In this section of our SEIntelligence series, we are going to cover page descriptions. More specifically, what page descriptions are, how they can benefit a website, and how to change your page descriptions in SEIntelligence.
Video Transcript:
A web page’s description can play an important role when it comes to search engines. If we take a look at this block of text here in a Google search result, it tells us a bit about what we can expect to find if we were to click to be taken to this page.
But where does this text come from? Well if we click to go to this page, and view the site’s source code, we will see that the snippet of text from the search result is actually taken from this page’s description tag. Google and other search engines, will use a page’s description in the search results when it deems that the description sufficiently describes the page.
When you load your site in SEIntelligence, you will be able to see each of your page’s descriptions by clicking on the page, and then selecting the Description tab. You can then get some feedback on your description, and then modify it in the text box should you choose to. Generally, you want to make your description enticing to the person viewing it in the search results, enough to make them want to click to be taken to your site. Every page on your site should have a unique description.
Sandvox users can easily add a mailing list signup form to their websites. Just follow the easy instructions in the tutorial below your MailShoot mailing list sign up form will be on your website in no time.
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 Sandvox, I am going to add a new page. I am going to choose the Empty Without Sidebar option. I will then go to Insert, and select Raw HTML. In the popup window, I will paste the code that I just copied in between the span tags. Now I will publish my site, and then view the signup form in my web browser. If I find that the form needs to be adjusted a bit, which in this case I do, because parts of the bottom of the form is missing, I will go back to Sandvox, delete the code from before, and re-peat the process from before. This time, I will adjust the height to a number I think will suffice, and then publish the site again. This time my form looks just the way I wanted it to.
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
This video is an update to an older video tutorial. In this video, we will show you how to properly verify your website with Google Webmaster Tools using Sitemap Automator, and then submit your Sitemap to Google and the other major search engines. If you haven’t already, please watch the first part of this tutorial which will show you how to create and publish an XML Sitemap.
Video Transcript:
So now that our Sitemaps have been published to our websites, we must notify the search engines. To do so, we’ll simply press the Notify Search Engines button. When you press this button, you will most likely see this window popup. This window is for instructions on notifying Google about your Sitemap. Notifying Google is slightly different from notifying other search engines. To notify Google, we will be creating an account for what is called Google Webmater Tools. In Google Webmaster Tools, we will be provided with some very useful information about our websites.
So to begin the process, first click on the Create account button. Your web browser will appear at the Google Webmaster Tools website. The first thing you’ll need to do is sign in with you Google account. If you don’t have an account, you can easily create one by clicking on the button for signing up for a new account.
When you are logged in the first thing you will need to do is click on the Add a site button. Then, you will need to paste your site’s URL and press the Continue button. Note that you did not copy your URL, but it was copied for you when you pressed on the Create Account button to be taken to Google Webmaster Tools.
Our next step is to verify our website. The reason we must verify is because Google Webmaster Tools will provide us with certain information about our sites. Information that only the webmaster should have, and not the general public. Because of this, we verify that we are the actual owner of the site.
First, we’ll click on the link to download the HTML verification file.
Then we’ll go back to Sitemap Automator, and select File in the menu bar, followed by Publish Verification File. Then press the Select Verification File button, and locate the verification file that you just downloaded. Highlight it and click Open.
Now we must Publish the verification file. If you publish to iDisk, click the Publish to iDisk button. If you publish to FTP, press the Publish to FTP button. Publish the file just like you did when you published the Sitemap.
When you are done publishing, go back to your web browser to where Google Webmaster Tools is open, and click on the link to confirm that the uploading of the file was successful. If you see a page like this, then you have done it correctly. If you get an error, then you have not done it correctly and you must try it again.
If you have published it correctly, click the Verify button.
You have now successfully verified your site. We have just a couple more steps left at this point. If you see this page, click the Continue button.
Make sure you get to your site’s Dashboard in Google Webmaster Tools. Click on Site Configuration, and then select Sitemaps. Then click on Submit a Sitemap and then type in sitemap.xml just like I am doing.
At this point, you have just submitted your Sitemap to Google.
