SEO For iWeb: How to get your iWeb Websites into Google & Other Major Search Engines
April 12th, 2008We always get questions from iWeb users asking how they can improve their website rankings. We also get comments that say RAGE Sitemap Automator doesn’t find all web pages on an iWeb site. Well there are a few reasons for this that we will discuss here.
UPDATE: As of version 2.0 of Sitemap Automator it will properly scan iWeb based websites, making it one of the only tools that is able to do this properly. However, the following tips are still essential for success with search engines. See our step by step video guide on creating an XML Sitemap file.
iWeb websites are not made to be search engine friendly. In fact, almost all iWeb based websites that we get are really hurting their search engine rankings. If you follow these few simple instructions, you will see some significant improvements.
1) iWeb Page Titles
As of iWeb 08 (and now iWeb 09), most built in templates have a large header caption at the top of the page. Your website’s title tag will actually reflect what you enter here. Many users simply keep this as the default caption, not utilizing the most important on-page optimization you can use for search engines.
The trick is to give your page a title that includes both the keywords you want to appear for in search engines and that accurately describes your website content. Your web page title appears at the very top of your web browser, and in a search engines results page. Search engines use your title tag to get an idea of what they will find on your website.
Update: With the free iWeb SEO Tool you can now edit your web page titles, meta tags and alternative image text after you publish your site. You no longer have to worry about how iWeb gets your title tag.
For templates without these header captions, or if you remove the caption, iWeb will use your page file name as its title. Below is a screen shot of your iWeb Inspector window which lets you edit the file name of your selected web page. Give it a good title using the advice we provided above.
2) Navigation bars
One of the biggest problems with iWeb is the way it creates your navigation bars. Instead of using standard HTML which search engines can use to correctly find all files on your website, it uses Javascript which makes it extremely hard for search engines to scan and index your website properly.
Fortunately there is a way you can work around this problem. Select your main page (or the first page that contains your navigation bar) and open the Inspector window. Click the Page Inspector tab (second tab) and deselect the option ‘Display Navigation Bar’ as shown in the following screen shot;
Now you’re going to create your own navigation bar with proper links to each of your pages. Create a new Text Box field and place it at the top of your page, while moving all your other content down. To quickly move all content down, go to Edit – Select All. Hold the shift key as you drag all your content down which will help insure you don’t accidentally move the content off center. Put the new Text Box at the top of your page and add captions for each of your pages separated using tabs or spaces so that they look like a proper navigation bar. Then select each caption and go to the ‘Link Inspector’ tab in the Inspector window. Select ‘Enable as a hyperlink’ and choose ‘One of My Pages’ from the ‘Link To’ drop down menu. Lastly select the page you want to link to from the ‘Page’ drop down menu.
Although you should do this for each of your pages for best results, insuring you do it on your main page only is extremely helpful for search engines.
3) The Right Content
One of the biggest issues I see with iWeb created websites is users choosing non-standard web fonts for their website. Just to provide some background information, there are a number of fonts that are considered safe for use on the web. These are fonts that are guaranteed to be installed on a users computer no matter what operating system or web browser they use. If a font is not installed on a users computer and you use it on your website, it will not display properly for them. iWeb works around this issue by turning your text into pictures if you use a non-standard font. This is why your webpage always looks the same no matter where you view it. Unfortunately, search engines can not ‘read’ text that is turned into pictures and this will severely impact your potential search engines rankings.
You must stick to the standard web fonts, which are listed below for you. This insures that your website has the best possible chance of ranking high for the keywords you are targeting.
Web safe fonts include;
- Arial
- Courier New
- Georgia
- Times New Roman
- Verdana
- Trebuchet MS
- Helvetica
*Note: Some of the above fonts may not always be installed on a persons computer but will be easily replaced with a very similar looking alternative if they can not be found. That is why they have all been included in the above list.
You want to make sure that your website content contains the keywords you want to rank high for in search engines. It’s not good enough to “be in search engines”, you want to appear when a potential customer types in one of your keywords. Search Engines will not know what your webpage is about unless you include the proper keywords in your web page content.
4) iWeb Landing Pages
Lastly, something I see very often is users making a so called “landing page” as their home page. This is the type of page where it may simply show your company logo with a “Click here to enter link”. Basically anything that requires a user to take one more step in order to see your website is never a good thing.
This applies to search engines as well. Your home page is considered your most important page by default so make sure you are taking full advantage of it. Link to other important pages directly from your home page and make sure it includes keyword rich content.
In the next post I will go over some iWeb misconceptions as well as some search engine misconceptions that can typically affect iWeb users.
