Mac SEO Blog

Oops! WebCrusher 2.1 didn’t optimize JPEG images, but this small update fixes that problem.

Download this free update from the WebCrusher download page.

Although WebCrusher lets you publish your website directly to your FTP server some users want to use their own FTP client. If you like using an FTP client for publishing your website, you still have that option after you have run your site through WebCrusher. Follow the instructions in the video tutorial to learn how.

Video Transcript

To publish your WebCrusher optimized site using a third-party FTP client, follow these simple steps.

First, locate your optimized website folder by clicking Export, and selecting the Open Enclosing Folder tab. Then press the Next button, and your optimized website folder should appear in the Finder window.

Open your FTP client. For this demonstration, I am using CyberDuck which is a free FTP client which you can download from cyberduck.ch or the Mac App Store. Once your FTP login information has been entered, and you’ve connected to your server, locate the directory on your server that your website is associated with… and then drag and drop the optimized website folder into that directory. When your site has finished uploading, you can visit it and view the source code to make sure it has published correctly.

If your code looks tightly squeezed together like you see here, then you have published it properly.

If you are unsure if you’re site has been published correctly using WebCrusher, this short video demonstration will show you how you can easily identify a properly published website.

Video Transcript

To check to see if you have properly published your site after using WebCrusher, simply open your website in your browser, go to View in the menu bar, and select View Source.

If your code looks like normal code with various spaces and line breaks like this, you have NOT published your site correctly with WebCrusher.

But if your code looks like this, with all of the code being tightly squeezed together, then you have published your site correctly with WebCrusher.

And that is the easiest way to determine if your site was published correctly with WebCrusher. If your site was not published correctly, go back to the Publish window in WebCrusher and make sure you have entered your FTP login details correctly, as well that you specified the correct Directory Path.

With many iWeb users e-mailing us, letting us know that their websites do not look good in Internet Explorer, we began investigating ways to help iWeb users make their sites become a lot more compatible with Internet Explorer. In the video below, we will discuss and demonstrate seven different ways to ensure your iWeb website has a better chance at being more compatible with Internet Explorer. The following is a summary of the seven steps, with the video tutorial below.

1. Text based navigation menu (Better for all web browsers and search engines)
2. Web-safe fonts (Always a good idea to use no matter what)
3. No shadows and reflections for text and images
4. YouTube for video, not QuickTime
5. No embedded images from third-party websites
6. WebCrusher’s ‘Improve Internet Explorer Compatibility’ option (plus makes your site faster too!)
7. Check compatibility in all web browsers

Although iWeb makes it extremely easy to build websites, there are still things you need to consider when designing your websites. This video goes over many of these guidelines. Because of the nature of the web, we do have a few limitations but we can still design beautiful and professional websites with iWeb.

iWeb and Internet Explorer Video Transcript

Many iWeb users have been reporting that their websites appear abnormal when viewed in Internet Explorer. In this video, we are going to go over several ways of making an iWeb site more compatible with Internet Explorer. This doesn’t mean that everyone’s website will look perfect in Internet Explorer, but an iWeb site’s appearance in Internet Explorer can be greatly improved by following these steps.

Make sure to listen to each step carefully, and not leave any of them out. Especially one of the last steps we will talk about, which involves our application called WebCrusher, which most of you are familiar with. For those not familiar with WebCrusher, it’s an application that reduces the size of your site so that it loads faster in your users browsers. We have released an update to it, that specifically targets this issue with Internet Explorer.

The first way of making an iWeb site more compatible with Internet Explorer is to make a text based navigation menu. This is because, for security reasons, Internet Explorer may not have javascript enabled, which is what is needed to show the iWeb navigation menu. For both Internet Explorer compatibility, and SEO benefits, change your navigation menu to a text based navigation menu. So to change your navigation menu in iWeb you will first need to disable the current navigation menu. To do this click on a page of your website, open the Inspector window, select the page tab, and then deselect the option that says Include Page In Navigation Menu. Repeat this process for all pages on your site.

