Making Apple’s iWeb More “Search Engine Friendly”
I was recently asked by a friend and Apple Creative Genius to write an article about Apple’s idiot-proof web design software, iWeb, and the field of search engine optimisation; more specifically, how to make iWeb more search engine friendly.
Given my current interest in SEO, I was certainly excited about looking at iWeb and similar programs such as RapidWeaver and considering ways in which to improve your chances, as a general user, to get your web site well ranked in Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other major search engine.
And so, after a while of dissecting, cogitating, and pondering over various thoughts and processes I came to the following conclusions about Apple’s iWeb software and its search engine friendliness:
Making a Great Web Page
iWeb might make a great looking web page, but does it really make a great web page? And in reality, how much of the input of a web design software application like iWeb actually makes a difference to the “importance” of your web site both in general and in relation to specific keywords and its findability.
It is true that the design of a web page does not make up the entire equation when it comes to the role of search engine optimisation, and that there are elements to improving your visibility that do not even pertain to the task of building and creating web content. That’s to say, that essentially there are tasks that need to be completed above and beyond the work that is done in iWeb. For one, this includes marketing and PR online, creating a hub bub about your product or service and getting the “web” talking about it. So, in the end, one has to accept that even if iWeb, RapidWeaver, or any other such software for that matter, fulfilled their side of the SEO equation perfectly, this would or may not be enough to completely optimize your web site for search engine “friendship”.
Disregarding this fact, how well does iWeb actually do at making a search engine optimized page, what does it do well? and what doesn’t it do well?
The Successes and Failures of iWeb
Having spent the best part of the last 10 years with my head inside a combination of different web design apps, including Golive CyberStudio, Macromedia Dreamweaver and text editors such as BareBones’ Edit and TextMate, I found it intriguing to actually start performing forensics on the results of a standard theme html page created in iWeb. The problem was, that the more I dug through code and the more I thought about iWeb and how a user could make it more search engine friendly, the more i realized that actually, in order to allow ordinary mac users, who, for all intent and purpose, are just newbies when it comes to web design (i mean, why would the be using iWeb if they weren’t?), the more they would actually need to get under the hood and play with the nuts and bolts of the web page, something they might not feel comfortable doing, and what’s more, something that they might not even be able to do in iWeb.
However, I suppose if you are reading this far in the article, you probably are wondering what exactly it is, this mystical and magical process that people often mutter under their breath in ever hushed tones: search engine optimisation! And how you can actually get under the bonnet of the iWeb vehicle and start tweaking to improve google page rank through making iWeb HTML code more search engine friendly.
Part of the problem with SEO is that not all of it is completely concrete and in fact, as many people will tell you, there is no guaranteed return of investment (ROI) for your time/money input. Moreover, the process is as much about building well architected, usable, interesting and generally useful web pages for people. Whatever that means!
But in reality from iWeb’s perspective, you need to correct a small but potentially significant series of flaws. Included amongst these are:
- The lack of META TAGS, and more importantly the lack of unique, page specific meta-descripion and meta-keywords tags for ever single page.
- The propensity for iWeb to just save and export whole swaves of text, inputted in iWeb by hand as blocks of graphics which are not indexable by search engine spiders.
- The criminal use of, and the general lack of ALT and TITLE parameters in hyperlinks and images.
- The insane use of the DOCUMENT TITLE for just about ever single element on the page, including image file name, page names, page title and everything else, creating a general repitition of not necessarily relevant, and usually too few words.
- Make sure your code validates. Whether it is HTML, XHTML, CSS or otherwise, you need to be certain you have implemented valid code using the validators on the W3C web site.
Is that all? I hear you say to yourself. Shockingly, YES! But then that is why there is a certain art and science to doing search engine optimsation. These things might seem like little things, and like not very great in numbers. But these elements described above are some of the tools that an SEO expert requires, and which in great hands will potentially produce great results. SEO and the development of content for the web is certainly an art that should be carefully considered at every step.
Content: Standing Head and Shoulders Above Others
As I have said already, at least twice, and will say again, you do need to think about building a web site that is not sparse of information, that contains the kinds of things that you want people to find you for, and that are useful, coherent and easy to use. Well architected pages are few and far between and it is easy to make them stand out from the crowd. If sites were all built equal, search engines would have a lot harder time actually differentiating amongst them.
Much of what makes Google great is its Page Ranking ability. This isn’t something that Google invented, because the concept and algorithm have been around for years, to assess the relevance and importance of academic papers. The ingenuity from Google’s perspective, wasn’t using this, but in creating a system that could calculate the relevance of pages online and to do it on a scalable basis. And so the ultimate goal is to make pages that are of the highest quality and which stand out as such!
And so where does this leave you stuck in iWeb?
