Mac SEO Blog

To see the SEO For Sandvox Video Course in its entirety, visit the SEO For Sandvox Video Course page.

The meta 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 speciality.” 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.

Again, it’s very easy to include your meta description in Sandvox. The box right below where we typed in our title tag is where we will type in our Meta description. You’ll want to try and limit the description to about 150 characters.

Google has gone on record to state that the accuracy of your meta description will not affect your rankings. The main purpose of the meta description is to try and improve click-through rates. Google also highly recommends that you avoid using identical, or very similar descriptions on every page of your site.

To see the SEO For Sandvox Video Course in its entirety, visit the SEO For Sandvox Video Course page.

The title tag is one of the most important SEO elements, and it’s been that way for a while. The title tag consists of the keywords and phrases found at the top of your web browser when you are visiting a site. In search engine results, the title tag shows up as the clickable link to take you to that webpage. This means that you’ll want to try and include phrases that are catchy so that you inspire clicks.

Conveniently for Sandvox users, editing title tags is extremely easy to do. To edit a title tag, highlight the page that you want to edit, and bring your mouse over to the text box that says Window Title at the bottom of the application. Here is where you will type in your Title Tag.
When typing in your title tag, I want you to keep a few things in mind. First, make sure that the title tag relates to the content on the page. You should also be including some of the phrases you had written down when you did your keyword research. Lastly, include your most important words and phrases at the beginning of your title. This is because search engines such as Google, begin cutting off the title tag in search results at around 70 characters. You’ll notice as you type in your title tag in Sandvox, there is a number in the top right corner that tells you how many characters you are at. After 65 characters, the number will turn red, which will indicate to you that your title tag is getting too long. Ideally, you should create a unique title for every page on your website.

What’s really great about Sandvox, is that if you were to leave the title tag box blank, an auto-generated title tag will be created using a combination of your page name, and your site name.

We are extremely happy to announce the release of iWeb SEO Tool 2.0. iWeb SEO Tool is our popular SEO tool that allows iWeb users to easily add SEO elements to their websites such as title tags, alternative text, header tags and more.

After many of you sent in some of your suggestions, we have decided to release this version with a very popular request. Users can now easily add a favicon to their websites with a simple click of a button.

To learn how to add your favicon using iWeb SEO Tool 2.0 (and what a favicon is for that matter) you can view this video tutorial.

Don’t forget to check out the iWeb SEO Walkthrough Video Tutorial to learn how to make a more search engine friendly iWeb website.

We recently ran a contest with users on our mailing list (don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t already – don’t miss the next one). We asked our customers to tell us about their experience using our software, tutorials, and hosting. We were overwhelmed with the responses, and were so happy to hear of all the great things people had to say about us.

It is very satisfying for us to hear about how successful so many of your websites are after having used our software. It makes us excited to improve our software and tutorials as we have continued to do so over the years. Since 1999, we have been providing entrepreneurs and business owners alike with quality software and educational tutorials. After all the thanks we have received from you, our customers, it is now time for us to say thank you to you.

Congratulations to our contest winners:

…I am happy (beyond happy really) with the results the site has achieved in such a short amount of time…

Michelle, California

…WebDesign really helps me keep my Websites By Cook business humming…

Stan, Ontario

…So without a moment’s thought I purchased and downloaded the Sitemap Automator. Once again, incredibly streamlined and user-friendly, just like Webcrusher…

Christopher, England

Our winners receive a copy of our latest SEO software, SEIntelligence. SEIntelligence is a great SEO tool to compare your competitors websites and see what they are all doing correctly, and how you can optimize your site to begin competing with them.

To see the SEO For Sandvox Video Course in its entirety, visit the SEO For Sandvox Video Course page.

Video Transcript:

In HTML, header tags are used by webmasters to display the headings on their pages. There are six types of header tags that can be used. What Sandvox users to need to know regarding header tags, is that there are 2 headers placed on each page. The first header is an h1, and is generally used for the title of the website. This header tag will remain constant from page to page on your website.

Another header tag, which is an h2 tag, is used as the title of the page and is located where the main part of the page begins. This is a great place for you to include a keyphrase that really illustrates what this particular page is about.

So for example, instead of having a header that reads something generic such as News, or Site Updates, take advantage of the header and give it a good keyword rich descriptive name. If this particular page is about Left Handed Golf Clubs, that is a phrase that might make a good header.
On a side note, an H3 tag is used when you are indexing content, so for example, the page title of a blog post, or photo page will show up with an H3 tag, so be sure to make keyword rich titles for those items.

In our social networking world, having a Facebook page for your business can be extremely important. In this video, we’re going to show you how you can add a Facebook ‘like’ button to your site in iWeb.

