Special Care Required to Achieve High Search Engine Rankings- Frames, Dynamic
Pages, and Database Driven Web Site Designs
Certain types of web site designs and web application frameworks require special
care in order to be search engine friendly. Lets look at how you can achieve high
search engine rankings for each of these types of web sites.
Frames
Web sites that use frames can be difficult for search engines to index. A frame
site actually consists of a main web page called a frameset and sub-pages or child
frames. The frameset defines the structure of the frames such as size location
and name. The content is actually stored in the child frames. If you were to view
the HTML source of a frame site you would only see the HTML for the frameset.
Unfortunately, this is also what the search engine “spider” or indexing program
would also see. Since the frameset does not contain any content beyond the page
title, and meta-tags the web site will probably not be indexed in less that search
engine accidentally stumbles upon one of your child pages.
Fortunately there is a very easy solution. There is a tag called <noframes>
</noframes> that is placed inside your frameset page that provides alternative
content for sites that cannot read frames. You can fill the <noframes> tags
with content from your home page and with links to all of the child frames of
your web site. Now when the search engine spider comes to your web site, it sees
the frameset and the <noframes> content. There is one caution to this approach.
Since the search engines are going to index your child frames outside the context
of your frameset, when viewers come to your set they will only see the child frame
and not the entire frameset. You should ensure that the visitor to your site would
be led back into your frameset by placing a link at the bottom of each child frame
to the frameset. You can give this link the name HOME.
Dynamic Pages and Database Driven Web Sites
Almost every e-commerce site uses some type of server-side programming language
to provide dynamic content. Many of these sites get their content from databases.
These types of sites present special problems for search engines. Consider the
following URL: www.somewebsite.com/somepage.jsp?session_id=X34yA8We&page_id=23.
Many search engines will ignore and URLs that contain ? and &. This means
that your dynamically served site with 5000 pages of content on the wildlife in
the rainforests around the world would not be indexed.
This problem is often sited as a weakness of Microsoft’s active server pages
(ASP) but is actually a problem common to all scripting languages such as Perl,
PHP Cold Fusion (CFM), or Java Server Pages (JSP). The basic problem is passing
variables in the URL. So how can you achieve high search engine rankings on a
site with this format?
Fortunately, there are ways around this so that your database or web application
driven web site can be search engine optimized. Your web site design firm can
develop an application framework that presents the URL in a search engine friendly
form. For example the URL: www.somewebsite.com/somepage.jsp?session_id=X34yA8We&page_id=23
could become www.somewebsite.com/somepage/ X34yA8We/23. Celestial Graphics web
design services has built this web site with our own custom portable application
framework. All of the pages on this site generated dynamically. Yet our URLs are
in a search engine friendly form. Click here for more information about our application
framework we used on this web site.
Search Engine Optimization Methods that Don’t Work
There are many search engine optimization techniques that don’t work. In the
best case, your page will be ignored. In many cases, the search engines may not
index your site at all. Here are a few of them.
Invisible Text: With this technique, text is placed on the page that
has the same color as the page’s background so you can’t see it. The search engines
will still read the text even though it is invisible to the human eye. People
who use this technique fill their pages with invisible text that contain their
keywords. Besides being sneaky and not very ethical, this technique is a sure
way to get your site banned from many of the search engines. The search engine
indexing programs look for text that has the same color as the page’s background.
Automatic Page Redirects: Some people have the idea that they can create
a page filled with text and keywords that only displays for an instant, then by
Java Script, or by using the page refresh meta-tag or some other mechanism, you
are automatically redirect you to their home page. Search engines are on to this
technique and will not index your site if you use it.
Duplicate Pages with Different URLs: Some people have the mistaken
belief that putting the same content on multiple URLs will yield higher search
engine rankings. Many search engines will recognize content they have already
indexed and ignore it.
Excessive Requests to Get Your Pages Indexed: Search engines do not
appreciate being spammed. Do not submit too many page requests to search engines
in a day. Be careful using automatic submission software. Many search engines
will not index your site if they detect that the submission was made by automatic
submission software.
Celestial Graphics Can Provide Search Engine Optimization for Your Site as
Part of Our Web Design Services
By now you are probably thinking that search engine optimization is a lot of
work. Well, your right. It can take many hours or even days of work to choose
your keywords, analyze your competition, optimize your content and submit the
pages to the search engines. Why not let us handle this for you? Celestial Graphics
as a part of our web site design service will analyze and optimize your entire
web site to help you achieve high search engine rankings.
|