Remember, search engines will not simply choose your site out of the billions out there and rank them at the top of their search index unless you give them good reason too. Getting high in search engines for the keywords your customers are searching for can be extremely profitable to you and will take some time to achieve. Don’t expect immediate results and keep learning about the strategies you can employ to get high rankings.
Download our Free Mac SEO Guide to learn how you can get higher rankings with your iWeb websites.
Related posts you may be interested in:
- Your iWeb Website, Top Search Engine Rankings
- Anchor Text, Links, & How To Quickly Increase your Search Engine Ranking
- Video Tutorial: Submit XML Sitemaps to Google for iWeb and MobileMe
- What Google Bot Knows About Your Website & Anchor Text
- Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization & High Google Rankings
April 13th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
This is really helpful. I am on the trial period and I must say I dropped the ball lately and did not work with the site automator but I will get back to it.
Thank you
Mireille
May 28th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I had the identical problem on a couple of my sites. I could never understand why the sites were not being spidered.
Now I see you have addressed these issues, and I am grateful for your advice!
June 18th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
so confused? do i have to change the words “welcome, bio, testimonials” etc from my pages? those are the tabs so the viewer knows what each page is. is that what i have to change in the page inspector in order for this to work for my page? yes it is iweb designed but not .mac its through godaddy…. any help for me?
June 19th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Yes that is what I am referring to. Your other option is to put the same links at the bottom of your page as regular links so that search engines can easily find all of your pages.
Note: This post refers to iWeb based websites no matter where it is hosted. All iWeb based sites suffer from the same issues no matter where they are hosted.
June 20th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
ok i am psyched i followed the directions and did the text box thing for my navigation bar did all links etc. buttttt am i supposed to check off the “make hyperlinks active” box after i do all that? this site above with the direction doesn’t mention it and i wasn’t sure if i am supposed to do it or not?
June 20th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
You need to make sure the ‘Enable as Hyperlink” is checked and you link it to the right page. Other than that, where is the ‘make hyperlinks active’ option? Or were you referring to the ‘Enable as Hyperlink’ option as well.
June 20th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
in the box where the enable as a hyperlink check is under where you list your page url and link to, its says “make hyperlinks active” NOT the enable, that i have checked like the directions say but nothing about the box at the bottom of that little box that sayd make active? its just under “open link in new window”
June 20th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
really useful info – thanks. I’ll be re-writing the nav bar tomorrow!
I do have two questions you may be able to help with.
If i understand correctly, in order for my site to get high rankings, i should try to use as much descriptive text as possible on a page. Does this have to be visible text on the webpage or can it be hidden within the html code?
I ask because the site i have created aims to have a very clean simple look, giving the info needed but relying mainly on images to “sell’ the subject matter.
Also – i know i need to use meta tags to promote my keywords, and i have Dreamweaver, so can insert them into iWeb pages after publishing….but i am not sure the correct syntax to write a meta tag or where in the html source it needs to go?
June 20th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
I have actually answered my own questions.Your suggestions prompted me to search out the answers not with web searches but with “View source code” within my browser.
A quick check of the high ranked sites within my target criteria showed exactly where and what i need to do.
Again, many thanks for such a valuable resource being given away for free. It has helped inspire this web newbie to try push my site that bit further.
June 21st, 2008 at 8:57 am
1) Do not hide any text within your HTML code. The only valid text that can be placed within your code that will not show up for your visitors and that will help your search engine rankings is your image alt text. However, you can not add this in iWeb. Hiding any other content will only get your website kicked out of Google’s index.
2) Meta tags will NOT help you with your search engine rankings. Only the description meta tag will sometimes be used in Google’s search results. However, it does not actually help with your rankings.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:56 am
so if meta tags aren’t used for rankings, whats the point of adding them? And just what does help with the rankings?
I probably used the wrong phrase…i’m not hiding text as such, i was referring to the description meta tag (i just didn’t know it was called that!).
What is image alt text? i’ve not heard of that before….but like i said i’m new to website design.
June 21st, 2008 at 10:25 am
You do not need to add meta keywords. You only need to add a meta description tag. The meta description tag is used in Google’s search results page right underneath your website title when a visitor searches for your website. It does not help with the ranking of your website at least in Google and most other search engines. You can not add this with iWeb and since it is tough to do, it really isn’t worth adding to your iWeb based site. There are other things you need to keep in mind.
There are many things that help with rankings and they are discussed in various articles in this blog. You can also check out our free SEO guide at http://www.ragesw.com/seoguide
Image ALT text refers to alternative text for images when they can not be disabled. Search engines occasionally use them to rank your website, however you can not add them in iWeb.
