Mac SEO Blog

This morning we finally released RAGE SERank 1.0, an all new application for Mac web site owners to track and manage their search engine rankings. With RAGE SERank you simply add the keywords you want to rank highly for and select from the over 40 search engines to check your search engine rankings.

RAGE SERank will automatically check your rankings and provide a detailed report of where your web site ranks in each search engine for all of the keywords you have entered. RAGE SERank can also be used to check the search engine rankings of your competitors to easily see what keywords they are targeting and ranking highly for. RAGE SERank will keep track of your rankings over time so you can graph changes or go back to any previous rank check.

With the professional version of RAGE SERank you can create customized PDF rank reports that you can use for personal use, or send to your clients or colleagues. The professional version also allows an unlimited number of web sites to be checked.

Download a free trial version of RAGE SERank or order your full standard or professional license.

A few days ago MSN’s Webmaster Tools officially came out of beta. Like Google’s Webmaster Tools, MSN’s tools let you quickly submit your sitemap.xml file that you have created with RAGE Google Sitemap Automator. Once submitted you are provided with search engine feedback including;

• How many of your web pages are indexed in MSN’s search
• The date MSN’s search spiders last crawled your web site
• Which, if any, of your web pages could not be properly indexed
• Your web site’s most popular incoming links

Although you won’t find as many resources and tools that are provided by Google’s Webmaster Tools, you will get some interesting information about how your web site is performing in MSN’s search.

If you already have your sitemap.xml file published on your web site, all you have to do is create your free Windows Live account and follow the simple steps to submitting your sitemap.xml file. The next update to RAGE Google Sitemap Automator will feature an all new way to ensure that your sitemap.xml files are recognized by all major search engines including MSN.

RAGE Domainer 1.1 has just been released. This free update for registered users adds the following new features and enhancements;

[NEW] Full support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
[NEW] Support for additional top-level domains (.in,.cn,.cz,.se)
[NEW] Now remembers list column sizes
[NEW] Clicking AlexaRank loads Alexa.com’s web site
[FIX] Importing CSV domain lists
[FIX] Correctly assigns owner details

RAGE Domainer is the only web developer’s tools for Mac OS X that lets users easily track and manage their domain names while getting an overview of a domain’s popularity and value.

RAGE Domainer 1.1 can be downloaded from the Domainer download page.

RAGE Domainer can be purchased for just $39.95 from RAGE Software’s secure online store.

Now that you have your blog set up with lots of great content related to your company, you can promote your blog using both Blog Search Engines and Blog Networks to get more exposure and drive more readers.

Blog Search Engines

Much like the Google search engine which searches the entire web, there are many search engines related purely to online blogs. That is, they will only search blog posts. With the rising popularity of blogs and blog search engines, leveraging these resources can offer a large amount of targeted web visitors to your web site’s blog. Some of the biggest blog search engines include;

• Technorati
• Google Blog Search

Getting your blog listed in Technorati can help provide extra exposure and important stats including how many other blogs are linking to your blog and your Blog Authority which, like Google’s PageRank, is measured by how many quality blogs link back to yours.

Once you have set up your online blog it is extremely important to set up your Technorati profile. Then, add your online blog to your profile and you can start tracking your blog’s popularity. As you add posts to your blog, they can appear on Technorati’s web site if you follow the notification descriptions below.

Blog Networks

On step above blog search engines are blog networks. Blog networks usually focus on a particular subject and allow only high quality, related blogs, to join their networks. They may be community driven, in that you must submit your blog to the network and other may vote on its relevance, or there may be a panel of judges that will determine whether or not your blog meets the standards of the network.

One of the more popular, and exclusive blog networks is 9rules (Update 2019: Link no longer available). A few times a year 9rules will open their network to submissions by bloggers, providing an opportunity for them to have their blog evaluated, and possibly included in their network.

Interested visitors will often visit blog networks in search of content related to their interests. In turn, this helps push new traffic to your web site. Other members of your same blog network may also discover your blog and provide links back to your web site. Blog networks are a great way to build your blog’s brand recognition, create a perception of quality and increase traffic and blog exposure.

