Mac SEO Blog

Apple today announced an update for iLife with some very cool new features to iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband. However, iWeb has not been updated at all.

When you buy iLife 11 you will get iWeb v3.0.2, the latest official release from Apple. This has been posted on Apple’s website on the iLife 11 Store Page. Scroll down near the bottom of the page and you will see;

What’s in the Box

• DVD containing iPhoto ’11, iMovie ’11, GarageBand ’11, iWeb (v3.0.2), iDVD (v7.1)
• Electronic documentation

I know many people were waiting for an iWeb update, unfortunately nothing is new with iLife 11.

Update: The SEO for RapidWeaver Walkthrough Video Tutorial has been released. The tutorial will walk you through the entire process for optimizing your RapidWeaver website. The tutorial will be a huge time saver as it will teach you about the SEO methods, while also showing you how to accomplish them very quickly.

Optimizing a RapidWeaver website for search engines can be challenging, but can also be fairly easy when you know what to do, how to do it, and where it can be done.

Whether you are a beginner to RapidWeaver, or you’ve been using it for a long time, search engine optimization (SEO) can be a brand new subject to many webmasters. This article is meant to push you in the right direction for making your RapidWeaver website more search engine friendly. Read each step carefully, and follow the tips and advice accordingly.

Page Titles

Page titles (also known as ‘Title Tags’) are one of the most important SEO elements. They can really give search engines a great understanding of what a website is about. Page titles are found at the top of your web browser. A good page title is keyword rich and accurately depicts the content of each web page.

Changing your page titles in RapidWeaver is very easy to do. Simply highlight the page that you wish to update, and click on the Page Info button in the top right corner of RapidWeaver.

Under the General tab, locate the Browser Title field box, and enter your title tag. Remember to repeat this process for all of the pages on your website.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when making your title tags:

1. Do not make your title tags excessively long
2. Make sure your title tag is relevant to the actual page
3. Each page should have a unique title tag

Did you know?

Your title tag is not only important for search engine optimization, but it is also very important for getting users to click on your website in the search results? The title tag also appears as the clickable link in the search results, making it an important factor for encouraging visitors to go to your site. An uninteresting title tag will certainly turn away potential visitors, while an attractive, and relevant title tag will surely increase your traffic.

Page Description

The page description, much like the title tag, can be a very important factor for getting visitors to click on your website in the search results. A large majority of the snippets you see beneath the title tag in the search results come from the page description.  Because of this, it is very important for us to create exceptional page descriptions that are keyword rich and are convincing to people who are viewing them in the search results.

To change your page description in RapidWeaver, highlight the page that you wish to update, and click on the Page Info button. Ensure that the Header tab is selected. The next thing you are going to do is press the ‘Plus’ button which is located on the right hand side of the window, almost half way down.

In the name field, type the word ‘description.’

In the content field, type in your desired page description. Remember to make the description enticing enough for visitors to be interested in going to your website and learning more.  Since every page on your website is unique, so should each page’s description. Keywords are bolded in the search engine snippet when they match up with the users search query, so make sure to use good keywords in your description.

Anchor Text

The text we use to link to other pages on our website (or to external sites) can play an important role for search engine optimization. You have probably seen many websites use the phrase “click here” when linking to one of their pages.

Using “click here” for the anchor is wasted opportunity. Whenever linking to pages within your website, it is best to use keyword rich anchor text. Search engines rely on anchor text to identify what a page may be about.

For example, let’s assume a website sells left handed golf clubs. There are many different websites linking to this website using the anchor text “Left handed golf clubs.” Search engines now know to relate this website to left handed golf clubs. The end result will be better rankings for this website for that exact phrase.

Alternative Text For Images

Image search engines have become increasingly popular over the years. While it may be difficult for search engines to understand what a picture is about, there are ways that we can help. Utilizing an images alt attribute can help us accomplish this. The benefit of this optimization is two-fold: Gaining more traffic from image searches, and being useful to users who are using browsers that do not support images.

In RapidWeaver, select an image, and then press the Media Inspector button. In the Alt Image field, type in your Alternative Text for your image. Remember to be descriptive, while not keyword stuffing. Avoid making your alt text misleading in any way.