When this is complete, you will no longer have any links in your navigation menu. Now you will need to create a custom navigation menu using text links. Simply click on the Text Box button, type in your anchor text, resize the box, and move it to where you want it to be on your navigation menu. Then highlight the text, and press the inspector button. Then go to the link tab which is a blue circle with an arrow in it. Check the option to Enable As Hyperlink, and type in the URL or select the page from the drop down menu. Repeat this process for the remaining links. When you are all done, select all text boxes by holding down command and clicking on each text box. Then copy what you have selected. Now you will need to go to each page on your site and press the paste button. And your navigation menu will now be text as opposed to javascript.

The second step is very easy to do. Using a font that is considered web safe, will give iWeb users a much better chance at having their website load correctly in Internet Explorer. To find a web safe font, just press the Fonts button, and click where it says Web. Here is a list of about 10 different fonts that you should choose from to use on your site. These fonts should be used everywhere on your site that contains text. Using web safe fonts will increase the compatibility of your website with Internet Explorer.

The third step is also an easy one. Much like how we want to avoid using fonts that are not considered web safe, we also want to avoid altering our text and images by using shadows and reflections. Doing so will also increase our chances at having our sites load normally in Internet Explorer. So how can you check to see if your text and images have shadows or reflections? Simply click on the text or image, press the inspector button, click on the Graphics tab and see if Shadow, or Reflection are checked. If they are, you may want to consider unchecking them so that your site can be viewed better in Internet Explorer.

By default, iWeb uses QuickTime, which is installed by default on all Mac computers. This isn’t the case for Windows users, however. Instead of putting your videos on your site directly, it is a better idea to upload them to YouTube, and then embed them on your site using the YouTube Widget. This will ensure the best compatibility for users who might not have QuickTime installed on their computer.

To avoid Internet Explorer giving your users security warnings, do not include HTML Snippets that embed images from other websites. This might sound a bit technical, but basically to avoid any security popups for Internet Explorer users, only use image and media files from your local computer.

An example of something that would provide a security warning for Internet Explorer users is this;

What this does is tell the web browser to load an image from a third party website which it may interpret as a security risk.

This next step is the most important one, as I mentioned earlier in the video. In this step, we are going to be using WebCrusher. The version of WebCrusher I am using in this tutorial is 1.9. Make sure you have this version or later. It is always a good idea to make sure you are using the most recent version of any software. Visit our website at ragesw.com to make sure you have the latest version.

The first thing you will need to do is open the Preferences by clicking on WebCrusher in the menu bar, and selecting Preferences. Next, under the Tag Optimizations heading, look for an option that says Improve Internet Explorer Compatibility, and make sure it is selected. Close the preferences window, and drag and drop your website folder onto WebCrusher like you normally would.

In the bottom left corner, there is a button that says Options. Click on that button, and make sure that Only Optimized Modified Files is not checked. The reason for this is because we want to make sure we apply the Improve Internet Explorer Compatibility option to every page on our site. Then, you can press Go and optimize your site and publish it like you normally would.

Since every website is built differently, it is still very important to check your site’s compatibility by visiting your site in as many browsers as you can. The most important thing to understand is that your site will not be perfect in many browsers, especially older ones such as Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Following the above steps, especially the step involving WebCrusher will make your site look much better in Internet Explorer 8 and higher. It is important to note that you should not expect perfection, but combining all of these methods should result in your site looking very good.

Google’s campaign to make the web faster puts some web masters in a tricky situation. When optimizing our sites for search engines, we are very used to doing the basic things such as having lots of great content and getting many high quality links. Now we must also consider another thing, and that is the speed of our websites. But how do you know how fast your website loads? And how do you make it load even faster

The video tutorial below will touch upon these two questions and give you the answers you need. When you are done watching, you can read up more about WebCrusher and see first hand how it can give you a faster loading website.

Video Transcript

Did you know that one of Google’s criteria for ranking websites involves the speed of a website. Many websites can load very slowly, and as a result, can be penalized by search engines. There is a great way to check to see if your website is slow loading or not.

For those of you who have a Google Webmaster Tools account, you can get a good idea of what your website’s current speed is. In your Dashboard, press the plus sign next to Labs and select Site Performance. Here you will see the speed performance of your website.

Google believes that anything that falls below 1 and a half seconds is considered to be fast. Anything slower than 1 and a half seconds is considered slow. The faster your site is, the better off you will be.

So how can you reduce the load time of your website? RAGE WebCrusher will do this for you automatically, in the easiest way possible. Simply drag your website folder into WebCrusher, and at the click of just a few buttons, you can greatly reduce the size of your website. Be sure to check out WebCrusher and see how it can help speed up your website.