Conclusion: A Product Miss-sold
I suppose once you have accepted that iWeb has these flaws, the you may or may not have given up completely on the idea of having the perfect web site, and although iWeb doesn’t preclude you from having a well ranked site - one can NEVER say that, as your site might become insanely popular on the web of its own accord, and will reach a tipping point of popularity which overcomes such basic SEO issues - SEO is certainly something you should consider, and whether that means attempting to do it yourself or paying a more seasone dprofessional developer or seo expert to do it, so be it.
SEO in itself has it’s own saleability problems. It is definitely a product that is misunderstood and missold. many designers and developers will build sites without even taking the basics into hand. Others will say they know what they are doing, but in reality don’t, and others will do a great job, but in the end only do it one time.
Search engine optimisation is a means by which to leverage marketing, and as such you should spend time, money, thought and energy pursuing it. Not just the once, but constantly. It is something that, if you take your web site seriously as part of your business, you need to nurture and keep an eye on at all times, and that needs to be built up and grown; and it is something which should ultimately reflect itself in a better designed, more useful, and totally accessible web site with plenty of monthly traffic, and, if ecommerce is your thing, increased monthly sales!
January 15th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
My website was developed through iweb and is hosted by Mac. My domain name was obtained through Godaddy. I also registered my website with godaddy’s Traffic Blaser to get my site posted on various search engines. I went through the optimization procedure as directed in the traffic Blaser instructions. I selected meta tags key words etc. and thought I was submitting these to various search engines. My website never showed on any search engine when various key words were typed in. My website is visible only if one types in the actual address http://www.northparkart.com
The question is; Is this combination iweb and godaddy traffic blaser a way to get my website posted on search engines?
If so , how do I do it ? what are the steps? HELP!
Thanks,
January 17th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
I hate that iWeb doesn’t let you easily edit the title or add meta tags. However i have been using this tool to add this information to my iWeb site;
http://www.ragesw.com/products/iweb-seo-tool.html
January 18th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Robert, I would start by clearing up the meta data and titles of your site, as per Marc’s suggestion with a application like Rage’s iWeb SEO tool that I have reviewed elsewhere on this site.
A lot of your traffic is likely to come from Google, and is easiest to generate from there. Last I heard, Google covers some 60-80% of the search market int he USA, so I suggest you do a decent job on focusing there. You can’t go much wrong with that. I would signi up for webmaster’s tools and creating a sitemap, and getting feedback from the Google. Also, the process of telling them what is on your site will help ensure all the pages are indexed, but best to do that once you have done a stellar job on the meta data and keywords on your site.
On a side note, I love the shaped canvases, wouldn’t mind ordering one myself!
January 18th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Robert, another thing I noticed is that your site is framed, just for the purpose of keeping your domain in the URL, this is not a good idea and is the first thing you should work on getting rid of.
February 5th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
Vincent - What do you mean by “framed?” I, too, am trying to SEO my website. The suggestion to use iWeb Tools is great. I will be working with that in the next day or two.
Do you mind looking at my website (I think my name is linked to it) and let me know if it is framed as well. Additionally, what advise might you have to fix it.
Thanks for the help!
February 15th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Steven =
Framed essentially refers to the use of frames in the HTML for the site. You can either tell by looking at the code, or by watching the URL bar of your browsers whilst you surf the site, if it doesn’t change then the site is likely in a frame, and must be broken out of it.
I see you have already used the iWeb SEO Tools though I recommend use of unique keywords, descriptions and titles per page and pertinent to the content. I would also suggest trying to narrow down a target audience, as I am sure that resumes in general are over subscribed and it would be easier to dominate lesser key phrases.
Beyond that most of your content is in text which is good, I would also encourage you to add link titles and alt tags to images, that can’t do any harm. Also add Google analytics to your site and sign up for Google webmaster tools. For finding keywords try Google Insight.
Best, Vincent =
February 24th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
My iWeb-made site is not showing up in Google. I attempted to include metadata (”description” & “keywords”) using Web Widgets. To date I get no response from Google even when I enter very specific search terms. I worry about Google Web Tools because in the Terms it states that they can place advertising on my site at their discretion. Because of this I am reluctant to use their Web Tools. It would help if I could ask someone at Google what this means, but I gather they don’t talk to people. I could not find this concern addressed in Google’s Help Forum.
February 24th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Greg =
Right now your site only has it’s index page indexed and showing up in Google. Other things of note, your site doesn’t have any meta data and the page titles are all the same and not pertinent to any keyphrases you might wish to dominate. If I were you I would investigate using something like Rage SWs iWeb SEO tool, and try and improve the quality and content on your site.
Best, Vincent =
March 16th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Hello Vincent, I’ve read through and I have the same problems as the other people here. I understand that I would need to populate links to my website but I need to be very specific to appear on Google. Even typing my company name exactly as it is puts me 5th on the search list. Can you give me any hints!? I would really appreciate!