June 21st, 2008 at 11:06 am
Thanks Paul – great info.
I have been creating the web in iWeb, then using dreamweaver to add the meta description, keywords, etc.
I have been looking at the code generated by iWeb, and i think i know where to put the image alt text – please could you confirm if i’m correct….
this is the code iweb created for a specific image…where it says alt= the quote marks were empty and i have added the description about Kath and Phil. Is that an image alt text ?
June 21st, 2008 at 8:06 pm
did anyone find out whether i should check off the “make hyperlinks active’ box. i know i am not the only one using iweb on here and there is no way that only my computer has that box? i don’t know whether to check it or not? “enable” is of course already checked… also once i did that and made my own nav. bar using the link system, and made good title names, do i now have to do anoahter step to help search engines, cause now i don’t come up with my name (which is in my ever title) or any of the words i used at all, so i think there is another step i have to take? i didn’t do the site map because i did the titles but do i have to buy the rage thing now?
June 21st, 2008 at 9:49 pm
You don’t need to check the ‘make hyperlinks active’. If you do, when you click a link within iWeb you will be taken to that page. Otherwise if it is not checked and you click a link you will be able edit that link. So do NOT select it.
Also, just because you apply what we discussed in this blog post does not mean you will instantly appear at the top of search engines for the keywords you want. It takes time and there are other things you must do as well (one being creating an XML sitemap). I suggest you read this blog and our free seo guide at http://www.ragesw.com/downloads/blog/rage_seo_guide.zip for more ideas. But remember, there is no magic solution, you have to be better than all other websites that rank above you.
I looked at your title tags and they are still the same as before. You do not have any keywords in there. Changing your title tags does not mean you shouldn’t have an XML sitemap file. You need to do everything you can for high rankings. You can create your sitemap file with RAGE Sitemap Automator.
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:49 am
thank you Paul! i will not check the box ( i hadn’t cause i had a feeling it wasn’t supposed to be). so i have to buy this rage thing? that bums me out i thought there were some free sitemaps out there?
i am confused though about what you said about my title tags? i totally changes them? and made each page a link like recommended, after the .com i have tons of descriptive words? my name, location and other words? right in the browser title of each page i have a different group of words, i don’t know what you are looking at? ….am i still confused?
i know i wont be first on page, trust me i know that, but i guess because i don’t have a sitemap yet i am not even on page 30! ha!
check my page again and you will see the title tags are totally long after the name of the site? i followed the directions exactly?
so now i need rage yes?
June 22nd, 2008 at 9:16 am
hi paul – after all the help you have given, its only fair to reciprocate. Do you want me to put a link to your site on my links page?
if you do, let me know the details…
adam
June 24th, 2008 at 12:02 am
@julie: You don’t have to buy RAGE Sitemap Automator if you don’t want to. That is our sitemap product that we offer and we built it to work with iWeb. Currently it is one of the only XML sitemap tools available that work with iWeb. Its up to you however.
You didn’t change all of your title tags for all of your pages. Your main page is just your URL.
An XML sitemap won’t necessarily bring you to the first page of Google. Lots of factors are involved in this, but it certainly helps. It also depends on what keywords you are talking about in this situation.
RAGE Sitemap Automator will easily create an XML sitemap file for you so if you would like to create, and I recommend you do, you can certainly use it.
@adam: Feel free to put a link on your site to ours at http://www.ragesw.com. Thanks Adam!
June 25th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Paul, first off thank you so much for the consistant help. below is what appears in the browser window when you pull up my site, is that not the title tag? why am i not getting what you keep telling me? i go to my iwed and open the first page and go to “show inspector” and i put in all the words for that page? isn’t that the title tag? that’s what i did for each page? i thought i checked that by seeing it in the browser when i pull it up like i pasted below? if this is very wrong could you help explain what it is other than what i’ve read and followed previously? (i dont have anything on me “site” page in iweb, i start with my “1st page” could that be why?
also,,,, as far as rage software, once i set that up is i continue to edit my site do i have to re/setup rage everytime?
http://www.brilliantbodiesbyjulie.com/fitness_upper_west_side_NYC_julie_fisher_personal_pilates_and_training.html
June 25th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
you got the link Paul.
regards
Adam
July 1st, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I love your hints and have implemented all of them, except the first one. When I change the name of my page from BLOG to anything else, I can’t get it to load without an error.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:57 pm
jdsanc Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I love your hints and have implemented all of them, except the first one. When I change the name of my page from BLOG to anything else, I can’t get it to load without an error.
