How do I increase my website's "Spiderability"?

Question

My website uses frames..do I need to put spider friendly code in every frame, or is one per page okay? Please describe. Also, to see more info check out my profile.

Answer 1

Start by getting rid of the frames. (Frame behavior is easier and more efficient using CSS). Major search engines understand frames, but can become confused. Other engines may not even try.

Avoiding frames may not be an option for you. Either way, be sure that your HTML validates. This is the single most important step in helping the spiders. See http://validator.w3.org/ for an online validation tool. Check pages with a text browser such as lynx, if available; you will see your pages the way spiders see them.

Finally, be sure to include good internal linkage. A sitemap page -- within one level of the homepage, linked from it and containing a link for each other page on your site -- will help enormously.

I'm not sure what you mean by "spider friendly code" but valid -- and frameless -- code with good linkage is always spider friendly. If you mean keywords and other meta tags, they can't hurt but won't help much either; they are most often ignored. A notable exception is the description meta tag, often used in search engine index result displays.

Google has a fairly complete guide at the link below.