For a full tutorial on using WebCrusher, please see the video tutorial available in the iWeb SEO, SEO Video, and RapidWeaver SEO video courses.

Hey WebCrusher Owners! Have you been keeping an eye on the speed of your website? Google finds the speed at which at website loads to be very important. As Google continues with its campaign to make the web faster, so should you. By ensuring your website is loading at an optimal speed, you can give your site an advantage over your competitors by loading quicking, and moving up in the search results.

Watch the following video tutorial to see how you can check on the speed of your website.

Video Transcript

One of Google’s latest search ranking criteria is the speed at which a website loads. You have already taken a step in the right direction by taking an interest in WebCrusher. I hope that you have used WebCrusher and continue to use it whenever need be.

For those of you who have a Google Webmaster Tools account, you can get a good idea of what your website’s current speed is. In your Dashboard, press the plus sign next to Labs and select Site Performance. Here you will see the speed performance of your website.

Google believes that anything that falls below 1 and a half seconds is considered to be fast. Anything slower than 1 and a half seconds is considered slow. See where you are, and make sure you run your website through WebCrusher for optimal speed.

Don’t forget to check out our SEO Video Courses which will walk you through the entire process of optimizing your website for the best possible search engine rankings.

If you are an iWeb user, be sure to check out the iWeb SEO Video Walkthrough Tutorial. If you use anything else to build your website, be sure to check out the SEO Video Course. RapidWeaver users can now purchase the SEO For RapidWeaver Video Tutorial as well.

WebCrusher 1.7 has just been released and brings a number of new features and enhancements. Firstly this update will optimize iWeb built sites much faster than before because it can intelligently determine which files are modified and which aren’t (since iWeb always updates all pages when you export a site, this is actually not an easy thing to do).

It also improves publishing speed when uploading to your FTP or MobileMe server. In addition it fixes problems with PNG files not being optimized which makes it a recommended update for all users. This update is free for all registered users.

Late last year Google announced that the speed of a website will play a factor in how it ranks in their search results. They have started an initiative to speed up the web and offer many tips and tricks for speeding up a website’s load time. Fortunately WebCrusher can do many of the recommended speed optimizations for you automatically.

If you have created your XML Sitemap file and submitted it Google Webmaster Tools, you will also see the new Page Speed tests Google has implemented for your site. You should login to your Google Webmaster Tools account and see how your website performs relative to other sites in your industry.

Now its not only important to have your website load quickly for your visitors, but it’s also important for your search engine rankings too.

A question that often comes up is why a website is not yet in search engines, or if it has been added to search engines, why isn’t it showing up for the keywords I want it to. These questions can be answered by looking at the data provided by Google Webmaster Tools. By creating an XML Sitemap file and submitting it to Google Webmaster Tools, you can quickly and easily learn the answers to this questions.

This article over at SEO Chat walks you through these questions in Google Webmaster Tools and helps you answer these important SEO questions.

Some of the questions covered by the article include;

• Why hasn’t Google indexed my website yet?
• Does my site appear relevant to Google for my targeted terms or niche?
• Why am I not getting clicks from Google?
• Has my website been hacked?
• Does my website load fast compared to other websites?

Pay special attention to the last question, how fast your website loads. This will become an important search engine ranking factor in early 2010. This has been confirmed by many sources already, that is why Google provides a site speed analysis test in their Google Webmaster Tools.

Of course, you can already be ahead of the game with WebCrusher, which will instantly speed up your website so it loads as fast as possible in all web browsers.

We are happy to announce an all new update to WebCrusher, the most powerful website optimizer for Mac OS X.

WebCrusher 1.6 will now only optimize modified files since the last optimization making the entire optimization faster much faster than before. It also adds improved support for MobileMe servers, allowing for much faster publishing.

Version 1.6 also improves stability on Snow Leopard and is a free update for registered users.

Check out the all new update and make sure your visitors aren’t waiting too long for your website to load.

We have posted an update to WebCrusher with some important fixes for all users. WebCrusher 1.5.2 improves CSS optimizations to help ensure there are no changes in your web page layout. It also fixes MobileMe publishing issues and problems when previewing certain pages after optimizations.

This update is free for registered users. You can download the update from the WebCrusher download page.