Mac SEO Blog

We have published an updated step by step video tutorial for getting your website listed in all major search engines with Sitemap Automator. The tutorial was created by courtesy of AppTorial Video Tutorials.

Whether you are using WebDesign, iWeb, Dreamweaver, RapidWeaver, Sandvox, or any other web development tool of your choice, follow the quick and easy step by step video tutorial to learn how to get your website listed in all major search engines with just a few minutes of work.

Sitemap Automator is the easiest way to create, publish and notify search engines of your industry standard XML Sitemap. XML Sitemaps are used to let search engines know about all pages on your website, how important each page is, and how often each page is updated.

Twitter.com is known as a micro-blogging website. A micro-blogging website is a website that lets you leave short posts, just a sentence or two, about what you are currently doing. You don’t even need to be next to a computer because you can post what you’re doing right from a cell phone.

With twitter you can set up a profile with you micro-blog and find other users to “follow”. Following a user lets you keep up to date with what they are doing at all times. Yes, that does sound a little scary, but users from all over the world have quickly embraced twitter even though it has only been online for a relatively short amount of time.

You can use twitter to quickly post what your company is currently doing. For example if you release a new product today or want to show off a new Website design. The trick to using twitter is to find users who have similar interests and start following their blog. As you build up the list of people who you follow and post interesting subjects, other users will begin to follow you as well.

You should also consider getting your existing website visitors following you on twitter by posting a link to your twitter account on your website.

Many services allow you to easily publish a quick summary of your latest blog posts to your twitter account. Other apps for iPhones or blackberrys let you easily “tweet” about what is currently happening with you.

Both facebook.com and myspace.com are the two largest social networking websites in the world. A social networking website is a website that connects friends and family together using common interests groups. For years, myspace.com has been used my amateur and professional musicians, artists and movie stars to promote themselves and there work. Comedians such as Dane Cook have been rumored to owe their career to the popularity they received from utilizing myspace.com.

Both of these websites provide ample opportunities for promotion including posting your sample products, for example if you compose music, creating common interests groups, as well as cheap and targeted advertising. booksforschool.com, a Canadian based online textbook exchange service used facebook.com to advertise specifically to Canadian University students only. This lowered costs by only advertising to their target market and not paying to advertise to people who would never use the service such as students who have graduated years ago.

Facebook also lets you create company pages just like you can create a personal page for yourself. Your friends and customers can become fans of your company page and any updates you post to your wall will appear in their news feed.

You can use this feature to post about new products, special discount codes for your members only, or to simply engage with your customers on a more personal level.

When you create a company page, facebook lets you easily add a Facebook Connect widget to your website just like the one on the right and side of this blog. They provide all the code you need so you can easily advertise your company’s facebook page to your visitors and get them to join.

You can explorer the hundreds of facebooks apps you can add to your company page including automatic blog updates, twitter updates and even discussion boards.

Facebook and MySpace also provides an online market place and classifieds system which you can use to advertise your products for sale to thousands of online users.

Recently Microsoft announced their all new search engine Bing. Coined as a “decision search engine”, Bing has certainly started off on the right foot providing one of the best search experiences of any previous Microsoft search engine and arguably of other major players in the field.

What is a decision based search engine?

Unlike Google who ranks websites based on popularity, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine attempts to understand what you are actually looking for. For example, if you were to type “digital camera” into Bing you will see a list of categories on the left hand side. Click the Shopping category to quickly see product reviews, comparisons and price. What’s more, your category selection is remembered so that each time you do a search for a product, you are taken directly to the Shopping category once again.

Bing helps you make decisions on any number of questions you may have. For example, type in “flights from boston to san francisco” and you will be able to quickly see when the best time to travel is, how much a flight would cost and what the best price is. Microsoft has attempted to bring features from dozens of other websites under one easy to use search engine including stocks, shopping, local maps and more.

Optimizing your website for Bing.com

With an estimated $80 million dollar marketing budget Microsoft will no doubt be attracting more and more users to its new search engine. Unlike MSN search and Live search, Bing brings innovation and much needed improvements to the search industry. So how you can you optimize your website for Bing?

Lets first take a quick look at Bing’s search results. Howevering your mouse over a search result in Bing reveals a popup window with a quick preview of the listed page. This isn’t a full web page preview like other search engines may provide. Instead, Bing attempts to grab the most relevant portions of a website so searchers can quickly decide whether or not they would like to visit it.

