1)Quit iWeb SEO Tool

2)Delete the file located at username/Library/Application Support/iWeb SEO Tool/

3)Relaunch iWeb SEO Tool.

I am going to show you why this error is occurring, and how you can fix the issue so that your site can be verified with Webmaster Tools.

The first thing I want you to do, is type your website’s URL in the address field and hit return. When your browser takes you to your website, you will notice how your site is forwarded to a URL that looks like this. This URL has the domain name, followed by the SiteName, followed by the page name. Some URL’s will only have the domain name followed by the page name.  Alternatively, if you do not have a custom domain name and you use MobileMe , you should see web.me.com followed by your username, followed by your sitename, followed by the page name.

Now what I want you to do, is to test that your sitemap has been correctly published. To do this, I want you to delete the page name in the URL, and type in sitemap.xml as I am doing here. An alternative way of seeing if your sitemap has been published correctly is to press the Test Sitemap button in Sitemap Automator.

If you are taken to a page that has the XML Sitemap, then this means you have published it correctly. If you do not see the sitemap, then what I want you to do now, is delete the Sitename as well, so that the URL looks like your domain followed by sitemap.xml

So in my case, I’ve deleted the sitename, and replaced the page name with sitemap.xml. If this works, then you’ve uploaded your sitemap correctly as well. If this doesn’t work, then this means you probably have not published your sitemap, and you should go back into Sitemap Automator and try it again. Remember to view the video tutorial that walks you through this process.

For those of you who can see your XML sitemap, we are ready to move on to the next step. So as a reminder, I will go back to where my sitemap actually was located. So you can see the location of my sitemap is www.anotherbigdeal.com/apptorial/sitemap.xml. I want you to keep this in mind. My sitemap works when it is my domain followed by my sitename followed by the page name which in this case is sitemap.xml. This should be the case for most of you.

First, I am going to explain why our initial attempt at verification failed. This will make it much easier for you to understand how to do the process properly when you attempt it again.

If you take a look at step 3 in the verification method, it will tell you the exact location where Webmaster Tools is looking for your verification file. You will see in my case, it is looking for the file at www.anotherbigdeal.com/ the file name for the verification file. Here is where the mistake usually occurs. We all can see that my sitemap is located at anotherbigdeal.com/apptorial/sitemap.xml. This is most likely the same situation for my verification file. If I wanted to see my verification file, I could just replace sitemap.xml with the verification file name and it would show up in my browser. This page actually shows this. If you look in the URL you will see that the only difference is that sitemap.xml has been replaced by the verification file name.

But if we look back at step 3, notice where Webmaster Tools is trying to find my verification file. Something is missing from this URL. By now you’ve probably figured out that its missing my SiteName, which in this case is apptorial. This is the reason that it was unable to verify my site. The verification file it is looking for is not located in the location where it is trying to find it.

So what I’m going to do is, hit this Back to Home button, and then I will press the Add A Site button. Now, when I type in my site’s URL, I will enter a /apptorial at the end of the URL. Now if we look at step 3, you will notice that the URL now reads the correct URL for where my verification file is actually located. Now all I have to do is click on the Verify button, and my website will be correctly verified.

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.

If you use iWeb, you already know that when you type in your website’s URL, once you are taken to your page, the URL in the address bar will forward to your domain name, followed by the site name that you gave in iWeb while publishing, followed by your page’s file name.  This URL you see here is just an example of what this might look like.

What we are going to be doing in this video, is reduce the length of the URL by getting rid of the site name so that the URL goes from looking like this, to looking like this. I will not be teaching you how to have the domain read just www.yourdomain.com. The reason for this is because the easiest way of actually doing this to an iWeb site would be to turn on what is called domain masking.

I will quickly tell you what domain masking is, and why you don’t want to use it for your website. Domain Masking is basically hiding the name of your site and replacing it with something else. As an example, notice how when I click to various pages on this site, the URL in the address bar stays the same. The reason why domain masking is not recommended, is because it makes other pages on your website unrecognizable by search engines and it makes it impossible for your users to bookmark an individual page on your site.

Now that we have a good understanding of the URL structure with iWeb sites, let’s get right into reducing the length of our URL’s. The first thing I want you to know is that you will be required to have a third-party FTP tool to publish your site. This means that we will no longer be publishing our websites directly from iWeb.

