Mac SEO Blog

When you start using EverWeb your focus will most likely be on learning the product as quickly as you can so you can get down to the task of creating the web pages you want for your website. One thing you may not immediately think of is how to attract visitors to your web pages once you have published your website to the Internet. This is where Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, comes in as it is the process by which you make your website as visible as possible to Internet search engines. EverWeb lets you easily add SEO in to your web pages but knowing what SEO is and where to use it effectively in EverWeb is essential. Once you have this knowledge you will vastly improve the likelihood of having  your web pages found by potential visitors.

About SEO…

When talking about SEO we typically think of Google which is natural as it’s the world’s most popular web search engine with 67% of the US search market according to Search Engine Journal. However, Google is not alone as the Microsoft’s Bing/Yahoo! search engine alliance also has a strong presence with a 29% market share. SEO applies to all search engines, although their approaches towards implementing SEO strategies may differ.

In addition to the sometimes differing SEO approaches of the search engine giants, SEO itself is constantly evolving as our needs and requirements change. Today we use mobile devices more than desktop ones and so perform more search on mobile devices then we did ten years ago so all mobile websites need to have SEO. Google has even prioritised SEO for mobile over SEO for desktop devices. Social media is also more in our lives than ever before and Microsoft’s Bing search engine weighs this factor moe in it’s search results than it used to. Such factors as these, driven by advances in technology, influence how search engines need to rank search results when you are looking for something on the Internet. For example, Google uses over 200 factors to determine how a web page is ranked and these factors are constantly in flux due to the factors outlined above. The ever increasing paced complexity of change can make SEO appear to be a minefield to navigate.

Making A Complex Problem Simpler

The ever changing dynamics of SEO can be bewildering when starting to work with it. However, successful SEO can be achieved once we realise that SEO is a just a process that helps improve websites and/or web page visibility in search engine results page rankings. There are good and bad practices to be aware of that will either help promote, or penalise, your page rankings. There are also no guarantees either with SEO as to the results rankings you will achieve. As mentioned earlier, the science behind SEO is constantly evolving so the best you can do is to stay up to date with SEO developments from Google and Microsoft/Yahoo! and the possible effects of such developments on your website’s page rankings.

Doing Your SEO Homework

SEO works by looking for ‘Keywords’ to help search engines find your website’s pages using specialist software known as web ‘crawlers’ or ‘spiders’. These software tools keep search engines indexed and web content up to date.

As such, using the right kind of Keywords will benefit your website as search engines will find your web pages more easily. So you will need to take some time to do your homework by researching what Keywords are best to use. Using generic words for your Keywords, e.g ’software’, will result in your website never being found. Google ‘software’ and you will get over 2,350,000,000 results. So be specific with your Keywords e.g. if you are a software vendor you may sell specific software, e.g. EverWeb, so use ‘EverWeb’ rather than ‘Software’ as a Keyword. This approach helps narrow the search focus and increases the chances of potential visitors finding your website. When thinking about Keywords for your own web pages, try to think about the words you would type in to find your own website quickly.

As Keywords are important it’s necessary to choose the best words to help your website stand out from the rest. Both Google and Microsoft have Keyword Planning tools for just this purpose.

When you have found your list of Keywords, select just a few of them to actually use. If you have too many Keywords you will probably lower the impact of your SEO. Google, for example, penalises websites that use ‘Keyword Stuffing’. It’s also good to remember that too many Keywords may impact your visitor experience in a negative way. Always prioritise your website content over the need for SEO.

Putting It All Together In EverWeb

When you have done all of your SEO homework, how do you translate it into practical use in EverWeb? There are a number of places to target for your SEO, most of which you can find on the Page tab of the Inspector Window.

1. File Name: Each web page has a file name which you can use to act as a Keyword.

2. Navigation Menu Display Name: SEO likes to find links to other pages so this is a good place to use your Keywords. Remember not to sacrifice the usability of your website for the sake of SEO.

3. Web Page Title: This is the text at the top of the browser window which is an ideal place to add in Keywords. Again, remember prioritise your visitor experience over better SEO.