Bing website description

This means, having the number one spot for a search result may not always provide the most amount of visitors. Here are some tips for optimizing your website for Bing.com;

1. With the new page summary features, ensuring you have enticing content on your page will allow you to be able to attract more visitors from the search results page.
2. Ensuring all of your pages have enough text on them with your targeted keywords. Initial studies show that having larger blocks of text near the top of your page results in better page summaries.
3. Keeping anchor text (text used to link between pages) consistent for important pages so they show up under the ‘Also on this page’ section.
4. Local search results are getting more and more important so be sure to include your address on your website.
5. Create your XML Sitemap file and submit it to Bing Webmaster Tools.

How can RAGE Software’s SEO products help?

Sitemap Automator will work flawlessly with Bing.com to get your website noticed by Bing as well as all other major search engines.

XML Sitemaps created with Sitemap Automator are still the best way to get your website listed in all major search engines.

SERank is being updated as we speak to include support for Bing.com. A new version will be available in the next few days so you can easily track your website’s success in Bing.com’s search results.

Domainer is still an invaluable tool for tracking your domains and websites, finding link partners and discovering how successful your competitor’s website’s are.

We are pleased to announce major updates to our search engine optimization software suite for Mac OS X. The updates include new versions of a number of our products including Sitemap Automator, WebCrusher and SERank.

Sitemap Automator
The only way to get your website recognized by all major search engines, Sitemap Automator 2.0 now lets you easily manage an unlimited number of websites. In addition, it can easily show you potential search engine crawling errors on your website, supports robot.txt files and offers improved support for iWeb built websites.

This 2.0 update is the first paid upgrade since the initial release back in 2005. If you purchased before May 1, 2008 you can purchase an update for just $19.95 USD. If you purchased after May 1, 2008 then you can get your free upgrade serial number from http://www.ragesw.com/getupdate.php

WebCrusher
Optimize your website so they load as fast as possible for your visitors. At the click of a button, WebCrusher can take any website and intelligently remove unneeded code and compress images making the website load as quickly as possible in any web browser. This free update to version 1.4 includes enhanced CSS optimizations and improved iWeb optimizations.

SERank
See exactly where your website ranks in over 60 search engines for your most popular keywords. Discover who ranks higher than you and how you can rise above them to get the number one spot on all major search engines. Version 1.9 adds enhanced reporting features, new exporting options with compatibility with Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers, as well as includes important bug fixes.

If you will be attending Macworld Expo 2009 please stop by our booth at #1744 and we would be happy to talk with your about our software and these updates.

So you’ve created your website in iWeb, using Apple’s easy to use webpage builder. Its published online ready for the world to see. The only problem, nobody knows about it.

We get hundreds of requests from iWeb users who have created business and even personal websites, trying to figure out how to get traffic to their site. Most users know that search engines provide the number one source of targeted traffic to a website. So how do you get your website to the top of search engines and start getting new visitors and customers?

Today we have made this difficult task much easier for you iWeb users with iWeb SEO Tool. Combined with our suite of Mac SEO Software, iWeb users can now enjoy the same search engine benefits and fairly compete for top search engine rankings.

Here are your steps to high search engine rankings for iWeb based websites. Keep in mind, the following strategies are not instant, but over time will help you get the top spots on all search engines.

1. Research the keywords your visitors are searching for in major search engines. To find out exactly what keywords are being searched for, download RAGE SEKeyword, the free keyword research tool from RAGE Software.
2. Make sure these keywords are placed in the right places on your website. That means in your title tag, meta tags, alternative image text and your actual webpage content. This is where iWeb SEO Tool comes in handy. Use iWeb SEO Tool to add your keywords to your title tags, meta tags and alternative image text. This step is known as on-page search engine optimization since they are strategies you apply directly to your website.
3. Publish your website to your server, which can all be done through iWeb SEO Tool, whether you use MobileMe or your own hosting provider.
4. Submit your website to all major search engines the proper way with XML based Sitemaps. Create your XML Sitemaps with Sitemap Automator, the only tool built specifically for iWeb based websites.
5. Get third party websites to link to your website with the keywords you researched in step one. The more links you have to your website, the better chance you have of ranking high for these keywords. This step is known as off-page optimizations and combined with on-page optimizations, puts your website in the best possible chance of ranking at the top of search engines. To find high quality link partners try Domainer the domain management and SEO tool. It will give you important search engine statistics about your website and any another website online.
6. Continually repeat step 5 in order to climb to the top of search engines. Remember, be patient as top search engine rankings do not happen over night. They take time as search engines update their indexes and algorithms.
7. Check your search engine rankings with RAGE SERank, the number one search engine rank checker for Mac OS X to see exactly where your website ranks for your most important keywords. Plus, you can see where your competitors rank too!
8. For more secrets to high search engine rankings see the SEO for iWeb article on the RAGE Software SEO Blog.