If you haven’t already, make sure you check out our video on how to create a custom Facebook page that looks similar to your website.

Video Transcript:

To add a Facebook Like, button to your iWeb website, first go to the Facebook Developers Like Button page. You can pause the video here and type in this URL, or you can do a search for the phrase Facebook Like Button and click on the result for the Facebook Developers Like Button page.

In the Step 1 – Get Like Button Code form, first enter the URL for your Facebook page. If you are unsure of what this URL is, you can visit your Facebook page, and copy and paste the URL into this field.

If you would like to include this Send button, you can leave this box checked, otherwise, you can remove it.

For Layout Style, go through each option and choose the one that you like best.

You can leave the width at 450, or you can change it if you’d like.

You can also choose to show the faces of people who have liked your page. That option looks like this on a webpage.

And lastly, you can pick your font and colour scheme that you would like to use.

When you are done, press the Get Code button, and highlight the code that pops up in the window.

Now let’s open up iWeb, and drag an HTML snippet onto our page. Paste the code that we just copied into this HTML Snippet. You should be able to see your Facebook Like or Recommend button, and you can resize it and move it to a location on your site that fits best.

And that is how you add a Facebook Like button to an iWeb website. Be sure to check out our other helpful iWeb tips and tricks videos which are located in the SEO For iWeb Walkthrough Video Tutorial or our iWeb SEO blog

To see the SEO For Sandvox Video Course in its entirety, visit the SEO For Sandvox Video Course page.

Video Transcript:

Alternative image text, also known as alt tags or alt text, is an HTML attribute that is used to describe images. This attribute exists because an image may not always load in a browser, so in its place, the alt text will appear, letting the user know what should have shown up.

This attribute also gives us a good way of describing pictures to search engines, so that they can properly place them in image searches. In Sandvox, any image you place will automatically be given alternative text identical to the image file name. This is a great feature because it can save you a lot of time if you publish a lot of pictures and don’t feel like giving them all alt tags.

If you do, however, wish to make your alt text differ from the file name, click on the image and then press the Inspector button. Then press the Media tab which is the last tab all the way on the right. Here you can see the name of the image, which is something we spoke about in the Image Names video, and you can also see the field that says Alternate Text. Here is where you will type in your few words that describe the photo. You don’t need to worry about separating your words with dashes for this feature.

Ever wanted to add a forum to your iWeb website? Well now you can. This quick tutorial will show you a very easy way to add a forum to an iWeb website. Also see our post on how to add a mailing list signup form to an iWeb website.

Video Transcript:

In this tutorial, I am going to show you how you can easily add a forum to your website in iWeb.

The first thing we’re going to do is open our web browser and go to nabble.com.

Next, click on the Start a Free Forum button. Type in a username that you want to use on the forum, and enter your e-mail address and a password.

Then think of the name that you want to give to your forum. Don’t worry too much about making the perfect name as you can easily change this later on.

You can put a description in if you want, otherwise leave it blank and type in the Captcha, and then press Create Forum.

When you are done, you will be taken to your forum. You will need to then open the confirmation e-mail that you will be sent, and then click to confirm. When you have been confirmed, your forum will look something like this.

Next, click on Options, and then select Embedding Options. Now highlight this embed code that you are given, and copy it.

Now let’s open up our sites in iWeb. Add a page by clicking Add Page, and selecting your template and then highlighting the Blank page and pressing the Choose button.

Delete the text box that says Text in it. Drag the HTML Snippet widget onto the page, and paste the embed code that we just copied.

Adjust the snippet so that the forum fits nicely on your page.

When you publish your site, your forum will be live and your users can begin having discussions.

To see the SEO For Sandvox Video Course in its entirety, visit the SEO For Sandvox Video Course page.

In the following video tutorial, we are going to cover how to add custom buttons to your iWeb website using ButtonDesign. With these custom buttons, you can create your own navigation menu, or include other buttons such as Buy Now, Learn More, etc.

Video Transcript:

To add custom buttons to your iWeb website using RAGE Software’s ButtonDesign, follow these simple steps.

First, choose the button template that you want to use. Next, type in your button caption. This will be the text that will appear on the button.

Adjust the button’s width and zoom as you want it to be.

When you are done, click on the Export To Web Site button in the top right corner of the application.

Make sure the option to Save As HTML Button is selected. Select PNG as the Image Type, select the location to save the button, and then press the Save button.

Next, open up iWeb, and drag and drop the .PNG button onto the page you want to add it to. Move the button to your desired location.

With the button still highlighted, click on the Inspector button, and then go to the Links tab. You can now link the button to your desired destination.

Repeat this process for as many buttons as you want.

This is what an all button navigation menu looks like.