4. Web Page Description: Although not directly used in SEO it’s a good idea to include some Keywords in your Page Description if it is relevant and appropriate to do so.

SEO Good Practices

When using SEO remembering to follow a few good practices will help promote your web pages…

1. Your Website Content

Your web page should contain original, good quality content. Both Google and Microsoft’s Bing look for fresh, quality content that is well written and easy to search for by their web crawlers. Your page content should be relevant to what web page, and website, is aiming to achieve. Always focus on good content rather than on SEO. Whilst SEO is important, the content and visitor perception of your website is more important.

2. Use Images Effectively

Use images properly in your website. Using appropriate quality images can instantly convey your meaning, or message, better than words can. When using images remember to add in some text describing the image in the Alt-Text section of the Shape Options Tab. The description should be brief but descriptive of the image itself. The Alt-Text function is also useful if an image does not appear on the page as it will be replaced by the descriptive text you have added in. Using Alt Text in your website may help search engines find and promote your website better.

3. Use Hyperlinks

Web crawlers like to see links in your pages to other pages within your website or to pages on other websites. So, use EverWeb’s Hyperlinking to do this. When you create a Hyperlink try to make the linking words something that is unique. Many websites say things like ‘click HERE’ where ‘HERE’ is the linking text. However, as we mentioned earlier, ‘HERE’ is used everywhere on the Internet! So if I want to take you to a video tutorial on Hyperlinking I could say click on the link here or I could say look at the Video Tutorial on Hyperlinking in EverWeb. For SEO, the second approach is much better.

4. The Heading Tags Widget

The Heading Tags Widget can be used to explicitly draw search engine attention to specific title text and headings in your web page. Whilst it may be useful to your SEO, it is something for advanced EverWeb users some HTML to use. The  Heading Tags Widget video tutorial will get you acquainted and we will discuss the use of this Widget in a specific blog in the near future.

Useful Resources for SEO in EverWeb

In addition to the Good Practices outlined above, you can find out more about using SEO in EverWeb using the following resources:

Blog Content

How To Use EverWeb’s SEO Features

Video Tutorial Content

The SEO for EverWeb Course

Adding Alt Text, or Alternative Text to Images in EverWeb

SEO For EverWeb – Heading Tags

Meta Keywords – SEO For EverWeb Video Course

Webpage Content – SEO For EverWeb Video Course

Using SEO in EverWeb is easy to implement using the above guidelines. Creating and maintaining good practices will help you successfully optimise your website to achieve the best search page rankings possible. Keeping abreast of Google and Microsoft/Yahoo!’s developments in SEO will also help you, and your website, up to date in the future. And remember, as always, to always keep your visitor experience as your number one concern over SEO rankings.

Next Time: In our next instalment we will look at the Web Page List and build navigation menus for your website.

As always let us know if you have any comments and questions. We’re happy to help. You can also find EverWeb on the following social media platforms:

Facebook

Google+

Flipboard

YouTube

Twitter handle @ragesw

October’s main highlight saw the release of the new EverWeb version 1.9. The latest version of EverWeb adds many under the hood features including an Enhanced HTML5 Publishing Engine for smaller, faster websites on both desktop and mobile. This and more to enjoy in this month’s Highlights edition…

EverWeb Latest News for October

EverWeb version 1.9 was released in late October with an Enhanced HTML5 Publishing Engine for faster, smaller websites. There are also some great UI enhancements such as a new Popup Window feature, Open In New Window feature, Presentation Mode and more! Check out the Blog ‘EverWeb 1.9 Released: Enhanced HTML5 Engine‘ for all the details!

Our Latest EverWeb Blog Posts

October’s Blogs focus on EverWeb version 1.9’s new Presentation Mode feature Duplicating a Project Features. There’s also in-depth blogs on how to get the best out of masking images in EverWeb, how to make a mobile website in three simple steps and much more! And feel free to comment or ask questions on any of the Blogs we feature!

