine optimization.
Bad for SEO: Using frames is the single worst thing you can do to your website if you care about SEO and search engine optimization.


Why Frames are BAD for SEO

Never, Ever Use Frames!

Using frames is a very bad design choice for building web pages. This obsolete technique "cloaks" the real pages on your site by using them as parts of other pages, usually your home page. As a result, search engines may see your home page as empty and may refuse to index the content on your site at all.

The image at left shows an example of a framed website. In this example, the frame itself is in red. It is the URL of a web page that has no content whatsoever. It is called a frameset page, and its only purpose is to define the three separate web pages (or frames) A, B, and C that are stuffed into it.

In this example,

  • A - might be a page like logo.php, which is nothing more than your site masthead and logo.
  • B - might be a page like navigation.php, which is your site navigation bar.
  • C - might be a content page like something.php, which is any other page on your site.
A, B and C can be pages from someone else's website. The URL will always look like your site because it is for the empty frameset page. The URL never changes when you navigate your site and this causes extremely serious problems for SEO:

Frames Cause Serious SEO Problems

We don't have to go too far, because the items below are show-stoppers.
  1. Your entire website looks like a 1-page website to search engines.
  2. At best, no matter how many pages your site actually has, Google will only see one page. Think about it- the URL never changes. So, how can Google index anything but that one URL?
  3. In some cases, your website may look like an empty, 1-page website, because what is actually being indexed is the empty frame (in red), not the contents.

Google may (or may not) make an attempt to follow frames for your home page, but nothing after that. This is because if it indexed a page like something.php it would have no idea what frame it belonged to, or even what website it belonged to.

Because it can not reconstruct frames, Google does not list such results at all. Otherwise, it would lead a visitor to a broken website with no navigation, or no content, or perhaps just a masthead! Then Google would be blamed. Other search engines do likewise. Without going any further, how well do you suppose a 1-page website gets ranked by Google?

Example of a Framed Web Page

Here is an example (<- Click) of a web page on this site that uses frames. I created it by taking a legitimate website with it's own URL and stuffing it into a framed page on my site. Everything looks normal, but the page you see is stuffed into a frameset.

  • If you look at the URL, it says "smallbizwebsites.org". That's misleading because the page you see comes from another site.
  • If you look at the page title in the very top left of your browser window, it says "Joe's Toy Store".
  • Now, look at the content of the page. It does not come from my website at all.
  • Click on the menu to go to another page. Notice the page title stays the same?
  • Notice the URL stays the same no matter what page you go to?
  • Do you think search engines will give "Joe's Toy Store" any credit for this web page?
  • The real URL of the page is ketchrecruiting.com.

Bottom line: If you use frames on your site, search engines will think you have an empty 1-page website, and visitors will find that it behaves strangely.

We are an SEO company. We do SEO Reports for existing sites and design new websites incorporating best practices for search engine optimization.

There are many more rules for search engine optimization. We employ them as best we can when we create your small business website design.

Prices shown are 40% off our regular prices. Contact us today for more information on a professional website for your small business Contact us today for more information on a professional website for your business.
Home Page | Site Map | Contact Us

We serve all of the USA. We have clients from California to Connecticut.
All contents ©Copyright 2009 Small Business Websites, LLC