Am I missing something? I want to put the name of my page or my own name there instead.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:17 pm
@jdsanc: what error do you get?
July 1st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
@julie: that is your url path. Look above that. That is your title tag.
With RAGE Sitemap Automator you don’t have to create a new sitemap everytime but it is recommended that you create a new one when new pages are added to your site.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:37 am
I used iWeb ‘06 to create my website. I also purchased RAGE Sitemap Automator. Google says my sitemap has errors. I really have no clue what I’m doing, and I’d like an easy solution to all this sitemap, metadata, google ranking business. Is there an easy solution?
http://www.evergreenroadproductions.com
August 28th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Please email support and let me know what the error the Google gives you says.
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:14 am
When i change the ‘Welcome’ tab to say – ‘Paul Greenwood’ my website is no longer visible on the net? It defaults to the .mac error page.I have to change it back to ‘Welcome’ What’s going wrong?
October 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
[...] arama motorlar? için optimize edilmi? websitelerinin nas?l haz?rlanaca??na dair iWeb için SEO makalesini okuyabilirler. Yaz?l?m ise buradan indirilebilir. addthis_url = [...]
October 13th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
If I have my own navigation bar on the left side of every page (the iWeb nav bar is not displayed), but the first page (first page is Welcome and enter) and all pages are linked to each other and every page has the banner title “Bingham Association Official Website,” do I still need to change each page name to start with Bingham Association, for example: “Bingham Association: Purpose”?
Also, I’m looking for a web host. Do all features of iWeb work with your web hosting (counter, email, etc.)?
October 13th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
You do not have to change the name of your pages. The article suggests changing your title tags, NOT your page names.
You should NOT have your main page simply have an enter button. Use your main page to include your important keywords as suggestion 4 indicates.
Some features of iWeb are not supported when you publish to a folder. (ie they are ONLY supported by iDisk/MobileMe). These features include;
Password protection
Blog and photo comments
Blog search
Hit counter
Enhanced slideshows
HOWEVER, our hosting service provides an extremely easy to use and a much more powerful blogging system with comments and search as well as being optimized for search engines. An extremely powerful hit counter that tells you exactly where visitors come from, how long they spend on your site, what country they are from and more. And it allows you to password protect pages very easily.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
This is my first website, but I ditched the templates and created my own text boxes and inserted my own floating images. I intend to use my own domain name, ie BinghamAssociation.org or .com or both. I’ve really studied iWeb, but I don’t speak developer’s lingo. What is a title tag? If its not a page name, and its not in my self-created navigation bar, is it the iweb list of pages that appears on the left outside of the website pages? If so, why not have that list be the same is my navigation bar?
My main page has the website title, the main page title with text telling what the website is about, four images with captions, an entry door with invitation to enter, an intellectual protection text box and the iWeb counter. This holds true when I publish to a folder on my desktop.
Now I’m reading about how to get on Goggle and have read your online material and iMap. Both of you confuse me about sequence of events when publishing and using my own domain name. Do you know of a good set of instructions about that?
I don’t intend to use blog or slideshow features.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
A title tag is what appears at the very top of your web browser window. It is explained in this blog article in more details. You can change the title with our iWeb SEO Tool which is free and can be downloaded from http://www.ragesw.com/products/iweb-seo-tool.html. iWeb does not allow you to change title tags in a straightforward way.
Your website will appear exactly as it does when you publish it to a folder if you user our web hosting. You can also purchase domains through us as well.
Please see the bottom of this post for the steps required to help get your website to the top of Google;
http://www.ragesw.com/blog/2008/10/07/iweb-website-top-search-engine-rankins/
November 27th, 2008 at 1:08 am
Hi Paul,
thanks for all this great information. I hope you are still checking your blog, as I have a question that I didn’t see addressed on this page…Maybe you can help
I have two sites in iWeb, both being published to .mac/mobile me. I bought each site through Godaddy. They are both hosted on mobile me. The first one is the top one, and the CNAMEs etc are set up properly at Godaddy and when I search, I am indeed able to find this site. It is a very simple, one page site with my resume etc. My second site, also purchased on Godaddy and hosted at mobile me, is more extensive with several pages. I have followed all your above instructions, but something else that might be a problem caught my attention. This second site, I have set up as forwarding, through Godaddy. It is actually a branch of the first site, since both are published to mobile me. When I went to Godaddy for the second site, I entered the page I wanted the site forwarded (and masked) to, so it actually INCLUDES the name of the first site in Godaddy forwarding info. I hope this all makes sense. For example, site number one is http://www.julietolek.com, is hosted on mobile me, but CNAME change thru Godaddy so I just hit Publish in iWeb and it’s set. Site number two, http://www.macgirlconsulting.com, is also published to the same mobile me. So instead of a CNAME change at godaddy, I just entered a forwarding to http://www.julietolek.com/julietolek/Mac_Girl_Consulting…..etc. Could this setup interfere with MacGirl not showing up in search results? Whew, that’s a long explanation. Also, at godaddy, when you forward, it asks for some index terms. I filled this space in with a bunch of keywords. Is that the right thing to do????