There are many blog networks around and reading other blogs in your industry, or doing a simple Google search will return the vast amounts of opportunities available to you. Some of the more popular blog networks include;

b5media (Update 2019: Link no longer available)
Smash.vc
Web2.0 Workgroup

For a long listing, and ranking scheme of the most influential blog networks, see The Blog Network List (Update: website no longer exists).

Automatically Notifying Blog Search Engines About Updates

The great thing about blogs is the ability to automatically let blog search engines, such as Technorati, know when you have posted a new blog article. This can happen instantly without you having to do anything but write your blog post and submit it to your web site. Technorati provides step by step instructions on how to PING (a fancy word for notify), their search engine when you write a new blog post. You can read the step by step instructions on the Technorati help pages (Update 2019: Link no longer works).

You can use Google’s Blog submission (Update 2019: link no longer available) service to submit your blog to Google’s Blog Search Engine. This works similar to the Technorati’s notification features described above.

Press releases are a great way to get your company name and product out to your customers. It is also a great way to obtain a large number of incoming links to your web site which can help improve your Google PageRank and in turn, your search engine rankings. A press release is a mock news story about any newsworthy information about your company, such as releasing a new product, acquiring a product from another company, or announcing significant company news.

There is a ton of information online that can teach you how to write press releases. For now, you can use the following guidelines to take into consideration when writing your press releases;

1. Make sure your press release relates to a newsworthy event
2. Don’t make your press release sound like a sales pitch. You are providing an unbiased news releases about a significant company event.
3. Always write your press release as if it were going out to people who have never heard of your company or product. Make sure you clearly define who you are and what you do each time a press release is sent out.
4. Always include an easy way for publications to get in contact with you if they have more questions.
5. Your first paragraph should concisely answer the questions, Who, What, Where, and When. Essentially a short summary of your entire release.
6. Try to keep your release to a page long and never exceed two pages.

There are a number of press release distributers. You can find ones that are more expensive but will get you a greater reach and have more credibility with publications, and you will also find some which are not too expensive and can still provide you with a number of media contacts and links back to your web site.

One of the most popular, and least expensive press release distribution web sites is PRWeb. You can send a release for as little as $0 to $80 $40 depending on who you want to reach. If you live in the UK, another popular newswire web site is http://www.sourcewire.com/.

Look around for other press release distributers, especially one that may be specific to the product or service your offer. For example, if you were a Mac Software developer you may want to use the services of PRMac which targets just Macintosh related web sites and publications.

Other press release distribution web sites that are more expensive but provide added credibility in the eyes of your target media include;

PR Newswire
Business Wire
CNW Group (Canadian)

Update: Changed the PRWeb pricing details as they have changed since this article was originally written. Thanks Mario!

We had the great opportunity to talk SEO and web site marketing with MacVoices.com Podcast. Chuck of MacVoices spoke with us about;

1. Using popular web development tools including RAGE WebDesign, iWeb and Rapidweaver and how to optimize your web site for search engines.
2. Most effective techniques for achieving higher search engine rankings
3. How to avoid hurting your search engine rankings
4. Awesome new software soon to be released by RAGE Software
5. How you can meet the RAGE team at MacWorld 2008 in San Francisco

Check out the full Podcast at the MacVoices web site.

If you have any further questions, be sure to post them to the RAGE Software discussion forum. We can help you with any web site marketing or search engine question you may have.

We are extremely happy to finally release version 1.0 of Domainer, a new application for web site owners, marketers and investors to track and manage their domain names.

Domainer is the first, and as of this writing, the only tool for the Mac that gives an overview of a web site’s popularity using Google PageRank, AlexaRank, incoming back links and social tags. With Domainer, you can quickly, and easily, see all important domain details in one easy to use application.

Use RAGE Domainer to manage your domains, track and beat the success of your competitors, and find profitable web sites to buy and sell.

A free download of Domainer can be found here. Domainer is available for purchase immediately through the RAGE Software secure online store for just $39.95 USD.

