Ever since we can remember, the use of the frame (also used with frameset) tag has been a thorn in the side of SEOs. They're tricky to work with and if not done correctly they can kill your site's chance of being crawled correctly and therefore ranking well in the engines.

Because of this we've taken the stance that you shouldn't use the frame tag unless you absolutely have to. The alternative we suggest is the iframe tag, which is similar in nature and has been applied without issue. However, these two tags are different from each other and we've decided to take a little time to evaluate them and their use within your SEO campaign.

First off, frames are an HTML element that pulls content in from another URL to the URL of your choice. It's like copying everything on a page to mirror it on another page. Sometimes there are solid reasons to use frames on your Web site. Perhaps you have a legacy site that will take too much time and energy to change over. Perhaps you're doing it for your affiliate campaigns. Regardless of why, if you simply must use the frame or iframe tags on your Web site, here are some guidelines to assist you in overcoming the potential disadvantages.

How Spiders Index Frames

These days Google and Bing are very good about correctly indexing content within <frameset></frameset> and <iframe></iframe> tags. However, the very important thing for you to understand is how the engines interpret the content. They crawl and index the non framed content on the site as one page and then crawl and index the framed content as an entirely separate page. That means they will not associate the framed content with the...