One more thing: I don’t know if you use facebook, but I was typing http://www.macgirlconsulting.com in a friends message, and halfway through, it found a list of all those index words i had typed in godaddy, and auto completed the website name, in the facebook message!!!! I am confused. And I hope you are not!!!
Thanks for any info. And thanks for your patience!!
Julie
November 28th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Hi Julie,
First, you want to make sure that masking is turned OFF for all of your domains.
Second, since your using two domains for one site, you may have problems with search engines. Best thing to do is make them two different websites. I believe you can do this using some third party iWeb tools. BUT your best bet is to go with a real hosting service such as http://www.ragesw.com/webhosting.php. You avoid all these forwarding/CNAME/Masking issues etc…
When you entered those keywords Godaddy embedded them in your website where visitors can not see, but bots such as search engines and facebook can.
The way your website is set up (the masked one) will actually hurt your search engine rankings tremendously. My recommendation to you, and to all iWeb users, is always go with a real web hosting company. Or at least change your set up to no using masked domains.
December 9th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Thanks!
December 31st, 2008 at 12:27 am
I have purchased some of your programs and downloaded the iweb SEO and read all the stuff – but i really don’t know what I’m doing. Is there someone who can just do all this stuff for me for a fee? I feel my time would be better spent on creating the things I sell rather than trying to figure out all this website stuff – although I have tried…..Any advise/suggestions? Thanks
Ruth
January 5th, 2009 at 4:15 am
Hi Ruth,
Please see our SEO Audits which can provide you with a detailed report on what you would have to do to optimize your website. If you would like us to actually make the changes for you, we can work something out;
http://www.ragesw.com/seoaudit.php
January 8th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Paul you are the BEST! Thank you, thank you, thank you for your expertise and info about ragesw.com. My website now has the title and tags I’ve wanted for oh so long! Wish I could buy you a beer. Thank you!
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Paul, I have tried to create my own navigation bar on all my pages of my website, only some of new navigation bars are working. Some are. What could be the problem? Please help.
-Vail
January 28th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Hi Paul. Thanks again for you useful help!
I have a question that maybe could become a hint: I wanted to give to my website a precise look and feel so i decided to use a specific font taking into consideration that all text boxes now are images and not text.
So I added in the page a text box where I wrote all my keywords using arial with no other effects – to ensure it is treated as clean text – and then i went to the colour windows and reduced the opacity to 0% in order to make it invisible to the people, hoping that will be visible to spiders.
What do you think about this? Could it work?
Alessandro
January 31st, 2009 at 4:03 pm
@Vail: Double check to make sure that you have properly linked all the pages in iWeb. Click each nav bar item and see if it is sent to go to on of your pages in the inspector window.
@Alessandro: If you do that you can pretty much guarantee that your site will be banned from most major search engines. NEVER try to trick search engines with hidden text. They will remove you from their index and it will be very hard to get back in.
Think about this, search engines want to provide the most relevant results to their users. If you try to trick them with hidden text and keyword stuffing in order to get to the top of their index then they wouldn’t be doing their job. What search engines see is what users should see.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:23 am
[...] de esto, iWeb no se queda totalmente al margen de un posible uso empresarial. Rage Software dispone de algunas herramientas que permiten optimizar los sitios web creados con [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Hi, Paul:
GREAT blog! Just downloaded your free SEO software for iWeb…looks very cool. Have our site up in Beta mode at the moment…still finalizing text & pics. Will optimize when all is approved.
However, I have two questions I hope you can answer: #1, I know it’s not on your list, but is Tahoma, by chance, an approved font? I changed all other fonts to those you suggested (except some sub-heads, which I know search engines will read as graphics files, but the fit the design so well!).
Secondly, this is not an SEO optimization question, but browser optimization question that I hope you’re able to answer…in particular, optimizing iWeb sites for IE. Ugghh! There is ALWAYS some problem!
