When iWeb users create and publish their site, there are so many SEO elements that have been ignored, making it almost impossible for anyone to find their site via search engines. This is not the iWeb users fault. Out of the box, yes iWeb is not very helpful for SEO. This is because things such as title tags, header tags, alternative text, and even basic content on a page is not a dominant on an iWeb site as opposed to a site made in a regular HTML editor.

But the problem is easy to fix! But just like you had to learn how to use iWeb, you are going to need to learn a few things about SEO.

First off, let me quickly explain what SEO is for those of you who might not be entirely sure. SEO is basically a process we do, and continue to perform, in order to get our sites ranking higher in search engines. Google has over 2 billion searches performed each day. We all want a piece of that pie.

Continuing with the explanation of what SEO is leads me to explaining the different types of optimizations that people can make to their site. The first optimization is the on-page optimizations. This consists of things we CAN control on our own. These are the actual changes we make to our sites so that our keywords can be better read by search engines, and even our website visitors. The second optimization is off-page optimizations. This consists of the promotion we do for our site in order to attract visitors, and gain reputation for our website. The better our site’s reputations, the higher we’ll be placed in search engines.

Now let’s head back to you guys. How can you accomplish this for your iWeb sites. Well, the first thing you need to address is your on-page optimizations. iWeb makes it a bit tricky to optimize a few things, such as title tags, alternative text, and meta information such as keywords, and description (note: meta keywords and description don’t influence our rankings, but are still very important for other reasons.)

Luckily for iWeb users, as most my website visitors already know, you can easily add those optimizations mentioned above via a free third-party tool called iWeb SEO Tool by RAGE Software.  This tool will help you easily implement your title tags, meta tags, alt text, and analytics codes. Be sure to watch my tutorial on how to use iWeb SEO Tool.

There are a few more things you can do to your site in order to make it more search engine friendly. Both on-page and off-page, there are so many things to learn about that can help your rankings. A search on Google will help you find what you are looking for, or if you are the type that prefers to have direct instructions in front of you, then I would suggest watching RAGE’s SEO Video which will show you a couple dozen things you can do to your iWeb sites, on-page and off-page to better help your SEO efforts.

So to sum up, iWeb is not bad for SEO – it’s just a bit trickier. Don’t be discouraged by people who tell you not to bother with iWeb because no one will be able to find your site. All you need is knowledge on the matter and you will see that in no time, your site will start soaring above others.

I began reading posts on Digital Point’s forums a few years back. For those unfamiliar, this forum is a large community made of aspiring entrepreneurs and skilled individuals looking to make money on the internet. There are countless threads with ignorant questions like “how u maked teh money in the adsense?” or “why is my site not ranked in google?”

Now, English as a second language aside, these are actually very valid questions. Everyone is curious how people make money online. Everyone wants to know why after all that work, their site is still not ranked in search engines.  That is why I really enjoy reading some of the threads on DP. People share some pretty interesting things. Good discussion is stirred up, and people talk about interesting ways to make money online.

This brings me back to the purpose of this post – why you’re not making money online. I wish there was just one reason I could tell you about, but life isn’t that easy. So without further adieu, I present to you the top six reasons why you’re not making money online:

6) OUT OF YOUR LEAGUE – “Hey man, if you have a blog that talks about cancer, AdSense will pay you a very high cost per click (CPC).” While this statement may be true, why on Earth would people with no knowledge or experience with any type of medical condition think they should write about it? Search engines are not stupid. If your content is garbage, search engines will know. People will know. The web is meant to provide people with the highest quality information. The power of search engines natural selection process will always filter these made for AdSense sites out.

If you cannot provide high quality information on something, then it is clear you are out of your league. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you fall in this category. It is time to focus on what you know. Are you a great skateboarder? Do you have strong opinions about minor league baseball players? Even if you are aware that the CPC in these industries are very low, you will be doing yourself, and the internet, a huge favor by sticking to what you know and love.

5) STOP COPYING ME – Since grade school, we’ve hated it when people copy us. I want you to think about that when it comes to how you run your business online. What do copycats have to offer that isn’t already on the table? If you want to have the next big celebrity gossip site, you are going to have to think of ways to differentiate yourself from every other site.  If you’re going to try and sell Amazon’s products, you are going to need to figure out why people should find your site, before they get to Amazon.

Copying will always exist. If you want to succeed while copying, you are going to have to think outside the bun like Taco Bell did with their diet menu.

4) NO HARD WORK – Remember when your third grade teacher wrote on your report card; “Billy would achieve straight A’s if he just put some effort into his work.” I think close to 100% of you just said no to that question but that’s besides the point. If you are really serious about making money, you need to act like it. Every minute you are not distracted by life, you need to be working on your business. It is your baby. You must cherish it. You must feed and burp it. It won’t take care of itself.

What I mean by all this, is that if you really want to succeed, you are going to have to realize that your online business is not much different from a real job. It will require you to put in many hours each day. Whatever you are doing for your business, you must put your blood, sweat, and tears into, in order to make sure its the best it can possibly be. If you work your hardest, and believe in what you are doing, you will be successful – no matter what.

3) NO TUNNEL VISION – After reading posts about Jim Karter on DigitalPoint, people concluded that he makes tens of thousands every month by going big. That is, having many different websites  covering many different niches. While this may work for some people (usually people who have employees or teams working with them) this most likely won’t work well for you. If you are not focusing on a certain area, you will find yourself much too overwhelmed to succeed. If this sounds all too familiar, then it might be a wise decision to take a page out of General Motor’s book and cut back on your “product” lines. Enabling yourself to focus on a specific area will lead you to becoming an expert in your field, and you will thus be able to provide people with much higher quality information.