Now just go back to Sitemap Automator and click on the Notify Search Engines button and your Sitemap will have been submitted to Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.
Remember to subscribe and visit our site for the next steps in our Sitemap Automator Instructional series.
We’ve just posted an all new update for WebCrusher. WebCrusher optimizes your website so it loads as fast as possible for your website visitors.
Version 2.1, which is free for registered users, provides faster publishing features, better support for Sandvox, the easy to use web building software, and a few other optimization fixes.
Download the WebCrusher trial for free and have a faster loading websites in just minutes!
The video tutorial below will show you the basics of creating an XML Sitemap using Sitemap Automator. We will also cover the basic points of publishing your Sitemap to your server.
Video Transcript:
To create an XML Sitemap using Sitemap Automator, the first thing you must do is add your site’s URL by clicking the New Sitemap button, and typing in your URL. Pay close attention to make sure there are no mistakes in your URL such as seeing http more than once.
Then click on the Create Sitemap button. Sitemap Automator will now scan through your website and find all of the available internal links on your site. When it is done you will be able to see all of the links that it was able to find.
Your next step is to click the Generate Sitemap button.
Now we must publish this Sitemap to our server. From the drop down menu, select to publish either to your iDisk or to your FTP server, and then press the Publish button.
If you publish to iDisk, your publish window will look like this. Select the option to publish to the root folder if you only have one website on your MobileMe account. If you have more than one, select the option to publish to selected website, and then select the website that you want to publish the Sitemap to, and then press the Publish button.
If you publish to FTP, your publish window will look like this. Enter your FTP login details in each of the fields. The Server field is usually just your website’s URL without the http, or www. If you are unsure of what your username, password, or root directory path may be, you will need to contact your web host to find out. When you are finished filling all the fields out, press the Upload button.
Your Sitemap should now be live on your site.
Remember to subscribe and visit our site for the next steps in our Sitemap Automator Instructional series.
We have just posted an update to Domainer, bringing it to version 2.1. This free update fixes problems with getting incoming links and Google PageRank for domains.
Domainer is the fully features domain management software for Mac OS X and Windows. It keeps track of when domains are expiring and important SEO details.
Learn about the title tag of a website and how it plays a role not only on your website but in the search results as well. We’ll then take you through SEIntelligence and show you how you can update your title tags.
Video Transcript:
So now that we’re familiar with the on-page optimizations interface, let’s jump right in and begin learning how to optimize our sites. We’ll start with the title tag, which is one of the most important on-page SEO elements.
If you’re not too familiar with the title tag, it is the block of text that will usually appear at the very top of your web browser. The title tag also appears as the clickable link, when you do a search query.
The title tag tells search engines a lot about a website. Placing our primary and secondary keywords into our title tag is a good way to tell search engines about our webpage, so that our pages can be indexed accordingly.
On the Title Tag tab, you will see the suggestions for your page at the bottom. You will be told how often that keyword is being used in the title tag by the sites that rank in the top 10 for that keyword. Generally, the keyword will be used one or two times by the top ranked sites.
You will also see suggestions for optimal character length, and optimal word length.
In the text box near the top, you can type in your new title tag for this page.
Here is one very general suggestion for the way you can structure your title tag. This is just an example, and you can choose to try anything you’d like to see what works best for you.
The primary keyword is the main keyword you are targeting on this page. The secondary keyword can be another keyword that you are targeting, but maybe this keyword is not mentioned as often on this page. I also like to include a company name at the end of the title tag as a way to brand a business.
We have posted a new update to Domainer which features a fix for the last version not getting your top incoming links. We have also revamped the user interface so it looks more modern and added support for additional top level domains (TLDs).
Domainer is the number 1 domain management tool for Mac OS X and Windows. It can automatically get your domain whois information and important SEO details. If you have many domains and need to keep track of them, Domainer is a great way to stay organized.
Domainer provides a overview of the value of a domain by showing you important statistics such as number of incoming links, social tags, Google PageRank, AlexaRank and more. It also syncs your domain expiry dates with iCal so you can set up automatic reminders when your domains expire.
You can download the update for free if you are a registered user or purchase the full version for just $29.95 USD (regularly $39.95 USD).
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