Often we get customers who have no idea where to begin when it comes to search engine optimization. So today we are going to go over the very basics of SEO and what you can do right now to improve your search engine rankings today.

First and foremost we need to clear up some confusion about what it means to rank high in search engines. We get a lot of customers who say their website does not appear in Google or they are not coming up for broad keywords like “design shop” or “printing company”. So lets clarify what it means to have top rankings in search engines.

It isn’t very difficult to get your website into Google or other major search engines. It takes an XML Sitemap and a link or two from a third party website and within a few days you’ll be able to see your website listed in most major search engines when you do a search for your website domain name.

But how valuable is that really? How many of your customers are typing your domain name into Google? Certainly not new customers who have never heard of you. They will most likely be customers who have already heard of you from some other source. What you really want is to appear at the top of search engines for the keywords your customers are searching for. This usually is not a very easy task and can take lots of time before you actually start appearing on the first page for your targeted keywords. Hopefully after reading this article, you will have a better understanding of what you need to do.

There is no secret to search engine optimization. No special technique that you can employ to become the top ranking website. If there was, well, every site would try it and since there is only room for one top result, the strategy would never hold. The only thing you can do is apply techniques to your website that will put you in the best possible position to rank high in search engines. So here it is, everything a beginner needs to know about search engine optimization;

1. Choosing the right keywords

Determine the keywords you want to rank high for in search engines. Now keep in mind, this is not easy and its a never end task. You always want to be on the look out for more keywords that your customers may be searching for. To get started, download our free keyword research tool and enter your website URL. You will get some keyword suggestions. After selecting any of the keyword suggestions, you will get a list of related keywords that are actually being searched for right now in search engines. So you know that if you are ranking high for these keywords, you are guaranteed to get lots of traffic to your website. But how do you rank high for these keywords? We’ll get to that in just a second. For now, here are some strategies for choosing the right keywords;

• Avoid broad terms like “printing” or “graphic design”. Instead try to get as specific as possible by thinking about specific niche services that you provide or anything that may differentiate you from competitors. It is much easier to rank high for specific keywords than it is for broad keywords. Plus, with specific keywords you know your visitors will be more targeted and a better position to buy from your website.
• Think about targeting your keywords to your specific geographic location. Many potential visitors want local products or services and will actual type their current location when searching for these products.

RAGE SEKeyword, our free keyword research tool, will actually provide both specific keyword suggestions and suggestions based on geographic locations.

2. Put the keywords in the right places

Your next step is to make sure your website contains the keywords and keyword phrases you have come up with. keep in mind a few things;

• Your title tag, the text that appears in your browser’s title bar when you visit your website, is the most important place that your keywords should appear. Keep your title tag between 60 and 120 characters and include 2-3 important keywords and keyword phrases.
• Your anchor text, that is the text used to link between pages, is also a really important place to include your keywords. See our post on anchor text for more tips on how to properly use them.
• Other places to include your keywords is in your actual web page copy. Make sure you include your text as actual text and not pictures. Search engines can not read text within pictures. This is a common mistake made by iWeb based websites.

The goal here is to make your website an information resource. Even if you are focusing on selling a product, always make sure customers can return to your website to find important information related to the products or services your provide.

3. Make friends online

Your last, and most important strategy, is to get third party websites to link to your website. Every time another website links to yours, it is as if they are voting for your website and search engines use these votes to help determine where to rank your site. The more links you can obtain, the better it looks in the eyes of search engines.

Keep in mind that not all links, or votes, are created equal. A popular and established website in itself that links to your website will carry more credibility with their vote, than a new and relatively unknown website. There are many factors that determine a popular website and they can all easily be found for any website using RAGE Domainer. Not only that, but with RAGE Domainer you can even see who is linking to your website or your competitors websites. A good strategy is to try and get links from the websites that link to your competitors to link your website. RAGE Domainer makes it really easy to find these websites and discover which ones will provide the most credibility when they link to you.

Now remember, these tips will almost certainly improve your search engine rankings if you are just starting out. But remember, high search engine rankings takes time and there are no secrets, no matter what someone may have told you.

So good luck with your website and your search engine optimization. If you have not already done so, download RAGE SERank to see where your website currently ranks in over 50 search engines. Once you apply the strategies discussed above, wait a few weeks and check them again. See how you have improved and feel free to ask specific questions about your search engine rankings on the RAGE SEO Discussion Forum.

