Mac SEO Blog

Sandvox users can easily add a mailing list signup form to their websites. Just follow the easy instructions in the tutorial below your MailShoot mailing list sign up form will be on your website in no time.

Video Transcript:

Keeping a mailing list is a great way to for you to keep in touch with your website visitors. It can also be a really good avenue for you to promote your product or services to people who might be genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

This tutorial is going to show you how to embed a mailing list signup form on your website. In case you are not familiar, the application I am showing you is called MailShoot. MailShoot is a mailing list manager that will allow you to easily embed your signup form on your website. You can then manage all of the e-mail addresses on the list and send them e-mails whenever you desire.

For this demonstration, we’re going to stick with the golf theme and assume I am running a golf website. The first thing I am going to do is save my document. I do this by clicking File, and going to Save As. I will them name my project and save it.

The next thing I will do is click on the Mailing List button. Currently, I have no lists because this is a brand new document. I will click on the Plus sign to add a new list.

If I double click on my list, the list editor window will appear. This is where all members of my mailing list will appear after they have been added.

So now we’re going to begin making our mailing list signup form. The first thing we are going to do is change some of the field names. These are going to be the fields for the information that we want to get from people who are signing up to our mailing list.

So here I will input just a few examples of the information I might want to collect from potential customers. (favoirte golfer, handicap, name of country club, left handed)

When I’m finished inputting the fields, I will press Done, and my next step will be to setup the Subscribe Page.

In this first step, I’ll need to give my list a name. I am going to call it Jeremy’s Golf Shop.

The List Short Name will be what is used in your signup form’s URL. This name must be unique across all MailShoot users so I’ll just add some random digits to the end of it to ensure it is unique. You can do the same if you’d like, or you can click on this Check button to see if what you have entered is unique or not.

Next I’ll enter a password for my list, followed by a list description.

In the Owner’s Details section, I will need to fill out all of these fields. The owner e-mail is especially important as this is the email address that users will see when the signup to the mailing list, as well as the email address where you will be notified of a signup.

The welcome message can be customized to your liking, or you can leave it as is.

In the custom fields section, you will need to tick off whatever custom fields you want included on your signup form. I will tick off the ones I customized earlier in the tutorial.

You can choose from four different type’s of fields you want to use. You can also input a default value for each field, as well as indicate if you want to the field to be a Required field or not.

In the links section, here is where we will get our code for embedding the form on our iWeb website. I’ll simply press the publish button, and the embed code will appear. You will also notice that two links appear. The first link will take us to the Subscribe page. The second link will take us to the unsubscribe page. When you create your form, click on these links so you can see first hand what your subscribe and unsubscribe pages look like.

Now, I’m going to highlight the embed code, and copy it.

In Sandvox, I am going to add a new page. I am going to choose the Empty Without Sidebar option. I will then go to Insert, and select Raw HTML. In the popup window, I will paste the code that I just copied in between the span tags. Now I will publish my site, and then view the signup form in my web browser. If I find that the form needs to be adjusted a bit, which in this case I do, because parts of the bottom of the form is missing, I will go back to Sandvox, delete the code from before, and re-peat the process from before. This time, I will adjust the height to a number I think will suffice, and then publish the site again. This time my form looks just the way I wanted it to.

And that is how you set up your mailing list sign up form. Remember to save your work as you go in MailShoot. For more MailShoot instructional videos, visit the MailShoot product page at ragesw.com/products/mailshoot.html

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.

This video is an update to an older video tutorial. In this video, we will show you how to properly verify your website with Google Webmaster Tools using Sitemap Automator, and then submit your Sitemap to Google and the other major search engines. If you haven’t already, please watch the first part of this tutorial which will show you how to create and publish an XML Sitemap.

Video Transcript:

So now that our Sitemaps have been published to our websites, we must notify the search engines. To do so, we’ll simply press the Notify Search Engines button. When you press this button, you will most likely see this window popup. This window is for instructions on notifying Google about your Sitemap. Notifying Google is slightly different from notifying other search engines. To notify Google, we will be creating an account for what is called Google Webmater Tools. In Google Webmaster Tools, we will be provided with some very useful information about our websites.

So to begin the process, first click on the Create account button. Your web browser will appear at the Google Webmaster Tools website. The first thing you’ll need to do is sign in with you Google account. If you don’t have an account, you can easily create one by clicking on the button for signing up for a new account.

When you are logged in the first thing you will need to do is click on the Add a site button. Then, you will need to paste your site’s URL and press the Continue button. Note that you did not copy your URL, but it was copied for you when you pressed on the Create Account button to be taken to Google Webmaster Tools.