This has never occurred to me before, but the site I just created for a client (link below) is crashing in IE, and some web research indicates it’s the thickness of “vertical lines.”
http://98.131.229.61/5thstfitness.com/5th_St_Fitness_Home.html
As you can see, I don’t have any visible vertical key lines…does this mean the “invisible” vertical lines around text boxes & pics? If so, does that mean I have to create visible keylines of more than an inch thick around every bit of floating text and picture? Yikes!
Your help is MUCH appreciated!
Best, –Susan
February 11th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Firstly, I’d like to thank you for this valuable information.
I’m still in the process of designing and not really ready to tackle SEO yet.
I got here by searching for ways to add comments directly on site, much like this.
Any suggestions as to how I can have my visitors insert comments the way you’ve done here?
i really like it’s simplicity.
Thanks in advance.
February 11th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
@Susan; Thanks for the comments. To answer your questions
1) You should be OK with Tahoma. It should work on Windows and Mac just fine.
2) Try WebCrusher which will optimize your website so it loads as fast as possible in your web browser. It works great with iWeb websites. It may fix the IE issues.
@eduardo: Use the blog feature in iWeb. Its the easiest way to do this.
February 12th, 2009 at 2:44 am
It took me about a month or more to figure out how to add Google Analytics to my iweb-built site published to MobileMe (url from Godaddy and forwarded to MobileMe). Just now finding out that browsers don’t really find iweb-built sites and especially difficult if url forwarded from GoDaddy. I actually publish entire site to idisk folder, then add Google Analytics plug-in (from Automator). So, questions are: if I purchase and use RAGE Sitemap Automator will it:
1) affect Google Analytics (GA) I add after I publish to my idisk folder?
2) if so, how will it affect GA?
3) At what stage do I run rage sitemap automator, which I understand must be run each time a new page is added (but not each time a change is made to a page and site is republished to MobileMe)?
4) will this impede GoDaddy from forwarding domain name to my MobileMe hosted site?
Also, like Donna above, I went to my Home (main) page in iweb, which I’d originally named “Home” plus the domain name, then went to “inspector” > “Page”. Then made sure both “Include Page in Navigation Menu” and “Display Navigation Menu” was NOT checked since I had created my own navigation menu at bottom of page. This looked to me like the example in #1 above. Then I renamed page using words that I thought better described site. Then I did this to most of my other pages (many). But after reading your answer to Donna above, it seems that was incorrect because the title is actually not the first page of the site, but the name of the site? In my case, I named my site with the domain name I got from GoDaddy so when I type website name in browsers, the name of my site shows at the very top. But after renaming pages with better keywords, I realized the example in #1 for titles (screen shot) looks to me just like the example in #2 in navigation, so I didn’t save any of these changes. So just to clarify: you recommend that the site name not be the site’s url but be more descriptive? And to do this I need the “free iweb SEO Tools” because it can’t be change within iweb (can’t I just rename it in list of sites and pages at left in iweb?). If I do this, GoDaddy will still find site on MobileMe, right? (because it’s forwarded to http://www.web.me.com/xxxxxxxx). And, it is not necessary to change the names in the navigation bar to more descriptive phrases vs. single words (”California” is okay and not “Save at things to do in California”)? Seems like the more descriptive phrase would be picked up in browser search but would be confusing and way too long to use in navigation bar.
Thanks, and great help.
T. Wade
February 12th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Hi Paul,
I’m glad I found your site. I bought a program to create a sitemap for iWeb and registered with google, switched my fonts to helvetica, made the sitemaps and sent them to google. Google is reading my site maps but my pages are not indexed. I posted a question at Google Webmasters but those folks aren’t too mac informed. I got responses, but, frankly, don’t understand what i should do to remedy the situation. I understand your suggestions here and will use the inspector to rewrite the nav bars… but, is there an inherent problem with the iWeb generated urls? which was suggested here in the response to my question??
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?fid=2c7e58b8fa4ec878000462ac4df5934a&hl=en
I have done some other reading but will download your guide!
Thank you so much for your help and all of your support!!!
So glad that you are here!!
Susan
February 13th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Hi Paul,
I created a new website with a nav bar on the first page that I created using your suggestions. Sent that into google… I also downloaded your free software and used that to add site description and tags…. so, I’m now waiting to see if that site gets indexed. The sitemap has already been downloaded by google. Again, any suggestions re: the urls is welcome! Thanks.
Susan
the new site is
web.me.com/susanrubin/home
when I look at google stats is says that I can only see crawl stats if I add and verify the site at the “root” and then it offers this suggestion as the “root”… web.me.com Clearly I can’t add and verify web.me.com as my url.
not sure how to get around that, if it is possible. and again, other web.me.com users must be on google so… there must be a way???
okay, thanks again,
susan
February 14th, 2009 at 1:09 am
About verifying your site at the root level. Google Webmaster Tools does not know how MobileMe works so they offer generic advice.
