Mac SEO Blog

Welcome to the SEO For Sandvox Video Course. This is the first of about 25 video tutorials in the SEO For Sandvox series. To view the entire video course in an easy-to-follow manner, please visit the SEO For Sandvox page.

Video Transcript:

Hello and welcome to the SEO For Sandvox video tutorial. My name is Jeremy, and over the next little while, I will be showing you how to properly optimize your Sandvox-made website so that you can have the best chance of ranking at the top of search engines.

This video is being provided to all Sandvox users for for free, courtesy of RAGE Software. We are providing this video to meet our goal to educate all owners of small businesses, so that they can have a better understanding of how to make their websites more visible to search engines and thus rank higher. In this video, I will be showing some of our software that will really help you during your optimization. You are not obligated to purchase the software, however, you will see how the applications can really make your life easier, and we encourage you to purchase anything you like, and help further support our goal.

So what is search engine optimization? Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is the process of attracting more visitors through search engines. You will notice how I do not define SEO as having a top ranked site. This is because even if you have a site that ranks at the top of all search engines, there is no guarantee that searchers are typing in the specific keywords you rank for and will even click your website in the search results. In this series of tutorials, we will cover the basics of how to discover highly searched key-terms and how to determine which ones are best to target.

These tutorials have been created to help you to understand the major optimizations, and how to implement them on your site. With so much information available on the web, search engine optimization can seem very confusing and time consuming to learn. These tutorials are to-the-point, and allow you to visualize what needs to be done, so that you can have a better understanding at a much quicker pace than if you had to sift through a 400 page book.

Sandvox makes the process of optimizing our sites for search engines quite simple. If you are unsure of what the proper techniques for optimization are, then this tutorial will definitely help you. Having the background knowledge of what search engines recommend, is a must if we want to have our optimizations go smoothly.

SEO is a process that we must go through in order to achieve our desired results. It is not something you do once and just forget about. It’s a form of marketing and if you want to keep on improving your chances at success and growing your business it is something you will constantly evaluate. Remember, if SEO were an easy thing to do, every site would be number one in search engines which is simply impossible.

This video will be broken down into three stages. The first stage, called the Planning stage, will be the briefest. We will go over a couple of things that we should do before we even begin optmizing our website. The second stage will be the on-page optimization stage. This is where we will be looking at the different methods for making our actual site more search engine friendly. On-page optimizations are only a portion of the battle to gain more traffic, but they are essentially the building blocks for your SEO campaign. The third and final stage will be the off-page optimizations. Off-page optimizations are an extremely important part of our attempt at gaining a positive reputation for our sites, as well as a means for gaining additional traffic from other places on the web.

The video will be shown in step-by-step format. This does not mean that you must follow this plan perfectly, but it is setup that way so that those who require this type of instruction still have that opportunity.

Remember, if you have any questions or do not understand one or more of the concepts, you can start a thread in our SEO forums, or submit a ticket through our support system.

We are extremely pleased to announce the release of two new video courses to our library of SEO video training courses.

The SEO For Sandvox and SEO For RapidWeaver video courses are now available at no cost to all Sandvox and RapidWeaver users, respectively.

In our effort to ensure all website owners are given the opportunity to learn search engine optimization (SEO) and how to apply it to their website correctly, these video courses will now give Sandvox and RapidWeaver users the ability to learn at their own pace, and have a much better understanding of ways of driving more traffic to their websites.

The SEO Video Courses will train users on the basics of search engine optimization, and give them step-by-step instructions on how to apply it to their site, taking away all of the guess work. Our instructions are based on Google’s recommendations for making a more search engine friendly website.

The courses go above and beyond, giving users additional how-to tips, as well as introducing RAGE Software applications, and showing users the benefits of using these applications to make your optimization process a lot smoother.

Get started optimizing your site today!

SEO For Sandvox Video Course

SEO For RapidWeaver Video Course

Earlier in 2011, we made a post/video about publishing a website to FTP in iWeb SEO Tool. We have recently updated that video to clear up some confusion that some users were having. The updated video is listed below for your viewing pleasure.

Video Transcript

This tutorial is going to strictly cover publishing a website to FTP using iWeb SEO Tool. We will cover all of the main points involved with publishing, and then we will discuss the biggest issue users have when publishing their website. That issue is the directory path.

I also want to quickly mention that there is a video tutorial that shows you how to check to see if your site has been published correctly using iWeb SEO Tool. This video can be found on our website, or our YouTube account.

So the first thing you will need to do is press the publish button, and then make sure Publish to FTP is selected, and then press the next button.

In the FTP field, here is where you will put your server address. Sometimes the server address may look like the one I have here, but more often than not, it will just be your domain. So if my domain were publishingtoiweb.com then that is what I would put in this field.

Do not include http, www, or ftp in this field. Just put your domain.com or .net or whatever the extension may be.

Your username and password must be accurate otherwise logging in will not work, and you will not be able to publish.

Next, I want everyone to check to see if you have all of your FTP login details entered in correctly. To do so, press the Browse button. If you are able to see files and folders like we see here, then you have logged in correctly. If you get an error similar to this, then your FTP information is incorrect. You must get the correct FTP information before proceeding to the next step.

Now we’re going to discuss the Directory Path field. This is the area where most users experience the most difficulty. Chances are, if you are watching this video, you need to enter something in this field.

Firstly, If you use RAGE Web Hosting, you should type in /public_html. For everyone else, please refer to the following method;

The first thing I want you to try to do, is publish your site in from iWeb SEO Tool by typing a forward slash in the Directory Path field. If that still doesn’t publish your site, refer to the next step.

What you want to do is open up iWeb, and go to the publish page of the website you want to publish in iWeb SEO Tool. Take a look at the current FTP information you already have. In the directory/path field, there may or may not be some text. If there is some text, I want you to copy it. If there is no text in there, don’t worry, just bear with me for a moment.

Go back to iWeb SEO Tool, and in the directory path field, paste the text you just copied. Make sure there is a forward slash at the beginning of this text.

This next step applies to everyone, even the users who did not have anything typed into the Directory Path field. Go back to the Publish page, and now copy the text that is in the Site Name field. Then go back to iWeb SEO Tool and paste this text beside the text we pasted earlier. If you didn’t paste any text earlier, then this will be the first time you are pasting anything into the Directory Path field. If you have multiple words in your site name, you will need to add underscores to separate each word. Underscores are the default word separator that iWeb adds to your site name.

Your site should publish properly now.

I want to make a note that this method should work for 95-99% of users. Since there are so many variations when it comes to publishing, some users may not achieve success using this method. For example, if you host multiple domains on one hosting account, or if you use our method for shortening your iWeb URL, this method might not work for you.

If this method does not work for you, submit a support ticket at ragesw.com/support and we will be happy to assist you. Be sure to include your FTP login details which includes your server address, username, and password, to help speed up the process.

Video Transcript

A splash screen or splash page, is usually the main page on a website, which consists of a large image, often with an Enter button. This is an example of a splash screen. A splash screen is something we want to avoid. Your main page is supposed to be one of the most important pages on your website. You should be including your most important links on your home page. Having just an image and no content does not give search engines a good indication of what your site is about.

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.