Comments on: Making Apple’s iWeb More “Search Engine Friendly”

By: Vincent

Vincent — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:09:09 +0000

Valarie =

Happy to work with you and give you tips, will email directly.

Best, Vincent =

By: Valarie Anderson

Valarie Anderson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:35:43 +0000

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.

By: Carey

Carey — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:16:38 +0000

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

By: Vincent

Vincent — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:57:20 +0000

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.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:42:40 +0000

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.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:17:15 +0000

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.

By: Vincent

Vincent — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:55:16 +0000

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 =

By: Mary Anderson

Mary Anderson — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:52:17 +0000

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,

By: Debbie C

Debbie C — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:43:27 +0000

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. . .

By: Debbie C

Debbie C — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:55:33 +0000

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

By: addderall

addderall — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:30:32 +0000

Abby- I think the key is to make certain that you are putting your text into “text boxes” rather than into “shapes”.

HTH! :-)

By: Abby

Abby — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:53:32 +0000

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

By: Etienne Michaud-Ste-Marie

Etienne Michaud-Ste-Marie — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:37:22 +0000

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

By: Vincent

Vincent — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:16:20 +0000

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 =

By: Gregory Fox

Gregory Fox — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:43:30 +0000

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.

By: Vincent

Vincent — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 18:16:54 +0000

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 =

By: Steven

Steven — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:19:46 +0000

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!

By: Vincent

Vincent — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:01:34 +0000

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.

By: Vincent

Vincent — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:58:45 +0000

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!

By: Marc Walters

Marc Walters — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 04:18:30 +0000

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