Our next step is to verify our website. The reason we must verify is because Google Webmaster Tools will provide us with certain information about our sites. Information that only the webmaster should have, and not the general public. Because of this, we verify that we are the actual owner of the site.

First, we’ll click on the link to download the HTML verification file.

Then we’ll go back to Sitemap Automator, and select File in the menu bar, followed by Publish Verification File. Then press the Select Verification File button, and locate the verification file that you just downloaded. Highlight it and click Open.

Now we must Publish the verification file. If you publish to iDisk, click the Publish to iDisk button. If you publish to FTP, press the Publish to FTP button. Publish the file just like you did when you published the Sitemap.

When you are done publishing, go back to your web browser to where Google Webmaster Tools is open, and click on the link to confirm that the uploading of the file was successful. If you see a page like this, then you have done it correctly. If you get an error, then you have not done it correctly and you must try it again.

If you have published it correctly, click the Verify button.

You have now successfully verified your site. We have just a couple more steps left at this point. If you see this page, click the Continue button.

Make sure you get to your site’s Dashboard in Google Webmaster Tools. Click on Site Configuration, and then select Sitemaps. Then click on Submit a Sitemap and then type in sitemap.xml just like I am doing.

At this point, you have just submitted your Sitemap to Google.

Now just go back to Sitemap Automator and click on the Notify Search Engines button and your Sitemap will have been submitted to Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.

Remember to subscribe and visit our site for the next steps in our Sitemap Automator Instructional series.

The video tutorial below will show you the basics of creating an XML Sitemap using Sitemap Automator. We will also cover the basic points of publishing your Sitemap to your server.

Video Transcript:

To create an XML Sitemap using Sitemap Automator, the first thing you must do is add your site’s URL by clicking the New Sitemap button, and typing in your URL. Pay close attention to make sure there are no mistakes in your URL such as seeing http more than once.

Then click on the Create Sitemap button. Sitemap Automator will now scan through your website and find all of the available internal links on your site. When it is done you will be able to see all of the links that it was able to find.

Your next step is to click the Generate Sitemap button.

Now we must publish this Sitemap to our server. From the drop down menu, select to publish either to your iDisk or to your FTP server, and then press the Publish button.

If you publish to iDisk, your publish window will look like this. Select the option to publish to the root folder if you only have one website on your MobileMe account. If you have more than one, select the option to publish to selected website, and then select the website that you want to publish the Sitemap to, and then press the Publish button.

If you publish to FTP, your publish window will look like this. Enter your FTP login details in each of the fields. The Server field is usually just your website’s URL without the http, or www. If you are unsure of what your username, password, or root directory path may be, you will need to contact your web host to find out. When you are finished filling all the fields out, press the Upload button.

Your Sitemap should now be live on your site.

Remember to subscribe and visit our site for the next steps in our Sitemap Automator Instructional series.

We have just posted an update to Domainer, bringing it to version 2.1. This free update fixes problems with getting incoming links and Google PageRank for domains.

Domainer is the fully features domain management software for Mac OS X and Windows. It keeps track of when domains are expiring and important SEO details.

Learn about the title tag of a website and how it plays a role not only on your website but in the search results as well. We’ll then take you through SEIntelligence and show you how you can update your title tags.

Video Transcript:

So now that we’re familiar with the on-page optimizations interface, let’s jump right in and begin learning how to optimize our sites. We’ll start with the title tag, which is one of the most important on-page SEO elements.

If you’re not too familiar with the title tag, it is the block of text that will usually appear at the very top of your web browser. The title tag also appears as the clickable link, when you do a search query.

The title tag tells search engines a lot about a website. Placing our primary and secondary keywords into our title tag is a good way to tell search engines about our webpage, so that our pages can be indexed accordingly.

On the Title Tag tab, you will see the suggestions for your page at the bottom. You will be told how often that keyword is being used in the title tag by the sites that rank in the top 10 for that keyword. Generally, the keyword will be used one or two times by the top ranked sites.

You will also see suggestions for optimal character length, and optimal word length.

In the text box near the top, you can type in your new title tag for this page.

Here is one very general suggestion for the way you can structure your title tag. This is just an example, and you can choose to try anything you’d like to see what works best for you.

The primary keyword is the main keyword you are targeting on this page. The secondary keyword can be another keyword that you are targeting, but maybe this keyword is not mentioned as often on this page. I also like to include a company name at the end of the title tag as a way to brand a business.

