SEO - Avoid frames on Java and flash

There are many pitfalls in design that can hinder a spiders ability to completely (or even partially) index the content within a given page.... thumbnail 1 summary

3:06 PM

There are many pitfalls in design that can hinder a spiders ability to completely (or even partially) index the content within a given page. One of the biggest mistakes webmasters are still making is that of using "frames".

Frames are a design convention used to utilize independant scrollable regions within a single URL designation (or so it appears). Frames are actually divided into multiple URL designations and are generally not spiderable by the search engines.

I do not want to get into how to optimize framed sites here as this is a tutorial about "proper seo" not "patchwork seo" if you have frames in your website then my advice is to redesign, as you can use CSS to give an equivilant effect if that scrolldown is really something you are not willing to give up. I will however be writing an article for those of you who are absulutely unwilling to give up your frames so that you can at least provide something for the spiders to love you for and thus improve your rankings somewhat but these techniques are far inferior to just building your website the right way in the first place.
Javascript:

Again, real pretty but excessive use is generally not necessary. Don't get me wrong even I use javascript on almost all of my sites but the key is to use it sparingly. The reason for this is that spiders cannot read javascript and thus any link or text portrayed by such Javascript will not be counted in your indexing and thus produce lost opportunity. My suggestion is for all webmasters to "STOP USING JAVASCRIPT FOR NAVIGATION" use HTML text links instead. Your images can be called in Java as with your pretty little rollovers but when it comes to things you want indexed Java is not the way to go.

Pack your javascript away

When calling javascript editors place the Java protocalls in header of your page: In order to save file size and maximize load times cut out that java protocall and paste it in an external file (i usually call mine java.js) then to call the java I place just this one line of code: this reduces the filesize considerably with no adverse side effects.
Flash:

Myself, I love flash. In fact my favorite sites all incorporate some type of flash into their design but the key phrase here is "some flash". To have a site with a flash image is great, it will impress your visitor and increase the estethic quality of your site for sure, but this flash must still be accompanied by a healthy portion of good old fashioned text, written in html, and readily accessible to the SE spiders.

Also, if it absolutely necessary to use flash navigation (which it never is) then make sure to include html text link counterparts so that your internal pages will be found and indexed. It is possible to embed text into flash but that is for another article...