Mac SEO Blog

Google recently updated their analytics code for a number of reasons. The most important reason is so that the code can run asynchronously while your website loads. This means your website load time should be faster and tracking should be more reliable.

In order to take advantage of the new Google Analytics code, we have added the ability to enter code into the head section of your website in iWeb SEO Tool. This means in addition to adding Google Analytics you can add custom javascript, favicons, meta tags or just about anything else you need to enter within theandtags.

To take advantage of this feature, open your iWeb site in iWeb SEO Tool. Your existing Google Analytics code will be in the ‘Footer Code’ field. Remove that code and login to your Google Analytics to get the new code snippet. Copy and paste this snippet into the ‘Head Code’ field. The following video tutorial explains how to add Google Analytics to your iWeb site with iWeb SEO Tool.

This new update also lets you quickly open the modified website folder when pressing the Export button. You have a third option to show your website folder in addition to publishing to your MobileMe or FTP server. Now if you have to you can use a third party FTP client to publish your site or use another tool such as WebCrusher to optimize your iWeb site for faster loading times.

You can download iWeb SEO Tool and use it on your iWeb site today.

Video Transcript:

Once you’ve loaded your website in iWeb SEO Tool, you will be able to see files and folders on the left hand side. Just a quick note for those who watched the tutorial on how to load a site in iWeb SEO Tool properly, you might have seen some text in these two fields here. Normally, these fields would be empty, but I had already added the text into those fields previously, so that is why there was text there. We’re going to talk about what to put in those fields later in this video.

The first thing you need to do is select one of your website files with a .html extension. You will all see an index.html file in your website folder. Do not optimize this page. The index.html page is just for redirect purposes, so whatever you do, do not optimize the index.html file.

So now you can begin adding your title tags, meta tags, and alt text to your site. I’m not going to explain what these items are, or the best way to create them because I want to keep this tutorial short. If you need to learn more about these items, I highly recommend purchasing the SEO For iWeb Walkthrough Video Tutorial. It’s only $29.95 and what you will learn in that course is worth much much more than this small price tag.

On the Site Settings tab, there are two fields. One is for the Head code and one is for the footer code.  What you should put in the Head code section is the code for Google Analytics. You can obtain this code by signing up for an account with Google Analytics, and registering to get the code. You can do all of this at google.com/analytics.

What you should put in the Footer code section is the code for Statcounter.com You can obtain this code by signing up for an account at statcounter.com and registering your website to get the code.

Both of these codes will allow you to receive information about your website visitors such as the number of unique visits, and how these people found your site. You don’t need to add both codes, but it is entirely up to you.

There is also a video in the SEO For iWeb Walkthrough Video Tutorial that will show you exactly how to obtain both of these codes.

Remember to click on the Apply button, or Apply To Entire Site button on the Site Settings tab to apply the changes to your site.

If you are using header tags on your site, make sure you select the option to Convert header tags and then press the Apply To Entire Site button. This will just strip the code from your site. It will not make the text in your header invisible. We never want to hide any text, so keep that in mind when creating your header tags. There is more information on header tags in the video course I mentioned earlier as well.

One last note, the Custom Meta Tags section is for advanced users, a large majority of you will never use it, so don’t worry about putting anything in there.

When you are done, you can publish your site by clicking on the Publish button. You can also find more video tutorials that will help you publish your website.