When Apple created iWeb they intended it to be used for personal websites. The idea that you can create something on your Mac and make it look exactly the same online, on all different browsers and operating systems was not the goal. The goal was to be able to easily create a website to share with friends and family.
Of course, you are using iWeb beyond what it is intended for, and by doing that you need to be aware of a very important fact about the web.
Since you never know who will be visiting your website, you can’t predict what web browser they are using, what operating system they have or, most importantly what fonts your visitor has installed. This means you can never be sure how your website may look to any of your visitors.
That is why a set of standards was developed to help ensure websites looked relatively the same, no matter what the visitor’s system configuration is. One of these standards is which fonts to use on your site that will always be available and show correctly for all users. iWeb turns non-standard fonts into images which can hurt your search engine rankings since search engines cannot “read” images. And since text content is so important for your search engine rankings, this is definitely not a good thing.
This quick video tutorial explains how to avoid this common problem;
Remember, the web is not print! You want to make your website accessible to the most amount of people while still making it look appealing. Good luck!
Are you ready for better search engine rankings? We have a full, step by step training course for iWeb users and how to properly optimize an iWeb site for search engines>. (If you aren’t ready for better rankings, don’t click that link 🙂 )
If you use iWeb, you already know that when you type in your website’s URL, once you are taken to your page, the URL in the address bar will forward to your domain name, followed by the site name that you gave in iWeb while publishing, followed by your page’s file name. It will look something like this;
What we will show you in this tutorial is how to shorten the URL so it only looks like this;
http://www.mydomain.com/page-name.html
The steps to do this are actually quite simple and if you are already using iWeb SEO Tool there really isn’t much more to it. It does require that you have a real web host with an FTP server, but if you are serious at all about your website, you should have one already.
We have just posted a long awaited update to Macintosh Explorer bringing the application to version 5.0. This new update adds support for Quicklook, improves support for Snow Leopard, and fixes many minor bugs and issues with the previous version.
We have just released a new update to Sitemap Automator, the easiest way to get your website listed in all major search engines.
This update will now show you any broken links on your website and where they can be found on your site. Just double click a broken link and Sitemap Automator will take you to the page that contains that link.
Broken links can negatively effect both your search engine rankings and your website visitor’s experience. Ensuring all your links work correctly is the starting point of a professional website.
iWeb SEO Tool, the search engine optimization tool for iWeb based sites, has been updated to version 1.9 and adds the two most request features.
It will now work properly with iWeb blogs that use commenting and with iDisk Syncing enabled. Loading a website from your iDisk will also work much faster than before.
We have a few important updates currently being beta tested. First and foremost, Macintosh Explorer, our file browser for Mac OS X has some new features including a new tabbed interface, support for Quick Look on Leopard and a few more enhancements.
We also have an update to iWeb SEO Tool which improves on some long standing issues. You can now properly use iWeb SEO Tool when you have MobileMe syncing enabled. You can also now optimize blog pages for search engines.
Just create a free beta testers account at the above site and you will see both products listed. Try them out and please submit your feedback and any problems you encounter so we can fix them ASAP.
Google recently updated their analytics code for a number of reasons. The most important reason is so that the code can run asynchronously while your website loads. This means your website load time should be faster and tracking should be more reliable.
In order to take advantage of the new Google Analytics code, we have added the ability to enter code into the head section of your website in iWeb SEO Tool. This means in addition to adding Google Analytics you can add custom javascript, favicons, meta tags or just about anything else you need to enter within theandtags.
To take advantage of this feature, open your iWeb site in iWeb SEO Tool. Your existing Google Analytics code will be in the ‘Footer Code’ field. Remove that code and login to your Google Analytics to get the new code snippet. Copy and paste this snippet into the ‘Head Code’ field. The following video tutorial explains how to add Google Analytics to your iWeb site with iWeb SEO Tool.
This new update also lets you quickly open the modified website folder when pressing the Export button. You have a third option to show your website folder in addition to publishing to your MobileMe or FTP server. Now if you have to you can use a third party FTP client to publish your site or use another tool such as WebCrusher to optimize your iWeb site for faster loading times.
You can download iWeb SEO Tool and use it on your iWeb site today.
Video Transcript:
Once you’ve loaded your website in iWeb SEO Tool, you will be able to see files and folders on the left hand side. Just a quick note for those who watched the tutorial on how to load a site in iWeb SEO Tool properly, you might have seen some text in these two fields here. Normally, these fields would be empty, but I had already added the text into those fields previously, so that is why there was text there. We’re going to talk about what to put in those fields later in this video.
The first thing you need to do is select one of your website files with a .html extension. You will all see an index.html file in your website folder. Do not optimize this page. The index.html page is just for redirect purposes, so whatever you do, do not optimize the index.html file.
So now you can begin adding your title tags, meta tags, and alt text to your site. I’m not going to explain what these items are, or the best way to create them because I want to keep this tutorial short. If you need to learn more about these items, I highly recommend purchasing the SEO For iWeb Walkthrough Video Tutorial. It’s only $29.95 and what you will learn in that course is worth much much more than this small price tag.
On the Site Settings tab, there are two fields. One is for the Head code and one is for the footer code. What you should put in the Head code section is the code for Google Analytics. You can obtain this code by signing up for an account with Google Analytics, and registering to get the code. You can do all of this at google.com/analytics.
What you should put in the Footer code section is the code for Statcounter.com You can obtain this code by signing up for an account at statcounter.com and registering your website to get the code.
Both of these codes will allow you to receive information about your website visitors such as the number of unique visits, and how these people found your site. You don’t need to add both codes, but it is entirely up to you.
There is also a video in the SEO For iWeb Walkthrough Video Tutorial that will show you exactly how to obtain both of these codes.
Remember to click on the Apply button, or Apply To Entire Site button on the Site Settings tab to apply the changes to your site.
If you are using header tags on your site, make sure you select the option to Convert header tags and then press the Apply To Entire Site button. This will just strip the code from your site. It will not make the text in your header invisible. We never want to hide any text, so keep that in mind when creating your header tags. There is more information on header tags in the video course I mentioned earlier as well.
One last note, the Custom Meta Tags section is for advanced users, a large majority of you will never use it, so don’t worry about putting anything in there.
When you are done, you can publish your site by clicking on the Publish button. You can also find more video tutorials that will help you publish your website.
We are happy to announce a major update to SERank 2.1, the most powerful search engine rank checker for Mac OS X. With SERank you can check where your website ranks in over one hundred search engines around the world, track your changes and even create PDF reports for yourself, clients or customers.
SERank 2.1 adds the ability to check multiple websites at once as well as faster, more search engine friendly rank checks, important fixes for Google and Ask and more.
SERank 2.1 is free for anyone who currently still has a valid upgrade plan. All purchases for SERank come with one year of free upgrades. You can purchase the full version of SERank, or renew your license, by visiting out secure online store.
We look forward to hearing your feedback and are here to answer any of your questions.
We are very excited to announce the first beta of MailShoot, a powerful newsletter and subscription management software. MailShoot will let you instantly create an online subscription form for your website, no programming skills necessary, where your visitors can subscribe to your newsletter. It even works with iWeb websites hosted on MobileMe.
From there, you can quickly and easily keep your visitors up to date with periodic email updates keeping them coming back to your website.
We have released the first beta version on Trybeta. Users who submit valuable feedback will get a free license when the final version is released. Just sign up as a beta tester to Trybeta below;
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