Mac SEO Blog

SEIntelligence’s user base consists of many RapidWeaver users. While making SEIntelligence’s recommended changes within SEIntelligence is always an option, we recommend RapidWeaver users to make the changes within the RapidWeaver application.

The reason for this is because over time, as you update your website, you will be able to publish your site straight from RapidWeaver, rather than add an extra step of re-loading your site in SEIntelligence, and then publishing from SEIntelligence.

You will still use SEIntelligence to analyze your website and learn how to make it more search engine efficient, but the changes will be made in RapidWeaver. The video below illustrates the easy process to accomplish this task. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this tutorial, which will cover the Site Settings section of SEIntelligence, and how to modify those for a RapidWeaver built website.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

If you are a RapidWeaver user, here is how to most efficiently use SEIntelligence on your website.

The first thing you need to do, is make sure the pages on your site have keywords listed in the meta keywords section. To do this, select the page on the left hand side, and then click on the Page Info page. Then click on the Header tab. Next, click the Plus button for the Meta tags box. Under the Name category, type in keywords. Under the Content category, type in the key-terms that you want to be associated with this particular page. Key-terms, can be as many words in length as you want. Just remember to separate each of the key-terms with commas. Repeat this process for the rest of the pages on your site.

Your next step is to export your website from RapidWeaver to a location on your hard drive. For simplicity, I like to export the website directly to my desktop, so I suggest you do the same.

When the site has been exported is on your hard drive, launch SEIntelligence and choose the first option which is to optimize website for search engines.

Select the first option which says Open local website folder. Type in your website’s domain without http or www, and then select the Choose button. Highlight your website folder and click Open. Then click on the Next button.

Your website will now load in SEIntelligence. Now, we’ll perform the competitive analysis so that we can compare our website’s to the website’s we compete with. We’ll do this one page at a time, so click on one of your pages in the left hand side. You should notice your keywords appear in the keywords column.

Next, click on the Get Competitors button. When the search is complete, you will see the results in this section here.

Just below these results, you will see the recommendations and suggestions for your website. SEIntelligence does have the ability for users to make these changes right from within the application, however, for a RapidWeaver use, what we suggest is to read over the suggestions, and then make the changes to your site in RapidWeaver itself. If you are not sure how or where to make these changes in RapidWeaver, make sure to check out our free SEO For RapidWeaver video course. In that video course, you will find where to make all of these changes. So for example, if you wanted to know how to change your title tags, you would click on this video called “Title tags: the most important optimization technique”

When you are all done making your changes to your site in RapidWeaver, what you can then do is once again, export your website from RapidWeaver to that very same location as when you first exported the site.

Now you can re-launch SEIntelligence, and select your website from the Existing Projects column to load the newly exported site.

Now, once again, click on the page name, and then select Get Competitors. Once again, search for your competitors. When the search is complete, read over the recommendations at the bottom to ensure that you have made that changes correctly. If your changes have been made correctly, you will see messages with happy faces beside them. Repeat this process until you are satisfied with your website’s optimizations.

In the tutorial below, we will show RapidWeaver users how you can easily embed a mailing list sign up form on your website, using MailShoot. The process is fairly simple and will only take a few minutes minutes.

Video Transcript:

Keeping a mailing list is a great way to for you to keep in touch with your website visitors. It can also be a really good avenue for you to promote your product or services to people who might be genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

This tutorial is going to show you how to embed a mailing list signup form on your website. In case you are not familiar, the application I am showing you is called MailShoot. MailShoot is a mailing list manager that will allow you to easily embed your signup form on your website. You can then manage all of the e-mail addresses on the list and send them e-mails whenever you desire.

For this demonstration, we’re going to stick with the golf theme and assume I am running a golf website. The first thing I am going to do is save my document. I do this by clicking File, and going to Save As. I will them name my project and save it.

The next thing I will do is click on the Mailing List button. Currently, I have no lists because this is a brand new document. I will click on the Plus sign to add a new list.

If I double click on my list, the list editor window will appear. This is where all members of my mailing list will appear after they have been added.

So now we’re going to begin making our mailing list signup form. The first thing we are going to do is change some of the field names. These are going to be the fields for the information that we want to get from people who are signing up to our mailing list.