EverWeb Highlights: September 2015

Building Mobile Websites in Just 3 Easy Steps

Creating Master Pages for EverWeb’s Theme Templates

Make Your Mark with Masking in EverWeb

EverWeb 1.9 Released: Enhanced HTML5 Publishing Engine

New User Interface Customisations in EverWeb 1.9

Getting the Best from Duplicating Projects in EverWeb version 1.9

Our Latest EverWeb Video Tutorials

EverWeb’s YouTube channel has four new videos to enjoy this month showcasing the new features of EverWeb version 1.9.

What’s New In EverWeb 1.9 – MacWebsite Builder

Cookie Consent Button Your EverWeb Website

Addon Domains for EverWeb+Hosting Accounts

Linking to a Popup Window In EverWeb

Keeping Up to Date With EverWeb

Keep up to date with EverWeb on the Internet! For the latest news, features, tutorials, blogs, comments and more just click on your choice below..

Facebook

Google+

Flipboard

YouTube

Or leave a comment below if you have any questions or want to know more…

One of the most important features of EverWeb is its Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) capabilities. However, you won’t find ‘SEO’ on any menu or listed in any dialog box. So why is SEO so important for your website and where do you find and effectively use EverWeb’s SEO features?

To answer such questions we need to first explore the nature of SEO. Much has been written about SEO as the ‘Holy Grail’ that every website developer must find. In reality, it boils down to the following things that you should know:

1. SEO is the term used to describe the way in which you make your website as visible as possible to Internet search engines such as Google, Bing, Safari etc.

2. SEO is important. With over 1 billion websites out there, SEO is the best way to get your website as high up in search engine results as possible.

3. SEO uses ‘Keywords’ to help search engines find your website pages through specific pieces of software called ‘Spiders’ .

4. Using the right type of Keywords is important so that search engines find your website more easily. If you use generic words for your Keywords e.g. ‘computer’, your website will never be found. The Keyword in this example is too general. A quick Google search finds 2,250,000,000 results!

5. SEO does not guarantee anything. However, it can be a great help in improving your website’s visibility if used properly.

6. SEO should be used on any pages that you want to draw attention to. Again focus on what is unique to your website. ‘About’ and ‘Contact’ pages will be too generic to be of much use for SEO.

7. SEO should be used on both your ‘mobile’ and ‘desktop’ web pages. Mobile is a priority for Google and it should be for you too!

8. There is no magic to SEO, you just need to know how it works so that you can get the best possible search result listing.

EverWeb and SEO

The use of good Keywords is, therefore, important in optimising your website for search engines. The question is, where do I put my keywords and what words should I use? let’s start with the Where…

The first thing to note is that you may want to use SEO on different pages of your website as different pages have different purposes. You will want your Keywords to be tailored to what the purpose of the page is.

In EverWeb you can enter Keywords in to the following fields in the Page Inspector (see screenshot below):

1. File Name: You can use the file name of your page to act as a Keyword.

2. Navigation Menu Display Name: This field is good to use for SEO as it provides links to other pages. This is something that search engines look for

3. Web Page Title: This is the text that you see at the top of the browser window. It’s great if you can add in some Keywords in to the Title, but remember that you should not sacrifice your visitor’s experience just for the sake of SEO.

4. Web Page Description: The page description is not a field used in SEO but you can use keywords in the description. Again remember your visitor experience when writing your description.

You should also use SEO with any Image files you are using. Search engines look at image file names as well as text Keywords. Therefore, it’s important that your image files have an appropriately descriptive name. If not then rename the image files before importing them into EverWeb. If you have already imported your image files in to EverWeb, rename them via the Assets tab.

In addition to using descriptive file names for your images, your SEO may be helped by adding Alt Text to your image files in EverWeb. Use the ‘Alt Text’ field in the Shape Options tab to add in a sort description of your image (see screenshot below).

Which Keywords Should You Use?

