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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!

 

If you are interested in SEO services, then please feel free to read up about those that Delamain IT offers, on our search engine optimisation services page.