So here I will input just a few examples of the information I might want to collect from potential customers. (favoirte golfer, handicap, name of country club, left handed)

When I’m finished inputting the fields, I will press Done, and my next step will be to setup the Subscribe Page.

In this first step, I’ll need to give my list a name. I am going to call it Jeremy’s Golf Shop.

The List Short Name will be what is used in your signup form’s URL. This name must be unique across all MailShoot users so I’ll just add some random digits to the end of it to ensure it is unique. You can do the same if you’d like, or you can click on this Check button to see if what you have entered is unique or not.

Next I’ll enter a password for my list, followed by a list description.

In the Owner’s Details section, I will need to fill out all of these fields. The owner e-mail is especially important as this is the email address that users will see when the signup to the mailing list, as well as the email address where you will be notified of a signup.

The welcome message can be customized to your liking, or you can leave it as is.

In the custom fields section, you will need to tick off whatever custom fields you want included on your signup form. I will tick off the ones I customized earlier in the tutorial.

You can choose from four different type’s of fields you want to use. You can also input a default value for each field, as well as indicate if you want to the field to be a Required field or not.

In the links section, here is where we will get our code for embedding the form on our iWeb website. I’ll simply press the publish button, and the embed code will appear. You will also notice that two links appear. The first link will take us to the Subscribe page. The second link will take us to the unsubscribe page. When you create your form, click on these links so you can see first hand what your subscribe and unsubscribe pages look like.

Now, I’m going to highlight the embed code, and copy it.

In RapidWeaver, I am going to add a new page. I am going to choose the HTML Code page option. I will simply paste the embed code, and as soon as I click on the preview button, I will be able to see my sign up form. Now you might notice here that some of my signup form is cut off. All I have to do is go back to the embed code, and change the value in the Height field, and check to see if I can now see my entire form.

And that is how you set up your mailing list sign up form. Remember to save your work as you go in MailShoot. For more MailShoot instructional videos, visit the MailShoot product page at ragesw.com/products/mailshoot.html

Video Transcript

The old saying of a picture is worth a thousand words is anything but true when it comes to search engines. For the time being, search engines cannot view an image and then know what keywords to associate them with. Instead, search engines rely on the webmaster to give an indication of what the image is about, via the alternative text feature.

In RapidWeaver, select an image, and then press the Media Inspector button. In the Alt Image field, type in your Alternative Text for your image. Remember to be descriptive, while not keyword stuffing. Avoid making your alt text misleading in any way.

Remember, try and include the keywords or phrases you have been using throughout your site while also keeping the text short, to the point, and relevant to the actual photo. Do this for all images you deem necessary to having alternative text. Do your best to avoid putting too many words in the alt text.

Video Transcript

Another method of emphasizing your most important key-terms is by utilizing header tags. Header tags can be used in various ways on a website. They are sometimes used to display the title of a page, like the one you see here, or as the headings for content, similar to what you see here on this site. There are six different header tags in HTML. The most important header tag is said to be the h1 tag.

The situation with header tags in RapidWeaver is this: Currently, there is one H1 tag, and one H2 tag. These are located in the title…and slogan, respectively. The biggest downside to this is that the location of these headers make it kind of difficult for you to customize the header to fit each page. In addition, these headers are identical on every page of your website.

My recommendation is this: If the header tags don’t concern you all that much, then don’t worry about them. If you want to have a good consistent site title or slogan across all pages of your website, then do so. You could attempt to make this title or slogan include some good keywords, and that might be a good idea.

Here is an alternative to creating your own header tags. This method is going to have you not include anything in your title or slogan, which might look a bit strange on some templates, but very normal of some of the other templates.

This method really is optional. If you don’t want to do it, don’t feel that you have to. Not having your header tags as optimized as they can be will not completely ruin your chance at ranking high in search engines. The first thing you are going to do, is turn off the Title and Slogan, by pressing the Setup button, going to the General tab, and unchecking the boxes next to Title and Slogan. Then, in the RapidWeaver edit window, we’re going to create our H1 tag. To do this, type the code exactly as I am doing. Replace the word KEYWORD with your own keyword. Having just one H1 tag per page should suffice.

