iframe = does this hurt SEO?

I've been told by some programmers that using iframes in your code doesn't hurt your sites changes with SEO, but I'm worried and just want to find out for sure. Many of my clients like their sites to stay "Above the Fold" and I'll use iframes to accomplish this for them.

Anyway, anyone know for sure if using iframes for most of the site's content hurts with SEO?

Thanks,

Ted

Hey Ted - welcome to the forums.

Do not use iframes.

Items placed inside the iframes will not be crawled by the spiders and indexed.

So, taken to an extreme example, let's say the page has 3 parts:

Header
Iframe to contain the content
Footer

The spiders would see items in the header, and in the footer. Anything inside the iframe, however, would be overlooked. Essentially, it's like placing a blanket over your content and hiding it from view of the engines.

Want proof?

Do a search - any search, really. Take a look at the top sites in the results - are they, overall, using iframes?

Another basic test to see if things can be crawled by the spiders is this - nothing scientific, but still useful:

Drag your mouse over the contents of a page and highlight everything. If the text is easily seen by spiders, it'll be highlighted like other items on the page such as images. If you cannot highlight the text/images, the spiders generally won't be able to see it either.

Like I said - it's hardly scientific, but still helpful.

Programmers are programmers - those who manage SEO projects are search marketers. Many, many times, they are very different individuals.

yeah I was told iframe does cause problems with spiders or crawlers to index the page. and so does javascript and flash. when designing your site, keep it simple, so search engine never have problems to index your page.

Thanks... that's what I needed to hear. To bad, they're a great tool for compact layout. Thanks - Ted

Use an frame to show content to the visitor that you don't want to show to the search engines.

Duane

so true about programmers and SEO managers being different species.

You have great practical stuff that tells what to do by concept. Like your article about redirect (301) by a server side description.

You would be surprised (maybe Not) how many people have no idea what type of OS the server is useing. Want to use Front Page WYSIWYG, and then end up retaining a server provider without extensions enabled.

yes inline frames, above the fold, no small problem for SEO admin. customers want the site to look good and be accesseable, but load time - and i frames - improper html to debug - site map structure, all affect rank.

They walk out on you and say, oh-you guy-you are a bag of...
GO THUK IT MAN

So if you read this, thanks, some times I use the forum to explain that I'm not crazy, but here is.......... for customers and help desk requests.
peds

ps:
yes webservers are not MS too much.

behind firewalls though, you get a lot NT, 2000, 2003. lots of private tunnels.

you can tell by the shift in the certifications that MS webserves are way less, then focussing on enterprise, routers, IPsec, and adding non MS stuff on the exams.
peds