There are other advantages to creating web portals, as well. Having a portal allows you to have
multiple home pages, which can give you the opportunity to create sites that consistently appear in
top ranking. You also have more sites to include in your other SEO strategies, and more places to
include keywords. However, there is a fine line between a useful portal and one that causes search
engines to turn away without listing your portal on SERPs.Don’t link all your sites to all of the others within your portal using some link-farm footer
at the bottom of every page. You may not even want to link all of them to the others on a
site map or links page. Instead, interlink them in an intelligent way. When you want to lead visitors to
another site in the portal, or when you want those users to be able to choose which site is most useful
to them, you can create intelligent links that have value for the site user. This value translates into better
rankings for your web site.As with most issues in web design, keep it user-friendly and attractive. If you have any doubt that the
actions you’re taking with your site or the design methods that you’re using could lead to negative
results for the SEO of your site, don’t use them. If you’re feeling that a strategy won’t work, it proba-
bly won’t, and you’re wasting your time if you insist on using a design you’re not comfortable with.Fussy frames
Some web-site designs require the use of frames. Frames are sections of a web site, with each section
a separate entity from the other portions of the page. Because the frames on a site represent separate
URLs, they often create display issues for users whose browsers don’t support frames, and for search
crawlers, which encounter the frames and can’t index the site where the frame is the navigational
structure.You have a couple of alternatives when frames are essential to the design of your web site. The first is
to include an alternative to the framed site. This requires the use of the noframes tag. The tag directs
the user’s browser to display the site without the framed navigational system. Users may see a stripped-
down version of your site, but at least they can still see it. When a search crawler encounters a site
made with frames, the noframes tag allows it to index the alternative site. It’s important to realize,
however, that when you use the noframes tag, you should load the code for an entire web page
between the opening tagand closing tag.When you’re creating a noframes tag for a framed site, the content of the noframes tags
should be exactly identical to the frame set. If it’s not, a search crawler could consider it
spam, and then your site would be penalized or even delisted.Another problem with frames is that search engines often display an internal page on your site in
response to a search query. If this internal page does not contain a link to your home page or some
form of navigation menu, the user is stuck on that page and is unable to navigate through your site.
That means the search crawler is also stuck in that same spot. As a result, the crawler might not index
your site.The solution is to place a link on the page that leads to your home page. In this link, include the
attribute TARGET = “_top”. This prevents your site from becoming nested within your own
frames, which locks the user on the page they landed on from the search results. It also makes it
possible for crawlers to efficiently crawl your site without getting stuck.CAUTION CAUTION
CAUTION CAUTION
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