If you feel it is appropriate to do so, you can add an H2, or even H3 tag to your page the exact same way. So when it is appropriate to do so? The answer to that depends on a few different factors. The H1 tag should contain your most important, or primary keyterm. If your webpage touches upon things related to your other keyterms, then it may make sense to put another keyterm in an H2 tag. The one thing you need to ask yourself when adding these header tags is ‘does this help my visitors better understand my page?’ if the answer is ‘no,’ then you might be better off only including the H1 tag. Adding header tags just for the sake of SEO is not the right way to do it.

Video Transcript

The meta keywords attribute has been around for quite some time. Unfortunately, too many webmasters were using this feature incorrectly by adding keywords that were unrelated to the content on their site. As a result, the meta keywords tag became less and less reliable. Nonetheless, it still exists, and there has been some speculation that some search engines still do take it into account. Therefore it only makes sense for us to include our keywords in them.

Putting in our meta tags is very simple. This process is going to be very similar to the page description process. Press the Page Info button, and make sure you are on the header tab. Press the ‘Plus’ button, and under the Name heading, type in ‘Keywords.’

In the content section, type in your keywords. Remember to separate each keyword or phrase with a comma. Do not add keywords or phrases which are irrelevant to your page. Keep this section to a minimum. Adding a bunch of keywords and phrases will not help your efforts. As an example, if this page was about left handed golf clubs, it wouldn’t make sense to add the phrase ‘Right handed golf clubs’ in the meta keywords. It would be more appropriate to save that phrase for your right handed golf clubs page.

Video Transcript

The description tag is a place where you can give a quick description of what is on your webpage. This isn’t a place to just pack in some keywords, but it is a great spot for you to write one or two sentences that really describe your page. It can also be thought of as a way of selling users on coming to your site. The reason for this is that sometimes, your description will show up in search engine results, right below the title tag here. So as you can see, this little blurb here reads “At Lefties Only, left handed golf clubs are our specialty.” If I were to click to go to this site, and then view the source code, we can see that that blurb actually came straight from the meta description. This isn’t always the case, but you have seen first hand how important it is to have a great description.

To change your page description in RapidWeaver, highlight the page that you wish to update, and click on the Page Info button. Ensure that the Header tab is selected. The next thing you are going to do is press the ‘Plus’ button which is located on the right hand side of the window, almost half way down. In the name field, type the word ‘description.’ In the content field, type in your desired page description. Remember to make the description enticing enough for visitors to be interested in going to your website and learning more. Since every page on your website is unique, so should each page’s description. Keywords are in bold in the search engine snippet when they match up with the users search query, so make sure to use good keywords in your description

Video Transcript

The title tag is one of the most important elements for search engine optimization. The title tag consists of the words and phrases found at the top of your web browser when you are visiting any given website. It is also what is shown as the first line when you are doing a search engine search.

The title tag should contain your most important keywords. Some of the biggest mistakes we see when it comes to title tags are seeing titles that simply read “Home,”  “Welcome,” or some other non-descriptive term. Another mistake is having just your company name as the title tag. Unless you are a company such as Nike or Pepsi for example, your company name alone, should not be in your title tag. The reason for this is that in your online business venture, you are trying to gain customers who have might not be aware of your existence. If they don’t know your business exists, how will they know to type your business name in a search query? You still should put your company name in your title tag, for branding purposes, or to make it helpful for the users who do know your company name to find your site. Just make sure that you order them properly by having keywords first, followed by the company name.

The title tag is located near the top of each page in the “head” tags. Google will only show up to about the first 70 characters in its results, so as mentioned earlier, make sure that your most important keywords are near the beginning of your title. Do your best to make each page on your site have a unique title. The title should also be very relevant to the content on the actual page.

To change your title tags in RapidWeaver, highlight the page on the left hand side, and press the Page Info button. In the field that says browser title, type in your desired title tag. Remember to use all of the tips mentioned earlier when creating your title tag.

So how do you know if you’ve created a good title tag? Well your best option is to try it out for a few months, and see if anything is going on with your rankings. If nothing has really improved, it might be time to change them up. If you are going to change them, make sure that you are not changing title tags on pages that currently do have rankings. You will risk ruining those rankings.

