Having written a plethora of articles on how to try and make iWeb more search engine friendly, I often get asked how to improve upon existing iWeb user’s efforts.  Frequently they fail practically every test in the book, and perhaps only once in the last 4 years has an iWeb site been built well enough for me to actually consider that the work put into it might have paid off from the search engine perspective

In reality, I think iWeb masquerades as something it is not.  Either Apple misrepresents it s as a web site building tool, or users get this half-fangled notion that it is more than it actually is.  To my mind, iWeb is nothing more than a half-decent prototyping tool, and at best an over-simplified web publishing application.  It is by no means a professional site building tool and in no way, shape or form should it be considered for building professional and well maintained web sites.  The fact that it rides soo rough-shod over the basics elements of good web design rules it out of that game completely.  It might be FREE, but the consideration that the hurdles it puts in front of the performance of your ‘business’ web site are far greater than the advantages attained from skimping on spending money on a web site.

I understand that startup costs need to be reduced when getting going with a business, but i think there are some actions which take that whole ethos a step too far.  iWeb users seem to be dogged in their mindset of ‘save save save’ at the expense of quality work and the acceptance that getting things done right, at the very least, does require some money.  Even a single well SEO-ed page would be better than an entire iWeb-built web site, unless of course you know what you are doing and can output the best quality work from iWeb, which in most cases, as mentioned above, is unlikely.

If you are intent on working your magic with iWeb, then I insist you do research.  Ask yourself for the answers and go out there and find them.  There are tools for optimising iWeb built sites, but at the same time you need to ensure that you have the know-how to best use them.  Making use of the iWeb SEO Tool from Rage Software is one thing, but really knowing what you are doing with it, is something else, and even then it doesn’t cover every base in the book.  Be prepared to open your HTML files in a text editor such as BBedit and to search and replace the poorly generated code iWeb created.  Moreover, expect to loose ALL your changes every time you go to update your site in iWeb.

Rather than kill an opportunity to find business online with a decent web site, then consider building a prototype of the site you want in iWeb and use it as a means to collect all the content you need for your web site, then hand it over to a professional properly to build, with a mandate to do a proper search engine optimisation job.  More importantly, expect to have a debate with your web developer or design firm about the final design of your site, because any web site building process should be a conversation between firm and client to achieve the best results, both for what you, as a client wants, but as experience tells the web development firm achieves the best results.