2) YOU’RE A LONER – Ever hear the saying that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know? Well, when it comes to the internet world, this statement could be the difference between success and failure. Search engines, especially Google, rely on other sites on the web to let them know where the good sites are. Mainly, a link from a highly regarded page to your page, will tell search engines that your site is a good site and will increase your rankings.

Naturally, your site should get links from other pages based off the content on the site. Making friends online can be a great way to speed up this process. If your friends who have trusted sites or blogs learn about your site directly from you, you might be able to convince them to link to you.

Don’t just rely on people being nice for the sake of it. Make sure you always have something to offer. If you provide a service, offer up your services for free. Many webmasters would be more than happy to link to you when you do an arrangement similar to this. Partnerships can go a long way, and can really help you reach your goals much quicker than anticipated.

1) YOU’RE A QUITTER – As Mike Iaconelli said in this hilarious clip, “NEVER GIVE UP!” A good friend of mine was telling me how he came up with this really good idea to make money via affiliate marketing. I was very impressed with his idea and excited to see how he would handle it. He worked on it for a bit and I thought it was looking good. Not too long later, he came up to me and told me about his latest idea of how he is going to make money online. When asked what happened to his affiliate marketing campaign, he told me that he stopped working on it because he wasn’t making much money and he was getting bored of it.

This is, in my opinion, one of the worst things an internet entrepreneur can do. If you were to work on something every 6 months, only to quit on your idea to start up another one, you will never be successful. Once you have come up with your awesome plan, stick to it. There is not much else to say. If you are a quitter, you will set yourself up for the ultimate fail.

Like I have mentioned before, if you are serious about having your own online business, working from home and eventually, from the golf course, then you must take your business serious. Do your best, work real hard, set your goals, and most importantly, NEVER GIVE UP!

When iWeb was created, Apple imagined that Jenny, the 54 year old mother of 3 would finally have a place to showcase the photos from her eldest daughters wedding, and send them to uncles and aunts and cousins from around the world. They also imagined how Jack, the 60 year old photography hobbyist would be able to create an online memory for his family and friends of the Mediterranean cruise they went on in 2006.

What Apple didn’t imagine, was that Sue, the 40 year old entrepreneur, would be using iWeb to display the inventory for Sue’s Jewelry Shop. They also didn’t imagine that Bob would be creating a website to try and gain new customers to come to his horseback riding ranch.

Because of this, SEO for iWeb has become a bit of a challenge for many users. There is no reason to fear just yet. Even though it might be more difficult, it is still quite possible. Here are five must know SEO For iWeb Tips, that anyone with an iWeb site should be well aware of.

5) Content – Wow. Doesn’t this one seem easy? Yet it’s not for some reason. Over and over again, I continue to see iWeb websites loaded with images, and barely any content. Let’s just think about this for one moment. If Bob’s site has a bunch of pictures of his horses, and very little content, how does he expect potential customers to find his site? Having pictures is a great idea. Just make sure that you include as much information in the form of text as possible. You wouldn’t believe what people type into search engines. If you put some writing on your site, users will find it. Try to make sure each of your pages has at least 250 words.

4) Site Speed – Google’s new campaign for making the web faster really lets us know that now is the time we must begin considering the speed of our site. Soon enough, the speed of your site will play a large factor in the ranking of your website. The problem with iWeb, is that we use many images which are relatively large in size. This causes our sites to be a tad slower than we want them to be. So what can we do to fix this problem? Well, to be honest, there really isn’t too much iWeb users can do themselves. If you are desperate to save some loading time, you can take off some images on your site, but then you would be compromising the integrity of your website.

Another option is to use a website optimizer such as RAGE Software’s WebCrusher.  What this application does is reduce the sizes of some of the files on your site so that it does end up loading faster in users browsers.

3) XML Sitemap – If you use the standard navigation menu in iWeb, search engines may have a tough time finding all of your pages. This is because the navigation menu is created in javascript, which search engines are not extremely fond of. To work around this issue, always remember to create an XML Sitemap, and submit it to search engines. You can watch this video that demonstrates how you can create an XML Sitemap and get your site listed in Google.

2) Incoming Links – I know you’ve heard this one before, but it’s on this list because it’s extremely accurate. Search engines really enjoy it when other sites recommend a site. It can’t just be any site making this recommendation, it has to be sites already considered to be of higher quality. There are many ways of getting incoming links. Way too many for me to even discuss right now. Just know that this is a serious thing when it comes to SEO and iWeb users need to be made aware of this.

1) Title Tags – iWeb makes it very difficult for iWeb users to change their title tags. Most don’t even know what title tags are. Luckily, there is a free tool, called iWeb SEO Tool, that helps iWeb users to update their title tags in a very easy way. You can watch my video tutorial to learn how to use title tags effectively for search engine optimization.

There are dozens upon dozens of things that we must do to ensure that our website is seen as a reliable source of information to users so that search engines will rank us highly. These are just a few things that every iWeb user must know when they are creating their sites. In just a short time, I will be releasing a 60+ minute long video dedicated to SEO For iWeb, which will be available to purchase for your optimizing needs. Be sure to check back soon for more information.