When it comes to framed sites and effect that use of frames by a site has on its search engine ranking, there are two schools of thought. Some people say that framed sites, if done properly, have no problems in getting good rankings in search engines.
Others claim that if search engine optimization is important to you, never use frames.
In my opinion, truth lies somewhere in between. Yes, use of frames does throw up a few issues when it comes to getting good rankings in search engines which don't understand frames.
Hence, when you are designing a new site, I would recommend that you avoid using frames, unless you have a specific reason for doing so.
However, if you already have a site which uses frames, all is not lost. You can still get good rankings in search engines even though you have used frames.
Furthermore, using frames also has its own advantages when it comes to search engine placement, as we shall later on.
This article assumes that you have a working knowledge of frames. For more information on frames, go to http://www.webreference.com/dev/frames/
In case your site uses frames, key to getting good rankings lies in using NOFRAMES tag. The NOFRAMES tag is intended to help framed web sites display some content for those people who are using browsers which don't understand frames.
The search engines which don't understand frames also look at NOFRAMES tag. Hence, if you are using frames, you need to add content to NOFRAMES tag.
What you should do is to add a complete web page within NOFRAMES tag. Ensure that this page repeats important keywords for your site a number of times.
Also, in order to ensure that content within NOFRAMES tag is as prominent as possible to search engines, you should put NOFRAMES tag right after FRAMESET tag. However, don't put NOFRAMES before FRAMESET tag. If you do that, Internet Explorer will display your site correctly but Netscape will display content present in NOFRAMES tag, rather than content present within frames.