Thx, Etienne
March 28th, 2009 at 8:53 am
Hello Vincent -
The issue I keep coming up with is that iweb apparently puts all of the text I write in as an image, so while I have content, the search engines won’t recognize it. Is there any way to add text as just plain text visible to search engines if I am using iWeb, or do I need to look for another website program?
Thanks, Abby
March 28th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Abby- I think the key is to make certain that you are putting your text into “text boxes” rather than into “shapes”.
HTH! :-)
March 29th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Hi Abby,
I’ve been going nuts over this since last July, and just found a post that may help both of us out. I haven’t tested it yet, but it sounds like it will work.
The resolution seems to be to change the font from Arial to Helvetica or Verdana and it should work. Only 1 of my pages was being picked up by the search engines - the About_us page, and the font there is Verdana. The font on all of the other pages is Arial.
Here is the post that explains it - http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006012617091313
Hope this helps. If it still doesn’t work for me, I’ll let you know. If it works for you, please let us know.
Thanks, Debbie
March 29th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Hi Abby,
I’ve got it! I feel so stupid!
What I was doing wrong, which may not be your case, is I created rounded rectangle shapes that I typed text into which caused .png files to be created. I don’t think it was the font at all, just a coincidence I didn’t have rounded rectangles or other shapes with text in it on the About_us page.
These rectangles are part of my layout design, so I really don’t want to get rid of them. So instead, I tested inserting a text box inside the rectangle, and it appears to work. My text is now part of the .html source, the page looks the same, and the .png file created is just an empty rounded rectangle.
Of course I will have to publish it to the server and wait to see if the search engines pick it up, but I’m happy I finally spent the time to figure this out. This is one of those things that makes too much sense. . .
April 17th, 2009 at 10:52 am
I too am having problems with iWeb and recognition by various search engines. My website is large and changes weekly. I have noticed that since I started using iWeb individual names are not being picked up. Before I started handling my own site the person (a professional) who handled my (a total novice) site had many names in the metadata. The change was necessitated by my need to make so many changes and her inability to do so. What do I have to do to make my site more search engine friendly?
Thank you,
April 17th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Mary =
You may wish to look at Rage’s iWeb Seo Tool which is free and is reviewed here:
http://www.techtalkpoint.com/articles/place-higher-in-google-with-rages-iweb-seo-tool/
Best, Vincent =
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Hello All,
Any help is appreciated! My site built with iWeb blog template (pardon the construction) is http://www.watchesandreviews.com, but when it is pulled up it looks like this http://www.watchesandreviews.com/Watches_And_Reviews/Blog/Blog.html . I am told this is because I am using a blog format that iWeb then creates a sub folder or a redirect. I used Submitnet to help optimize my site and one of the functions it offers is “search engine readiness”, this search engine readiness all looks good except I have warning that my site might get overlooked because engines look over redirects. It is a small redirect as it only redirects from watchesandreviews.com to watchesandreviews.com/Watches_And_Reviews/Blog/Blog/.html. Currently I know of no way to change the html on iWeb (using ‘09 version) to eliminate the redirect. Does this really matter???
To comment on the above metatags, I simply go to my host open the html file and past in the metatags there since I can’t do it in the iWeb application. A drag right now because I just launched my site and I am not searchable yet, but once the site only needs the monthly update I can live with the cut and paste….Currently only on home page coded this way.
April 26th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Wow, I’m reading everything above and I’m amazed at what’s happened to my website. If you google search ethnic talent agency my company which I run off of iWeb is #1. Know how I did this? I bought the domain ethnictalentagency.com and forwarded and masked my iWeb site. How much did it cost me? $9.99 for the domain name, and no time at all. How’s that for your search engine optimization? Wanna see more iWebsites that I built? Check out NicholasSegura.com. It’ll give you some great ideas on how to be creative with iWeb.
April 26th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Nico, Congratulations, you pulled the easiest party trick in the house. Your own site doesnt even come up top (#1) in Google for the search term “Nicholas Segura” and that’s with the phrase in your domain. How about actually getting a domain top for results that have no match with anything in the URL? Requires more than just 9.99 and a slap happy approach.
April 29th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Hi Vincent,
Thanks for this great site. I’m building a web site in iWeb and using the Rage SEO tool right now. Things are going well, except, most of my images are not showing up in the meta data editor. Any thoughts?
Thanks, Carey
June 24th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
OK I need in on all of this, reading this thread. I am such a newbie with a site that is only 2 weeks old. Can you take a look at my site and let me know what I need and simultaneously I will investigate the Rage SEO tool. I am like the first commentator who has a go daddy domain name but built my site on iweb using mobile me and mac.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:09 am
Valarie =
Happy to work with you and give you tips, will email directly.
Best, Vincent =