I recommend using Cyberduck or iWeb SEO Tool which are both available for free. Cyberduck is a basic FTP client which allows you to transfer files from your local hard drive to your web-space and vice cersa. iWeb SEO Tool is a great application for iWeb users to optimize their sites for search engines, AND it also includes a built in FTP client.  I’m going to be using iWeb SEO Tool in this demonstration, because I want to show how this method of reducing the length of our URL’s applies to people who use iWeb SEO Tool as well.

So the first thing we are going to do, is publish our website to a local folder in iWeb. It will be easiest for you if you create a new folder and publish your site to this new folder. You will need to remember where you created this new folder on your hard drive. I am going to call my new folder My iWeb SIte. While the site is publishing, I want you to take note of my Site Name, Photos By Matt which can be seen here…and here. Keep this in mind for later in the tutorial.

When our sites have finished publishing, go ahead and open the folder where you just published your site to. You should notice that there are three things inside this folder. There is an index.html file, a file with a long name that has the word ‘assets’ at the front, and finally a folder with your Site Name on it. Inside this folder, is where all of our website files are. The reason we get long URL’s is because we publish all three of these files.

Here is how we will fix this. In iWeb SEO Tool, when I press the Open Website button, I will first locate the folder that I just created. Many people will select this folder and choose to load the entire folder. This is how we end up with those long URLs. Instead, I will select this folder, and then locate the folder inside of it that contains the Site Name for my website, which is Photos By Matt which, we took note of earlier.

When we publish this to our FTP account, our site will now not have the site name in the URL.

If you wanted to publish to an FTP client such as Cyberduck,  make sure that you do not just upload the folder with your Site Name on it, but that you select all of the contents of the folder and upload them directly to your FTP.

The first thing you must remember to do, is publish your site to your iDisk directly from iWeb.

Once your site is published, you are ready to begin your optimization using iWeb SEO Tool.

Make sure you load your site using the Load iDisk Sites button.

The preferences in iWeb SEO Tool are set to not allow a page file that contains the word ‘blog’ to be optimized. The reason for this is that if a file of this kind is optimized, it will compromise the file and cause the blog commenting feature to not function. In some cases, the blog files may not contain the word ‘blog’ in them. This would be due to the user naming these files something different. If that is the case, you can change the preferences so that the tool does not optimize the files for your blog. So let’s say for example that you change the name of this file here from Blog to Journal. When optimizing your site in iWeb SEO Tool, you must change the preferences so that the tool is set to not optimize files that contain the word Journal.

Once you have optimized all of your pages, you do not need to publish your site to your MobileMe account within the tool. Since you are logged in, and have loaded your site directly from your iDisk, the changes you make in iWeb SEO Tool will be reflected immediately after you press the apply button.

You can either select one of the pre-made templates, open an existing website or create a new webpage using the Web Page wizard.

Scroll through the available templates which range from fully developed websites to blank templates. Once you have chosen a template, press the ?Select? button.

WebDesign?s Site Manager will open along with the Site Settings window. From this window you can select a prede?ned FTP account to publish your website to. At this time you can ignore this option if you do not yet have a web host set up. Your purchase of WebDesign comes with four free months of web hosting to get your started. Details on how to take advantage of this offer can be found in your order confirmation email.

Once you have entered your website settings, all of your website ?les will be listed for you in the Site Manager. The index.html ?le is the default page that will load when someone enters your domain name into their web browser. The rest of the pages are sub pages linked from the navigation menu of each page.

The Site Manager provides everything you need to manage your website in WebDesign. You can add new ?les by pressing the plus button underneath the ?le listing. If are using a template, the new pages will be based on your existing template ?le.

The file labeled index.html is your default page. We will double click the index.html to open it up in WebDesign?s editor.

As you can see below, WebDesign provides a text editor and a visual preview of your website which gets updated as you edit your page.

If you have used Apple?s “Pages” software you may notice the similarities between the two applications. WebDesign provides a sub toolbar at the top of the window that provides common tasks like changing fonts, font size, styles, colors, as well as inserting more advanced code such as lists, tables, links, and images.

Just like any word processing application, WebDesign lets you select a block of text and easily apply style changes such as making the text bold, italic or underlined. Just select a block of text and press the B button in the sub toolbar, or press command-B on your keyboard.