This is where you need to have a Keyword strategy and do your research before using adding in Keywords. As discussed above, if you used ‘computer’ as a keyword you would have no chance of standing out from the crowd. Instead think of Keywords that are specific and focused on what your clients are going to be looking for. As an example, if you are a company selling shoes, think about any specialist type, or brands, of shoe that you sell, for instance, clogs. The word ‘clog’ is a more specific and better Keyword than using the word ‘shoe’. The more specific and focused your Keywords, so much the better!

Use just a few Keywords in the fields mentioned above. Remember that having too many Keywords may lessen the focus of your SEO, and may also undermine your visitor experience. Having a website just littered with Keywords without meaningful text is not very appealing.

The good news is that help is available for finding the Keywords that are best for you to use. Google provides the ‘Google Keyword Planner’ just for this very purpose as part of Google Analytics. See https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner for more information.

In answering the original question posed at the start, SEO is baked in to EverWeb in many different places. It underpins EverWeb, so be sure to remember to fill in the appropriate fields with a few well chosen Keywords when you are building your web pages. Having an appropriate, sensible SEO strategy that balances visitor experience against your search engine ranking will help you get more hits on your web site, and hopefully more online business!

What Next?

We have only been able to give you an overview of SEO in this Blog. There is much more to discover so why not begin by exploring the ‘SEO for EverWeb Video Course’.

So you have a mailing list sign up form set up on your website, but are you getting enough users to notice it and willingly give you their email addresses?

Watch the tutorial below to learn an easy way to triple your mailing list sign ups! Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel to never miss out on our great website tips and tricks.

Video Transcript:

A very good way of collecting user’s email addresses is to offer them something in return for signing up to your mailing list. This popular strategy is widely used across many sites on the web.

In this tutorial, I am going to show you a way of setting up your mailing list created using MailShoot to automatically deliver the free item when the user confirms their subscription.

This tutorial will assume you already have your mailing list set up. If you do not have your mailing list set up, or you are new to MailShoot and want to learn how to do everything from start to finish, visit this page to view our other training tutorials.

The first thing you will need is to have your free gift handy. Since we are dealing with the internet and computers, we will need to have our gift be in digital form. For my example, the gift I am offering is this PDF that I have here on my desktop.

Now, I will open up my web browser to ge.tt which is a website that allows users to upload files to share with others. All I will do is drag and drop my PDF onto the screen here. This might be different depending on which web browser you are using.

When the upload has completed, we will be given a link to access the item that was just uploaded. What you will need to do is now copy that URL.

Now, in MailShoot, open up your mailing list, or click on the Subscribe Page button. Then select the Messages tab. On this page, here is where you will paste the link that we just copied. You can write a message next to the link to let the user know that this link is where they will find the free gift that was promised. When you are done, click the Publish button.

Now when users sign up to your mailing list, and then confirm the subscription, they will see this Welcome message and will be able to download your free gift using that link.

For more website tips and tricks, please subscribe.

READ THIS FIRST

The videos listed below give you detailed instructions on how to use iWeb SEO Tool the proper way. It is very important to follow these instructions in order to limit errors. The videos are in order and should be watched that way.

While these videos are very helpful in teaching you the proper ways of using iWeb SEO Tool, they cannot substitute the content that is in the SEO For iWeb Walkthrough Video Tutorial. That walkthrough video tutorial goes beyond the basics of using iWeb SEO Tool and can help you dramatically improve your website’s rankings in all major search engines. Your business is definitely worth it, so we highly recommend checking out that walkthrough video tutorial. It will also save you a lot of time and heartache in the future.

1. How to open your site in iWeb SEO Tool

2. How to optimize your site in iWeb SEO Tool

3. How to publish your site to FTP in iWeb SEO Tool

4. Updating your iWeb website and using iWeb SEO Tool

5. How to make sure you published your site correctly from iWeb SEO Tool

6. How to back up your data stored in iWeb SEO Tool

7a. How to have a shortened iWeb URL by using iWeb SEO Tool

7b. How to get rid of the site redirect AND shorten the iWeb URL

8. How to use the Favicon feature in iWeb SEO Tool

9. How to publish only changes with iWeb SEO Tool

10. Setting up a Mobile friendly iWeb site

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.