READ THIS FIRST

The videos listed below give you detailed instructions on how to use iWeb SEO Tool the proper way. It is very important to follow these instructions in order to limit errors. The videos are in order and should be watched that way.

While these videos are very helpful in teaching you the proper ways of using iWeb SEO Tool, they cannot substitute the content that is in the SEO For iWeb Walkthrough Video Tutorial. That walkthrough video tutorial goes beyond the basics of using iWeb SEO Tool and can help you dramatically improve your website’s rankings in all major search engines. Your business is definitely worth it, so we highly recommend checking out that walkthrough video tutorial. It will also save you a lot of time and heartache in the future.

1. How to open your site in iWeb SEO Tool

2. How to optimize your site in iWeb SEO Tool

3. How to publish your site to FTP in iWeb SEO Tool

4. Updating your iWeb website and using iWeb SEO Tool

5. How to make sure you published your site correctly from iWeb SEO Tool

6. How to back up your data stored in iWeb SEO Tool

7a. How to have a shortened iWeb URL by using iWeb SEO Tool

7b. How to get rid of the site redirect AND shorten the iWeb URL

8. How to use the Favicon feature in iWeb SEO Tool

9. How to publish only changes with iWeb SEO Tool

10. Setting up a Mobile friendly iWeb site

We are happy to announce that MailShoot 2.3 is now available.

You can now send e-mails to parts of your mailing list using MailShoot, our  newsletter and email list manager.

Let’s say you only want to send a newsletter to users on your list who are interested in ‘widgets’. You can set a filter to only send e-mails to users who match certain criteria of your choosing. The video below will demonstrate what segmenting is, and how to do it with MailShoot.

You can create an unlimited number of filters for each contact list. MailShoot also lets you verify who will receive your email before sending.

Video Transcript:

Using the filters feature in MailShoot is a great way to segment users on your mailing list. For example, let’s say I want to send a newsletter to my users who are interested in Fairway woods and not users who are interested in anything else. Here is my list for Jeremy’s Golf Shop. This list has 7 e-mail subscribers, all interested in different products. Using the filters feature in MailShoot, I will be able to send an e-mail only to these people, as the e-mail is going to talk about fairway woods.

On the Send Mail tab, I am going to select Filters & Limits. Next to where it says No Filter Selected, I am going to click on New to create a new filter.

The first thing I will do is name my filter so that I can refer back to it later. I will then filter out the e-mails so that I can send an e-mail only to users interested in fairway woods. I do this by selecting Products from the first drop down menu, and typing in Fairway Woods in the text field.

When I press the OK button, I will be taken back to the Send Mail tab, and I will see that 3 of 7 contacts match this filter. That is, 3 of the 7 users on my list are interested in Fairway Woods. I can now press the Preview and Send Mail button and send out my newsletter to these individuals.

We are extremely happy to announce the release of iWeb SEO Tool 2.0. iWeb SEO Tool is our popular SEO tool that allows iWeb users to easily add SEO elements to their websites such as title tags, alternative text, header tags and more.

After many of you sent in some of your suggestions, we have decided to release this version with a very popular request. Users can now easily add a favicon to their websites with a simple click of a button.

To learn how to add your favicon using iWeb SEO Tool 2.0 (and what a favicon is for that matter) you can view this video tutorial.

Don’t forget to check out the iWeb SEO Walkthrough Video Tutorial to learn how to make a more search engine friendly iWeb website.

We recently ran a contest with users on our mailing list (don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t already – don’t miss the next one). We asked our customers to tell us about their experience using our software, tutorials, and hosting. We were overwhelmed with the responses, and were so happy to hear of all the great things people had to say about us.

It is very satisfying for us to hear about how successful so many of your websites are after having used our software. It makes us excited to improve our software and tutorials as we have continued to do so over the years. Since 1999, we have been providing entrepreneurs and business owners alike with quality software and educational tutorials. After all the thanks we have received from you, our customers, it is now time for us to say thank you to you.

Congratulations to our contest winners:

…I am happy (beyond happy really) with the results the site has achieved in such a short amount of time…

Michelle, California

…WebDesign really helps me keep my Websites By Cook business humming…

Stan, Ontario

…So without a moment’s thought I purchased and downloaded the Sitemap Automator. Once again, incredibly streamlined and user-friendly, just like Webcrusher…

Christopher, England

Our winners receive a copy of our latest SEO software, SEIntelligence. SEIntelligence is a great SEO tool to compare your competitors websites and see what they are all doing correctly, and how you can optimize your site to begin competing with them.