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.
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, 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.
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.
This is the main reason why RAGE Sitemap Automator will not automatically find all web pages on your site. Once you do this, RAGE Sitemap Automator, as well as all search engines, will be able to properly find all pages on your website.
*Note: If you do not want to do this but want search engines to be able to find all of your webpages, add your web pages manually in RAGE Sitemap Automator and submit your XML sitemap to search engines. You only have to do this once.
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
- 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.
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.