Mac SEO Blog

Nobody likes visiting a slow loading website. Websites that take a long time to load (more than 5 seconds) are losing out on potential visitors. Studies have shown that visitors will wait no more than 8 seconds on average for a page to load. But did you know that search engines won’t wait for pages to load either?

Google in particular does not like slow loading websites. In fact, if you are using adwords to promote your site, the speed of your website’s load time is used as a Quality Factor to help determine your cost-per-click and your ad position.

Even more important however, is that your website’s load time will effect how many of your pages Google will index. Take a look at the following graphs taken from Google Webmaster Tools. The bottom graph shows the time spent downloading a page while the middle graph shows the number of kilobytes downloaded per day and the top graph shows the number of pages crawled per day.

You can easily see that as the time spent downloading pages went up Google indexed LESS pages. There is a clear inverse relationship between download time and number of pages indexed.

How do you check your own site?

You can check this for your own site by creating an XML Sitemap file and checking the Crawl Stats in your Google Webmaster Tools account.

How do you fix this?

Fortunately there is a very easy way to fix this. You need to reduce the size of your website and you can easily do this with WebCrusher website optimizer. WebCrusher will instantly optimize your site by removing unneeded website code and compressing image files. Then it can automatically publish your site directly to your webserver whether your are using an actual web host or MobileMe/iDisk to host your site.

In just 5 minutes you can have a faster website, that loads as quickly as possible for your visitors and insures Google and other search engines can properly scan and index all of your webpage files.

You also want to make sure that you are using a fast web hosting service to host your site. If you are a MobileMe/iDisk user it may be time to change to a fast and reliable web hosting service.

Macworld was a tremendous success for RAGE Software this year. We had the opportunity to provide a presentation for Xsilva LightSpeed Resellers on how to apply search engine optimization strategies to their small business, talked with a record number of attendees and customers during the show, and had the opportunity to check out the San Francisco hot spots.

SEO Presentation at Xsilva’s Day Camp

Our week started with an in depth presentation on search engine optimization for Xsilva LightSpeed POS resellers and users. We provided specific search engine optimization strategies and demoed our LightSpeed Web Store SEO Add-ons. The Day Camp presentation took place at the Westin St-Francis hotel.

Exhibiting at Macworld 2009: New SEO Software for Mac OS X

Starting early Tuesday morning we got to speak with hundreds of new and existing customer’s interested in promoting their websites in search engines and learning about our web development software and all new web hosting services for Mac users.

We updated the following software for Macworld 2009:
Sitemap Automator 2.0 which includes a totally redesigned user interface, support for robots.txt file, the ability to report potential indexing errors on your site and the ability to remember the details you have set for each page after re-scanning your website for new content. Sitemap Automator is now the most complete, and fastest way to create and update your XML Sitemaps on any platform.

WebCrusher 1.4 which significantly improves optimizations of cascading style sheets, iWeb based websites and more. Watch for all new, feature packed updates coming soon!

SERank 1.9 includes improved reporting features, new exporting options for importing into Excel or Numbers and a number of bug fixes.

Check out some of the highlights from show;

Macworld After Parties and Sponsorships

Macworld isn’t complete without the after parties. This year, RAGE Software sponsored the popular MacMingle party at Jillian’s restaurant. The party was a tremendous success once again and we were happy to speak with customers and press outside of the busy show floor.

We are pleased to announce major updates to our search engine optimization software suite for Mac OS X. The updates include new versions of a number of our products including Sitemap Automator, WebCrusher and SERank.

Sitemap Automator
The only way to get your website recognized by all major search engines, Sitemap Automator 2.0 now lets you easily manage an unlimited number of websites. In addition, it can easily show you potential search engine crawling errors on your website, supports robot.txt files and offers improved support for iWeb built websites.

This 2.0 update is the first paid upgrade since the initial release back in 2005. If you purchased before May 1, 2008 you can purchase an update for just $19.95 USD. If you purchased after May 1, 2008 then you can get your free upgrade serial number from http://www.ragesw.com/getupdate.php

WebCrusher
Optimize your website so they load as fast as possible for your visitors. At the click of a button, WebCrusher can take any website and intelligently remove unneeded code and compress images making the website load as quickly as possible in any web browser. This free update to version 1.4 includes enhanced CSS optimizations and improved iWeb optimizations.

SERank
See exactly where your website ranks in over 60 search engines for your most popular keywords. Discover who ranks higher than you and how you can rise above them to get the number one spot on all major search engines. Version 1.9 adds enhanced reporting features, new exporting options with compatibility with Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers, as well as includes important bug fixes.

If you will be attending Macworld Expo 2009 please stop by our booth at #1744 and we would be happy to talk with your about our software and these updates.

We are once again very excited to be exhibiting at Macworld Expo this January 5th-9th 2009 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Our entire team will be there to demo new products, talk about great new updates and mingle with the Mac community.