Video Transcript

When it comes to placing links on our page, the anchor text, or the phrase that you can click on that takes you to the destination page, plays a far greater role than most people imagine. For example, let’s do a Google search for the term “click here.” You will notice that the first result is for Adobe Reader. No where on the Adobe site does click here appear, yet it ranks number one for the term. The reason for this, is because many other websites, including very high authority sites such as educational institutions, link to this exact page, and the anchor they use is “click here.”

I want to show another good example of anchor text that will really illustrate how the anchors influences the results in searches. As you can see here, this particular anchor is actually a typo. Instead of typing AppTorial, this webmaster accidentally typed in AppToria. Also take note of the destination URL for this link. Let’s see what happens when we search for the term AppToria in Google. You will notice that in the results, the exact page that had the link for AppToria appears. No other page on the AppTorial site appears for this search term.

When you make your site, keep this SEO tip in mind. When you link to other pages on your website, avoid using common phrases like click here or anything similar to it. Instead, use some of the keywords and phrases that you have written down. So for example, if I want to send my users to my page that talks about left handed golf clubs, I will type in “left handed golf clubs” highlight the string of text, right click and select Add Link. Then, I will link to the appropriate page on my site.

Navigating through a website should not be a difficult task. Find out how to make your site easier to navigate for your users, while making it more friendly for search engines.

Video Transcript

This optimization is very simple and easy to accomplish. When it comes to the navigation of a website, there is nothing search engines like to see more, than a nice structural and consistent navigation menu.

What this means, is that your navigation menu should flow from page to page within your site. There shouldn’t be any differences in your navigation menu on any page on your site. A good navigation menu also includes proper keyterms linking to pages relevant to each of the keyterms. In other words, the keyterm is not misleading to any user who might click on it. Google likes it when websites have a natural flowing hierarchy that makes it easy for users to go from one page to the next. Making your users click several times before landing on the page they want is not the right approach to take.

Google also likes a breadcrumb navigation, which looks like this; This is a row of links which allow users to easily navigate back to the previous page, or to a page which is more than one back click away. These breadcrumb navigations can be helpful to your users and are best placed at the top or bottom of each page.

Navigation menus are very easy to edit in RapidWeaver. Simply click on the page, and then press the Page Info button. Then type your new page name in the Page Title field. You will want to make sure that these keyterms are not excessively long, and that they are not misleading. In addition, some pages won’t require you to make new keyterms. For example, a contact might not need to have a keyword in the navigation menu. Leaving it as Contact, or Contact Us will suffice.

There is also a breadcrumb feature in RapidWeaver that we can also turn on. Press the Setup button, and select the Advanced tab. There you will see an option to display breadcrumb trails. Click on the tickbox to activate the breadcrumb trails. You will notice that the breadcrumb trails appear at the bottom of each page.

In the first lesson of the on-page optimizations section, we will discuss a commonly overlooked place to insert your keywords. Remember to register to view the entire RapidWeaver SEO course, and to ensure you are watching the most updated video tutorials.

Video Transcript

If we take a look at what we see in our address bar here, we see this site’s domain, which is rockbottomgolf.com. If we look directly beside the domain name, we see “golf swing trainers and practice aids.” The latter part of that address is what is known as the page filename. Page filenames are a fantastic place for us to include our websites keywords. Unfortunately, many webmasters make the mistake of not taking advantage of this opportunity. You will notice how this particular address is not painfully long, has dashes separating the words, and is very clean looking. This page name makes it much easier for search engines to understand what this particular page revolves around. If we compare this address to one that looked something like this, we can really get a good idea of how search engines would have an easier time categorizing this page.

It’s typical to see webmasters naming their page files with generic names such as page1 or homepage. Our goal is to utilize every option we have for incorporating our keywords into our website. Whenever you create a new page, make sure your file is given a keyword rich name.

If you already have pages with poor filenames but are actually successful with search engines, do not change the filename as this will ruin your ranking. Just be sure to apply this optimization tip in the future.

To name your files, highlight the file in the Webpages navigation on the left. Then press the Page Info button, and where it says Filename, type in your new page file name. Try to use a key-term that is greater than one word, and less than 6 words in length. Remember to use dashes to separate each word. It is important to note that your homepage’s filename will be index.html. Do not rename this page. Just leave it as is.