Meta Keywords

While many people are aware that meta keywords are not important to Google, there still may be some search engines that do take this attribute into consideration. Because of this, it is always a good idea to add some keywords to every page of our website.

This process is going to be very similar to the page description process. Press the Page Info button, and make sure you are on the header tab. Press the ‘Plus’ button, and under the Name heading, type in ‘Keywords.’

In the content section, type in your keywords. Remember to separate each keyword or phrase with a comma. Do not add keywords or phrases which are irrelevant to your page. Keep this section to a minimum. Adding a bunch of keywords and phrases will not help your efforts. As an example, if this page was about left handed golf clubs, it wouldn’t make sense to add the phrase ‘Right handed golf clubs’ in the meta keywords. It would be more appropriate to save that phrase for your right handed golf clubs page.

Header Tags

In HTML, there are 6 header tags;

• H1
• H2
• H3
• H4
• H5
• H6

H1 is the “highest” and H6 is the “lowest.”

In search engine optimization, text within an H1 tag lets search engines know that the webmaster considers that text to be important. This gives a good indication to search engines as to what the page may be about.

RapidWeaver does not offer the most flexible way for putting unique H1 tags on every page. Instead, we are able to add one H1 tag, and one H2 tag that is constant across all pages on our website.

Click on the Setup button.

On the General tab, the Title is where our H1 tag goes, and the Slogan is where our H2 tag goes.

There are ways around this header situation, however, they are beyond the scope of this tutorial. For the time being, place any keywords you feel are appropriate for a header consistent throughout your entire site. If a business name is most appropriate, then that is what you should put as the header.

You’re walking in a shopping mall, among the hundreds of stores competing for your attention, one catches your eye.

Have you ever walked by a store and been so intrigued you had to go in? What if you could do the same thing with your website?

When someone does a search in Google for a keyword related to your site they are presented by hundreds of thousands of choices. Even on the front page they have 10 results to choose from. How can you make sure they click your site even if you may not be right at the top?

Your website title tag is the very first thing your visitor will see. That is why it is so important to make sure you have the perfect title tag for each of your pages. A title tag that both attracts web searches but also has your keywords for the best search engine rankings is extremely important. This video will explain in detail what a title tag is and how it is used.

Once you know why you need the title tag, you can learn how to create the perfect title tag that not only gets people clicking to your site, but also includes the keywords your customers are searching for you. Check out our walk through SEO video tutorials to learn how to improve your website’s title tags.

Adding Google Analyitcs and Statcounter codes to your Sandvox websites is very easy to do, but can be very frustrating if not added correctly.

In this tutorial, we are going to quickly add both statistical trackers to our Sandvox websites.

The first code we will be adding is for Google Analytics. If you are unsure of what Google Analytics is and want to learn more, you can read up more about it on the Analytics website. In the meantime, here is a demonstration on how to add the code to your website. Open up your web browser to www.google.com/analytics.

If you do not have a Google account, you will need to click on the Sign up Now button. Otherwise, click on the Access Analytics button and login using your Google ID and password. Assuming this is your first time signing up for Google Analytics, you will need to click the Sign up button, located in the bottom left corner of the analytics page.

On the next page, you will need to enter your websites URL. You will also need to name the account. This name can be whatever you want it to be or you can simply leave it as your URL. Then select your country, and time zone, and hit the continue button. Fill out the remaining information required when signing up.

The final stage will ask you what you are tracking, which most of you can leave as A single domain. Finally, you will be told to paste a certain code on your site. Highlight that code and copy it by holding command and c or by going to Edit, and selecting Copy.

Head back to Sandvox, and in the menu bar, press Site, and then select Site Code Injection. Make sure that the Head Area tab is selected, and paste the code you just copied into the second of the two text fields. Your Google Analytics code will now be applied to all pages on your website.

Now I’m going to show you a very similar process, but this time we will be adding a Statcounter.com code. The first thing we will do, is open up our browser to www.statcounter.com. If you do not have an account with statcounter, click on the register button on the top left part of the navigation menu. Fill out all the required information and register your account. After you have registered, login with your username and password.  Once you are logged in, you will need to create a new project in order to get your code. Click on the Add New Project button.

In the following form, you will need to enter a title for your website, your website URL, a category for your website, and your time zone. You also have the option of having the statcounter not count your visits to the site by blocking your IP. If you don’t care for this feature, just leave it blank.