Create Add-ons, Tutorials, & Resources For Third Party Products

The number one best strategy that you can employ in driving more traffic to your website is leveraging the success and visitors of other websites. A great way to do this is by creating add-ons, tutorials or third party products for an existing product or service. Before worrying about the How and For What, consider the benefits of going in this direction. Companies love when you extend or talk about their product or service for the same reason you would appreciate the gesture, free advertising. You single handily increase their exposure and the usefulness of their product or service.

With that being said, most companies would be more than willing to help promote your add-on and they may even have some insight into promotional areas you can leverage on your own. Taking a look at Apple’s online store we see a multitude of third party products that customers can purchase. The extra exposure these companies get by providing an Apple related product greatly enhances their product reputation and provides free advertising for their website. They can than leverage this extra exposure to help promote other product lines.

In another example, RAGE Software’s MapDesign provides a great way for website developers to easily add interactive media to their websites. Of course, there are dozens of software packages that users can use to design and build websites. One of the most popular for the Mac, RapidWeaver, was being used by many of our RAGE MapDesign customers. We leveraged the success of RapidWeaver by making it easy to use RAGE MapDesign along with it. We created an online video tutorial to show step by step how the two applications can integrate with each other and posted it to the RapidWeaver forums. Since we were the first to do this, we were able to attract a large portion of RapidWeaver users over to our product line. As we introduced more products, these customers kept coming back. In addition, we also increased our search engine rankings by branching off into new features that were searched often in many major search engines.

Now you may be wondering what you can do in order to leverage the traffic and success of other products and services, and in turn, gain new customers and higher search engine rankings. At the very least you can write articles pertaining to your area of expertise. However, by getting a little creative you can go further in leveraging the traffic of other websites.

First and foremost you must consider the industry you are in. Whether it be law, religion, technology, SEO, there is always creative options you can take advantage of. Very generically you can use special deal websites such as Red Flag Deals to announce your one time deals on products or services.

How To Brainstorm New Traffic Generating Ideas

Here are the steps involved in determining the websites to go after;

1. Make a list of all the ways your customers use your products or services. Get specific and creative here. Do a search for your product or service name to see if anyone has been talking about using your product in a way you may not have thought of yet.
2. Find other products or services that your products can be used with to help make those customers more productive.
3. Look for any communities that may already have been established around these products or services to see if their customers could benefit from your offerings and to find places you can promote your product/services.
4. Create your free add-on, tutorial or resource for these third party products. The important strategy here is to make this add-on free because it gives you more of an opportunity to promote and will lower the barriers required for new customers to come try it and discover what else you have to offer.
5. Evaluate the traffic and feedback you get from these new users to see if your promotional efforts have paid off and whether you should consider additional add-ons for this segment or move on to a new one.

In our last post we talked about anchor text, and how to use it effectively to help increase your search engine rankings. Today we will talk about how to evaluate the effectiveness of your anchor text and what Googlebot knows about your website.

If you don’t already have one, your will need an XML Sitemap file published and submitted to Google’s Webmaster Tools. You can use RAGE Sitemap Automator to quickly and easily create your XML Sitemap file.

Now that you have your XML Sitemap file published to your website and submitted to Google, login to your Google’s Webmaster Tools account. Click ‘Statistics’ on the left hand side and the click ‘What Googlebot Sees’. Here you will get a whole list of the most predominant anchor text used to link to your website. Click any of the anchor text keywords to see some slight variations used by the various websites that link to yours.

If you scroll down a little further, you will see the most predominant keywords, as determined by Google, on your website as well as the most predominant keywords used to link to your website from third party websites.

Use this information to;

1. Determine what keywords other websites are using to link to your website
2. Brainstorm additional keywords for your website

Today we are proud to announce a set of three add-ons for the Xsilva LightSpeed Web Store that will help Web Store users get more visitors to there store through search engines.

The three add-ons include;

1) RAGE SEO Add-on
Makes sure your Web Store is properly optimized for search engines by creating dynamic title and meta tags for your product pages.

2) RAGE Google Base Add-on
Gets your products listed in Google’s Product search engine so customers will see your inventory listed in Google’s search index within 48 hours along with a detailed description and price information.

3) RAGE Google Analytics Add-on
Links your e-commerce web store with Google Analytics so you can see where your customers are coming from, how they use your website, and who your most profitable customers are.

More information on the add-ons can be found on the LightSpeed SEO Add-on page.