Our booth this year is 1744, right behind Apple’s booth in the South Hall. We’ve got lots of new updates to talk about and look forward to meeting our current users and introducing our products to new users.

We will also be sponsoring the MacMingle party taking place on Thursday January 8th at Jillian’s, right down the street from the Moscone Center. The MacMingle party is one of the best attended party during the show. It is opened to all Macworld attendees. More details on the MacMingle party can be found at:http://shadovitz.com/macmingle2009/

See you in San Francisco next month!

Domainer 1.8 has been released with lots of new features and some critical fixes for 1.7 users.

We’ve added the highly request labels feature which allows you to categorize domains by label colors, just as you would with files in the Finder. You can also now see the IP address that each domain resolves to. In addition to these new features you can also create smart groups based on labels and IP addresses.

This version also fixes critical issues with version 1.7 after protocol changes by some third party websites and the way some details are sent to Domainer. With version 1.8 you can now get incoming links and delicious social tags again.

This update is free for registered users.

We have just posted an update to RAGE SERank, adding over a dozen new regional search engines for Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and more.

This free update also includes a critical fix for Google results after a change in their algorithms late last week. If you are using a previous version you will need to update to 1.8 in order to see Google results.

RAGE SERank monitors search engine rankings for any number of keywords and displays changes in a website’s search engine rankings over any point in time. Try the demo version and find out how your website ranks in major search engines.

We exhibited at Macworld 2008 in San Francisco for the first time this year, and had an amazing time doing it.

We started on Sunday with a presentation on search engine optimization at Xsilva’s Daycamp in front of around 60 Lightspeed resellers. We demoed some of our software and how it can help with search engine rankings and bringing in new website traffic.

The show went very well for us, with a lot of existing and new customers checking out our products. We released updates to RAGE Domainer and RAGE SERank with lots of great new features.

The feedback we received for our software was great! Customers were really blown away with some of the features they didn’t know were available to them. People really liked seeing the statistics in RAGE Domainer and got a few surprises when they entered in their website.

All in all I think it was an amazing show. We received a tremendous amount of feedback, made some great connections and got some very favorable media coverage. We doubled our booth size for next year (we are going 10 by 20) and can’t wait to do it again!

We would like to invite you to come meet the RAGE Software team at MacWorld Expo 2008 in San Francisco. We will be exhibiting in booth S-2727 and the entire RAGE team will be there.

Now is your chance to give us your feedback in person. We will be providing free search engine rank reports and custom web site consulting. Just come by our booth with your web site and questions ready.

We will also be demoing new software updates and showing off what we have planned for 2008 and beyond.

We have been provided with a limited number of free Exhibit Hall passes. Join the MacWorld Expo community pages then join our RAGE Software group and I will personally send you a free Exhibit Hall pass. If you sign up, just post a message on my account that you would like the pass or send an email through our support department so I know you need one.

If you miss out on the above offer IDG has also provided us with $10 off the registration fee for an Exhibit Hall pass.

Judging from last year, MacWorld 2008 will be a tremendous success with new products, parties and mingling with other Mac users. We truly look forward to meeting with you and hearing how you have used our software. More details on the event can be found at: http://www.ragesw.com/ragesw-at-macworld-2008/

If you have any questions before the show, feel free to send an email to support.

This morning we finally released RAGE SERank 1.0, an all new application for Mac web site owners to track and manage their search engine rankings. With RAGE SERank you simply add the keywords you want to rank highly for and select from the over 40 search engines to check your search engine rankings.

RAGE SERank will automatically check your rankings and provide a detailed report of where your web site ranks in each search engine for all of the keywords you have entered. RAGE SERank can also be used to check the search engine rankings of your competitors to easily see what keywords they are targeting and ranking highly for. RAGE SERank will keep track of your rankings over time so you can graph changes or go back to any previous rank check.

With the professional version of RAGE SERank you can create customized PDF rank reports that you can use for personal use, or send to your clients or colleagues. The professional version also allows an unlimited number of web sites to be checked.

Download a free trial version of RAGE SERank or order your full standard or professional license.

A few days ago MSN’s Webmaster Tools officially came out of beta. Like Google’s Webmaster Tools, MSN’s tools let you quickly submit your sitemap.xml file that you have created with RAGE Google Sitemap Automator. Once submitted you are provided with search engine feedback including;

• How many of your web pages are indexed in MSN’s search
• The date MSN’s search spiders last crawled your web site
• Which, if any, of your web pages could not be properly indexed
• Your web site’s most popular incoming links

Although you won’t find as many resources and tools that are provided by Google’s Webmaster Tools, you will get some interesting information about how your web site is performing in MSN’s search.

If you already have your sitemap.xml file published on your web site, all you have to do is create your free Windows Live account and follow the simple steps to submitting your sitemap.xml file. The next update to RAGE Google Sitemap Automator will feature an all new way to ensure that your sitemap.xml files are recognized by all major search engines including MSN.