Gaining and maintaining good search engine results is important. But, personally (and I'm stressing the all out subjectivity) I would not press a client to compromise or shelve one iota of cutting edge, involving, striking, memorable, convenient, effective, versatile, cost-effective, meaningful, productive, or any other 'dead right on, exactly what the site needs' design or layout or tools or architecture even if search engines still have issues with it.
That is my pure personal subjective attitude. So I'd say: use iframes to integrate content, if that is the answer that solves your web presentation issue. Then use the entire tool box of other ways to fortify your seo issues. But, of course, the customer gets the final say. Several, top-level solid pages on the site that have well-thought-out page title, complete meta tags, alt tags and other proper company information and identification are the core essentials that need to be injected into the site. Then you need some meaningful content that is worth checking out. Because I deal freelance essentially with smaller businesses (though they usually have gross sales in the multi-millions), when I first come across their existing low search engine visibility pages, (I am sorry to disclose) but I have found they frequently don't even have proper meta tags. After we pump in the meta, structure the site properly, present it more clearly with a sound menu and architecture, their search engine results are nicely improved and we even have some Flash eye candy and use JavaScripted menus, and make titles out of gifs. I would never stop a client from listening to and employing specialized seo consultation strategies and if they were to direct me to meet certain criteria, I'd do it. When I go to work, I first reference powerhouse sites like cnn, mtv, bbc, yahoo, google, cartier, kb homes, dodge, vogue, dow jones, forbes, fortune... and see what they are up too. They are not running from any technology, they all pull every dirty development technique in the book that makes the site work for the user to the point where they put heir own web cause second and the user's cause first. And they seem to keep winning. As usual I would first stress business/web innovation and leadership first -- see how your immediate clients and their clients express appreciation -- your business will get recognized for all of it. Just my dos centavos. Warmest regards, Peter Sawczynec Technology Director PSWebcode _Design & Interface _Ecommerce _Database Management 646.316.3678 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.pswebcode.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of inforequest Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 7:04 PM To: talk@lists.nyphp.org Subject: Re: [nyphp-talk] Thoughts on using JavaScript withno progressivefall-back Peter Sawczynec ps-at-sun-code.com |nyphp dev/internal group use| wrote: >It is interesting to note here that iframes have a history. If I recall >correctly: > >Originally, iframes were an IE only gambit and served to sidestep the >more routinely employed numbingly complex of framesets, divs, layers and >ilayers. > >Then iframes were a security issue. > >Today iframes are a very handy vehicle allowing fast integration of >disparate content items/sources. > >Like Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm says -- I think maybe in Jurassic >Park X, and correct me if I am wrong, but he says: "Nature will find a >way. Nature always finds a way." > >Peter > > And as I am sure many people have said, big business will always try and limit innovation. IFrames (and asynchronous modification of page content) is a problem for search engines. To the extent that you need search engine referred traffic relevant to your page content, you need to avoid iframes and ajax (for now). Chris' example is a submisison form, which has little to do with SE traffic. In general iframes are problematic for search engine spiders and ajax used for content (as opposed to UI stuff) is also problematic for spiders and indexing. -=john andrews -- ------------------------------------------------------------- Your web server traffic log file is the most important source of web business information available. Do you know where your logs are right now? Do you know who else has access to your log files? When they were last archived? Where those archives are? --John Andrews Competitive Webmaster and SEO Blogging at http://www.johnon.com _______________________________________________ New York PHP Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk NYPHPCon 2006 Presentations Online http://www.nyphpcon.com Show Your Participation in New York PHP http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php _______________________________________________ New York PHP Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk NYPHPCon 2006 Presentations Online http://www.nyphpcon.com Show Your Participation in New York PHP http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php