After you click the “Next” button, you will then need to click on the Configure and Install Code button. You have a few options for which type of statcounter you want. It is recommend that you use the Invisible statcounter, that way, you are the only one who knows how many hits your site gets. Then click on the next button. Make sure that Default Installation Guide is selected from the drop down menu. Then press the Next button. Now we are given our Statcounter code. Again, we must highlight this code, and copy it.

Back in Sandvox, we must have our Site Code Injection window opened again. This time, make sure the Document Body tab is highlighted. Once again, we are going to paste the code we just copied in the second of the two text fields.

When you publish your site, the Statcounter and Google Analytics codes will be applied to every page on your Sandvox website, and you will now be able to track your website visitors.

We are happy to announce a major update to WebDesign, the fully featured web authoring package and HTML editor for Mac OS X. This update adds a number of enhancements, most notably support for HTML 5.

If you are new to HTML 5, you’ll love the new features we added. You can now see what tags and attributes are new to HTML 5 and a description for each one in the attribute editor. Auto complete and syntax checking also support the new HTML 5 tags and attributes.

WebDesign Attribute Editor

Publishing from the Site manager has also been improved. WebDesign will now mark documents that have been changed with a modified tag and only publish those files that have been modified locally. To restore the behavior from version 3.0 you can hold option as you publish. This will do a one way sync to your FTP server.

Lots of other bug fixes and improvements can be found in this update. It is free for registered 3.x users.

Reports of a new version of iLife have been circulating for a few months now. It was first speculated that iLife ’11 would be released in August, then September and now November with a book listing on Amazon.com according to 9to5mac.com.

Whether or not iLife ’11 gets released next month with a new version of iWeb is yet to be known. What we do know is that all of our software will be 100% compatible with the new version of iWeb. The only product that may need an update is iWeb SEO Tool, but it is very unlikely that the new version of iWeb will cause conflicts with it. All of our other software will be fully functional in their current versions when iWeb ’11 is eventually released.

Our speculation for what will come with iWeb ’11 is new templates, twitter integration, updated blogging features and possibly some creative HTML 5 only features. 64-bit versions of all applications is also very likely. An iOS version is also very possible.

Have you ever wanted to use your iWeb site to sell products or services? Maybe you want to start your own business and don’t know how to get started selling products online.

It’s actually very easy to set up an e-commerce store with iWeb and Paypal. The benefit of using Paypal is that you don’t need to worry about having a secure server, setting up a merchant account, fraud, chargebacks and everything else that comes along with accepting payments online.

Even if your customers don’t have paypal accounts, although many do, they can still use their credit cards to make a purchase online. You are notified instantly once the payment is added to your account.

We have posted a step by step video explaining how to add Paypal to your iWeb site so you can start selling online.

Building Trust Online

There are still many people who are nervous to purchase something online. Another benefit of using Paypal is people know they can trust them. But how can you let them know that they can trust you? Here are some tips for building trust online;

• Have a real domain name and avoid using your web.mac.com name if you are using MobileMe. Domain names are cheap, they only cost a few dollars a year, and they show you are serious about your online business. You can get a business domain name here.
• If you are using MobileMe to host your website, be aware that it is not meant for business websites, just personal sites. Consider a real web host for faster servers, the ability to handle an increasing number of visitors and more options with what you can do with your website (see for example our URL shortening video for iWeb sites.
• Include a privacy policy so your customers know what information you collect from them and how you use their information.
• Include your address and an easy way for customers to contact you.
• If possible, provide some kind of money back guarantee. If your products are good, you shouldn’t expect many people to want a refund.
• Remember that search engines are always the best way to at attract new and targeted customers to your website. Check out our step by step SEO for iWeb instructional course which provides a complete walkthrough on how to optimize your website.

We just published an update to iWeb SEO Tool. It fixes a problem with case sensitive volumes. If you were getting an error when launching prior versions of iWeb SEO Tool, please download this update. It also fixes some other minor bugs and improves MobileMe publishing.

Download iWeb SEO Tool 1.9.1 here

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;

http://www.mydomain.com/long-site-name/page-name.html

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.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them below. This video has also been added to the iWeb SEO Video Walkthrough Tutorial