We look forward to hearing your feedback. Come discuss your thoughts, feature suggestions and any questions you may have for Domainer on the RAGE Discussion forum.

For the past 8 years we have been providing software that makes it really easy for Mac users to design beautiful web sites. We started with RAGE WebDesign, the best Mac Web Development tool back in early 2000. Than we released RAGE ButtonDesign and RAGE MapDesign to make it really easy to add professional looking graphics and add some really cool effects to your web site. We even released 15 beautiful CSS based templates for users who need a little inspiration when designing their web sites.

Now we are entering a new segment in the web development arena. In 2005 we released RAGE Google Sitemap Automator to help web developers get their web site listed in major search engines. This was a huge hit with our customers as they loved the ability to not only get their sites listed in search engines really easily, but the added feedback provided by Google’s Webmaster Tools has enabled users to obtain an edge over their competition.

Today we are announcing beta versions of two awesome new web promotional tools. Never before has their been a native Mac application as robust and beautiful looking as our new Mac SEO Tools. So Today we are proud to announce the beta versions of;

Domainer – The only tool for Mac that lets you easily track and compare multiple web sites in one easy to use interface. Domainer provides important SEO details including Google PageRank, AlexaRank, Incoming Links and Number of Social tags in addition to key Domain details such as expiration and creation dates, domain owners, FTP details and hosting information.

RAGE SERank – Check your web site ranking in over 40 search engines. Now you can know exactly where your web site appears in search engines for the keywords you are targeting. Plus, you can easily see which one of your competitors ranks above you and easily track your search engine rankings over time. Built on a beautiful Mac interface, RAGE SERank is the first native search engine rank checker for the Mac.

You can sign up to beta test each application by creating a free beta testing account at the following URL;

Beta Test Here

Once logged in you will see the two applications listed. You can then request to beta test. Beta testers will receive a free license once the application is officially released.

We look forward to getting your feedback and hearing what you have to say.

Recently Google updated their Webmaster Tools account with more data and a revamped Interface. Personally I find the new interface to be much easier to use.

The biggest addition is a web site feed subscriber stats section. You can see the subscriber stats from the Statistics tab.

The all new subscriber stats give you details about how many people subscribe to your web site feeds, such as RSS and atom feeds, through Google services. Although this won’t give you the total number of subscribers since not everyone is using Google tools to subscribe to your feeds, it does provide a nice overview and a gauge at how popular your feed actually is.

If you are unsure what a feed actually is, or you are interested in learning how to get more subscribers to your feeds through Google, there is a Google help page describing how to set up and track site feeds

If you don’t yet have a Google Webmaster Tools account, or have your XML sitemap up, do so now with RAGE Google Sitemap Automator. XML Sitemaps help you get your web site indexed faster and more thoroughly, giving you much more control on how search engines find and index your web site.

Great news today from the top search engine giants. According to TechCrunch Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have announced an agreement on the sitemaps protocol created by Google.

It’s great to hear that these three competitors have worked together for the benefit of Internet users. This will greatly enhance the ability of web developers to let all major search engines know which of their web site’s pages are important and how often they are updated. I hope this leads to more relevant results from these search engines based on the information provided by web site owners.

It is also likely the sitemap protocol will be expanded to add more features and give more control to web site owners over what kind of information the search engines store about each web site.

What does this mean for RAGE Google Sitemap Automator users? Your sitemaps will now be recognized by Yahoo and Microsoft in addition to Google. Further, any search engine can decide to support sitemaps which means your sitemap has just become that much more important for your search engine ranking strategy.

If you have already created your sitemap in RAGE Google Sitemap Automator you do not have to change a thing. Your sitemaps will already be compatible with Yahoo and Microsoft’s search engine.

We will be adding features to make it much easier to submit your sitemaps to Yahoo and Microsoft. We will also obviously adjust the name once these features are added to better reflect the programs new features.

More information on the changes can be found at sitemaps.org.

We will be posting more details as they become available. A significant update to RAGE Google Sitemap Automator will be released very soon. We have added some great new features that will make creating and uploading your sitemaps much easier. We are just fine tuning its performance for Intel computers.