If you created your XML SItemap with our product RAGE Sitemap Automator we describe how to verify your website with Google Webmaster tools both in the user manual under the help menu (with detailed screenshots) and in our knowledge base article about verifying an XML Sitemap with iWeb
Keep in mind, your XML Sitemap is of little use to Google if it is not verified.
February 14th, 2009 at 1:15 am
Its not iWeb that has the problem with URLs, but MobileMe which causes the issues. Notice how when you visit http://web.me.com/susanrubin/ in your browser the path at the top of your screen changes a few times without you doing anything.
This is known as a redirect and is NOT good at all for search engines. This is what those responses were referring too.
If you are serious about creating a professional website that has the best chance of ranking at the top of search engines, consider using a real web hosting company instead of MobileMe. You get the extra benefits of a more search engine friendly website, and a faster, more reliable web hosting service.
February 14th, 2009 at 1:21 am
@TWade: Its not BROWSERS that have a hard time finding your site, its SEARCH ENGINES (like Google and Yahoo) being able to properly scan your entire site to find all pages and add them to their search index.
To answer your questions;
1) RAGE Sitemap Automator does not affect your actual site in any way so it will not affect your google analytics code at all.
2) See above.
3) You would run RAGE Sitemap Automator after each time you publish your website to your server
4) It has no affect on Godaddy or anything else to do with your website.
You are very confused about Title tags and your Site name. They are very different things. Don’t change your site name in iWeb. In fact, don’t change anything in iWeb. Download the free iWeb SEO Tool to add Title tags for EACH page on your site.
February 14th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Thanks Paul! I appreciate your help!!
I think I get it now… my one remaining question is… will my site EVER be indexed as is or is it impossible for the bots to read through all of those redirects…? is it necessary to get a domain name for other hosting or just better?
Thanks again!! Susan
February 14th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Hi Paul,
If I purchase a domain name through Rage and sign up for hosting with Rage is there a simple way to transfer my iWeb pages to the new site? Will I need to buy other Rage software or can I simply move the pages that I’ve already designed in iWeb?? Thanks!
February 14th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
There is a very simple way to transfer your files to the our servers with iWeb. You just publish to our FTP servers instead of MobileMe when publishing your site in iWeb (if you have the new iWeb 09).
If you have iWeb 08 then you can use our FREE iWeb SEO Tool to publish directly to our servers. It is very easy. You will NOT have to buy anything else.
Also, another tip for you. Don’t use tinyurl.com when linking to your site. Use your actual domain name. You are losing the “link value” that search engines give your website when you use tiny url. Once you switch over to our hosting, you can register a short domain name (such as susanrubin.com if you liked).
February 14th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Thanks Paul! That sounds great… I’ll be onboard soon!
February 14th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Just ordered my domain name and iWeb hosting on Rage! Can’t wait to get started! Thanks Paul!!!
February 17th, 2009 at 9:29 am
My new Rage hosted website has been up for a couple of days. Unlike the previous iWeb site without the nav bars you suggested and hosted by MobileMe…. this one has already been crawled by the googlebots! My other site was up for weeks without being crawled, even though I had submitted a sitemap and had verified my site. I’m still not in the google index but it’s only been two days! I’ll keep you posted! thanks again for all of your help!
rubinlcsw.com
February 17th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Oh, I should have entered my site this way…
http://www.rubinlcsw.com
March 4th, 2009 at 4:56 am
Dear Paul,
I’m hoping you can help me with getting my site indexed. I’ve purchased Rage Site mapper after testing the free version (which is great).
I’ve uploaded the site to Google using the URL submission, the sitemap and a robots.txt file to help.
But after all of this my site is still not indexed. I haven’t had any messages from Google. There is nothing hidden on my page.
I made a change this morning to add a ‘front’ page to the site to reduce the link size to http://darkfalltrader.co.uk/DFT/DFT.html from http://darkfalltrader.co.uk/DFT/DFT_News/DFT_News.html to see if that would help.
As you can see my navigation bar is based on images, but also at the bottom of each page I have made a text version.
What would you recommend to help get my site indexed. As Google has crawled the site according and looked at the sitemap?
My site is uploaded to a real server (register1 – pro package) and not mobile me.