Likewise, many of the other styling options can be applied in a similar manner. In addition to what is provided in the sub toolbar, WebDesign also provides over 40 built in wizards which can be inserted into your webpage from the Tools window on the left hand side of your screen or the Insert menu in your menubar at the top of your screen.

With WebDesign you can quickly and easily drag and drop HTML wizards from the Tools window into your document.  Since only content placed within the body tags will be rendered in your browser, all wizards should be placed within these tags.

WebDesign makes it extremely easy to work with your HTML webpage ?les. All of your HTML tags are color coded so you can easily separate HTML markup with regular text content. Syntax coloring also allows you to easily spot basic coding errors in your HTML.

WebDesign also includes auto completion of HTML tags, attributes and attribute values.  As you type, a list of all available HTML tags and attributes will be provided. You can use your keyboard’s arrow keys to select one of the available options. Pressing the tab key on your keyboard will insert the currently selected autocomplete tag.

You will also notice that WebDesign provides HTML attribute suggestions and attribute value suggestions including a built in color picker to easily insert web safe colors into your document.

Lastly, WebDesign also includes an easy to use attribute editor. Open the Attribute editor by clicking the Attributes button in the toolbar. Now, when you click within an HTML Tag, the attributes editor will list all the attributes for the selected HTML tag to easily edit them. If an attribute requires a speci?c value, you can select it from the prede?ned list.

Most of your HTML needs can be handled by WebDesign?s sub toolbar, directly above WebDesign?s text editor. For example, the Font menu provides access to commonly used web safe fonts, while the Color button will let you specify the text color of the currently selected text.

When you are finished editing your website, you can go back to your Site Manager and use the Prepare Site button to check your site for coding errors and broken links. In addition, you can also apply various modifications to your entire site. You can convert your site to XHTML or CSS. You can optimize your HTML code so it loads faster for your visitors or change the case of your HTML tags.

Once we have applied any changes to our site we can Publish our website to our server by clicking the Publish Site button. WebDesign will only publish modified files. We will have to enter our server information, but once we have done this once, WebDesign will remember these details when publishing in the future.

After you’ve downloaded and installed iWeb SEO Tool, open up your web browser to www.statcounter.com. If you don’t have an account with Statcounter, click on the register button on the top left part of the navigation menu. Fill out all the required information and register your account. After you have registered, login with your username and password.

Once you are logged in, you will need to create a new project in order to get your code. Click on the “Add New Project” button.

In the following form, you will need to enter a title for your website followed by  your website’s URL. Then you will need to select a category for your website, and your time zone. You also have the option of having the statcounter not count your visits to the site by blocking your IP. If you don’t care for this feature, just leave it blank.

When you are done filling out the form, click the Next button. Now, you will  need to click on the “Configure and Install Code” button. You have a few options for which type of statcounter you want. Choose whichever option you like best, and then click on the next button.

In the drop down menu that says “default installation guide select iWeb. Then press the “Next” button. We are then given our Statcounter code. We must highlight this code and copy it.

Now open up iWeb SEO Tool. Load your iWeb site by clicking on the “Open Website” button. Your iWeb site must be saved to a folder on your hard drive in order to do this. If you wish, you can also load your site directly from your iDisk.

On the left hand side, all of the files from your site will appear. Under the Site Settings tab, paste the code we just copied into the Analytics code box.

Then press the “Apply to Entire Site” button.

Finally, you must publish the changes so that the Statcounter code can begin tracking visits to your site. The Publish button is located in the top right corner of the application. Here you will have the option of publishing to FTP or to MobileMe. Make sure you have your FTP or MobileMe information handy.

Once you publish your site, you can then go back to statcounter.com and view your site’s statistics as they appear.

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. Yotu can watch my video tutorial o 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.

So, what are the implications for you as a webmaster? Well, you must now keep in mind that the speed of your website, may be a large factor in your search engine rankings. This can be really unfortunate for iWeb users for two reasons. The first reason is that many iWeb made sites are naturally slow loading. The other reason is that many iWeb webmasters are not aware of how to make their sites load quicker.

In the SEO For iWeb video, not only will you learn many different ways of making your site more search engine friendly, but you will also be taught how to combat this speed issue in an extremely simple way, using just one application.  Get a copy today because your business is worth it.