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Although, frames have become slightly outdated as a method of structuring a website, it's helpful to realize why their effect can have such a negative impact in terms of search engine results.

What Is A Frame?

A frame is an html tag that allows you to load multiple html files into one browser screen. People often use this method as means of keeping a stationary navigation, while allowing the user to search through individual content pages.

The Main Problem With Frames?

Although it is now possible for search engines to identify and find the individual files associated within the frameset, the main problem with frames consists of them not allowing any links to those individual framed pages. In other words, you can only bookmark one URL for the web address and this is for the frameset file itself.

This hinders the site because users cannot bookmark any of the content, and it's impossible for outside sites to link in to any other pages besides the homepage. If the individual page is found by chance using a search engine, it will load as only the frame content and will be orphaned from the usually crucial navigation frame -- this will greatly hinder your SEO ranking efforts.

For websites with frames, all traffic to the website has to come in through the front, ensuring all of the frames of the website are included. This obviously hinders all other traffic linking in to the individual sub pages. Since all traffic is directed to the front home page, this makes optimizing the rest of the site for individual pages nearly impossible.

The Solution To Frame Based Layout?

Since frames were mostly utilized in order to create a stationary navigation (i.e. navigation that stays in the same position while the rest of the page scrolls), the use of CSS (cascading style sheets) has greatly remedied this problem and created much better SEO website design possibilities. CSS allows certain elements on the page to take on various types of positioning properties. One of these properties is 'Absolute' positioning, which gives that element an absolute position that stays at the same point regardless of scrolling. This now allows the same result while using only one html document. Returning to a layout that utilizes only one html document being viewed at a time creates a page that is easier to optimize for search engines.

--Marco del Rio