Thank you.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Paul
I used the iweb SEO tool to write keywords into my site and had no problem publishing it to my bluehost server by placing it into public.html
Unfortunately second time around I am trying to publish to go daddy and they do not have a public.html folder and I cannot select the / directory which serves as public.html with go daddy
I tried publishing it to an empty folder in the directory but when I tried it sends out
Can’t change directory to /ezcctest// Easy_CC_South_Orange_County/So_Much_More_than_Check_Cashing/_South_OC-files: No such file or directory
what can I do to get around this problem or publish to go daddy, is there any way I can save my keyworded site to a folder and publish via I web or an ftp transfer program such as Filezilla?
I’m really pulling my hair out over this one!
March 31st, 2009 at 1:49 pm
hello
i am trying to create a sitemap to upload to my server’s website. i currently use webhostingbuzz.com and usually upload files manually though file manager although i do not see that option on your setup.
when i input all the ftp information, and click ‘upload’ message indicator shows “connecting’ but nothing happens for over 20 minutes… what am i doing wrong?
March 31st, 2009 at 3:18 pm
paul
i am trying to create a sitemap to upload to my server’s website. i currently use webhostingbuzz.com and usually upload files manually though file manager although i do not see that option on your setup.
when i input all the ftp information, and click ‘upload’ message indicator shows “connecting’ but nothing happens for over 20 minutes… what am i doing wrong?
April 1st, 2009 at 7:12 am
I found your iweb optimization software. THANK YOU! Still, one question however, I use the photo templates on iweb and I can not seem to see the images in the iweb SEO tool so that I might give the images alt. text. Do I need to revise these pages and get the images out of the albums or is there a way to give each image in the album a name? I have seen images of more conventional pages. Thank you for any help offered.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
iWeb uses JavaScript to create their albums so you can not add alternative image text unfortunately. There is not much you can do here.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Please contact support at http://www.ragesw.com/support/ with your FTP details so we can test this and find out what the problem is.
April 1st, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Your settings are saved back to your Local folder that you originally opened in iWeb SEO Tool. However, you should be able to upload to your godaddy servers in iWeb SEO Tool.
Leave the root directory field blank and see if it uploads to your goddady server.
April 1st, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Is it recommended to redesign the JavaScript albums in iweb to be html pages without JavaScript? Thank you for any thoughts. I have a lot of iweb albums with many images but if I am going to remake the pages, now is the time to do so, else albums of albums will be created.
May 4th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Hi there,
I purchased the Rage Site Automater and successfully went through the steps on the video tutorial but, I’m not able to “verify” my site with google. I’ve added the meta tag that Google requested I add, I added it to every page by going to Insert>Add HTML Snippet. But Google is saying that the website is not verified.
The other problem I’m having is that with the iweb SEO tool, I can’t figure out how to even open or connect to my website through this software. Please help.
Thank you,
Josie
May 5th, 2009 at 10:45 am
@Josie: For verification use the HTML file option, not the meta tag option. See the user manual under the Help menu in Sitemap Automator for step by step details on how to do this. You can not use the meta tag option with the HTML snippet feature in iWeb.
iWeb SEO Tool also has a user manual under its Help menu with step by step details to connecting to your website.
May 27th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Hi there Paul,
Been reading through all the info above and i probably know less than most people on here! ha ha!
I have created an uber basic webpage to promote my little business i run from home. I haven’t yet had it published onto the net as I jsut finished designing it and have been getting quotes for hosting (that are all ridiculously expensive! but that’s not why i write).
I’m new to mac and new to webpage design, but i didn’t want to have to pay to have a page designed for me coz it seems silly. it’s so basic what I’m doing. Anywayz – so I used one of the templates on iWeb and all was great. The site looks perfect, but then when I hit publish to folder and view it through safari everything is a disaster. There’s big spaces between some of the tex (even though i’ve done it in text boxes), the font on some of the pages is different and is suddenly black. Some of the pictures I’ve put in, have no borders, where in iWeb I’ve used that little pinup looking border around the image!? It’s the strangest thing! One of the pages came out perfect, with the right font, right colours, right borders, but others are a disaster.!? !?!?! any idea what i’m doing wrong or where to start to rectify it?
Im not worried at this point about being top of gooogle search, for now just want the site to look nice.
Please please help!
June 11th, 2009 at 8:40 am
I love these tips. They are all useful and relevant ,,,but does anyone know of anyone who offers an iweb site optimisation service?….as happy to pay for some help.
Thx
June 11th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Hi Amanda,
We offer SEO audits that you may be interested in;
http://www.ragesw.com/seoaudit.php
June 11th, 2009 at 9:12 am
It sounds to be like some important files that hold the styling information were not published to your server for some reason. Try publishing again and reloading your website.