Please note that this is different from having a google search box on your site and to have it searching within you website. For that have a look at this page instead.

If you don't want to go through all these steps there's an application called iMap doing it for you. You can get it at guimkie.com ( for 7.99 € ).

Another application is Rage Sitemap Automator. It will produce your sitemap, upload it and verify it with Google, Yahoo and Ask.com. It’s more expansive ( 29.99 $ ) than iMap but is very fast and convenient if you work with a lot of websites.

If you don’t want to pay for that then go through the following steps...

For .Mac publishers: black+red

For not .Mac publishers (publishing to a folder) or non iWeb created sites: black+green

If you have multiple Sites published to the same server or .Mac account and want to have a sitemap for each of them instead of one for all (I have one for all because it’s easier and the result is the same), follow the one of the above that applies to you+magenta

Before starting submit your url to http://www.dmoz.org/

if using .Mac and a personal domain, don’t submit your personal domain but submit the web.mac.com/yourname/

if not publishing to .Mac submit your base url (mine is http://alyeska.altervista.org )

and only that one, not all your pages

And now these are the steps you have to follow:

Please note that in the whole process whenever asked for URL you have to give Google

if you are publishing to .Mac your .Mac base URL http://web.mac.com/username/ and not your registered domain name (Read Note 2 at the end of the page to know why)

if publishing to folder you base url, mine is http://www.alyeska.altervista.org

the base url of the site http://baseurl.com/sitename/

1. 1) Submit your URL going to addurl
   

2. 2) Register here to register to the Google Webmaster Tools.
   

3. 
   

3. 3) Before creating a Sitemap of your site there is a problem: The Navigation Bar of iWeb is Javascript rendering so Google and other search engines (and applications for making Sitemaps) can’t look it through and don’t see what pages your website contains. The solution is to put a second Navbar on the bottom of the page made by your own, that’s how: create a text field, make normal text links to the pages included in the Navbar and you’re done (you can see an example of it at the bottom of this page). The search engines will now follow those links. Best is to make it once and then copy and paste it to the other pages included in the navbar. You don’t have to put it on all your pages.
   

4. 
   

4. 4) Now create a sitemap http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
   

-Put your base URL where it says Starting your url (example: http://www.alyeska.altervista.org/ note that it’s different from http://alyeska.latervista.org so you would have to do it all twice if you want)

If you are masking your domain (I have http://www.alaskadream.org/ ) you have to put in the real URL and not the masked (it would be http://www.alyeska.altervista.org/ for me, http://web.mac.com/username/ for .Mac users). If you put your mask in there no page will be displayed in the sitemap (see note 2 at the bottom of these page for explanation)

http://baseurl.com/sitename/ for separated multiple sites

-Click on start

5. 5) Download un-compressed XML Sitemap
   

6. 6) Open it in Safari to see if almost all pages are included, if they aren’t something went wrong. If it doesn’t open with Safari right-click on it (ctrl+click) and choose “Open with” and select “Safari”.
   

7. 7) If it’s ok. Upload that file to your main location on your server so that it will be http://www.yoururl.com/sitemap.xml (not in the subfolder of the Sites folder named with the title of your site...*).
   

For .Mac go to the Finder menu and select Go/iDisk/My iDisk/ or hit Schift+Command(Apple)+i and then go to /Web/Sites/. Drop your file into the "Sites" folder

Entering: http://web.mac.com/username/sitemap.xml in your browser should bring up this file. If it doesn’t you placed the file in the wrong location.

Entering: http://yourbaseurl.com/sitemap.xml in your browser should bring up this file. If it doesn’t you placed the file in the wrong location.

1. *If you want to have separated sitemap.xml then put it into the folder with the sitename and enetering: http://baseurl.com/sitename/sitemap.xml in your browser should bring up this file.
   

If it doesn’t come up in the browser then something went wrong and you will have to find out what.

8. 8) Once you uploaded that file go to the Google Webmaster Tools you registered to in Step 2.  In the Dashboard if it isn’t already listed type your base URL in the “Add site” field
   

if you are publishing to .Mac your .Mac base URL http://web.mac.com/username/ and not your registered domain name (Read Note 2 at the end of the page to know why)

if publishing to folder you base url, mine is http://www.alyeska.altervista.org

the base url of the site http://baseurl.com/sitename/

and click “Add site”.

Your URL will now appear in a list in the Dashboard. Click it and go to Sitemaps and then choose Add a Sitemap.

9. 9) After you clicked on Add a sitemap, choose “Add a General Web Sitemap” from the “Choose type...” menu and then Where it says “My Sitemap URL is:” you only need to write in sitemap.xml (or the name of the file) as the other part should already appear as you typed it in in step 8)
   

10. 10) They will ask you to verify that it really is your website. “Choose verification method” select “Upload an HTML file” and now you will have to build that verification file (here’s a How-to by Roddy).
    

- Go to your applications folder and launch Text Edit.

- Don't put anything on the blank page.

- Select File/Save As.

- In the popup window "Save As" box enter your Google number (something like google05a23d347cXXXXXX )

- In the "Where" box select desktop.

- In "File Format" menu select HTML.

- Click "Save".

- A file will appear on your desktop called google05a23d347cXXXXXX.html

- This is what you upload to your server or iDisk.

Upload that file to your main folder on your server so that it will be http://www.yoururl.com/google05a23d347cXXXXXX.html (not in the subfolder of the Sites folder named with the title of your site...*).

For .Mac go to the Finder menu and select Go/iDisk/My iDisk/ or hit Schift+Command(Apple)+i and then go to /Web/Sites/. Drop your file into the "Sites" folder

Entering: http://web.mac.com/username/google05a23d347cXXXXXX.html in your browser should bring up this file. If it doesn’t you placed the file in the wrong location.

Entering: http://yourbaseurl.com/sitemap.xml in your browser should bring up this file. If it doesn’t you placed the file in the wrong location.

1. *If you want to have separated sitemap.xml then put it into the folder with the sitename adn enetering: http://baseurl.com/sitename/sitemap.xml in your browser should bring up this file.
   

If it doesn’t come up in the browser then something went wrong and you will have to find out what.

11. 11) That’s it. However you will have to wait some time before you see your site indexed by google. To see if your website is indexed in google go to google, in the search box type site:’your url’ (see example here ) note that it changes whether you include or not the www. I find most of my pages indexed without because I first registered it that way.
    

You will have to replace the old Sitemap with a new one every time you add a new page to your website and republish to keep it updated. No need to update it if you republish without having added a new page. To replace a sitemap:

- Make a new sitemap

1. -Upload it to the server
   

2. -Go to your Google Webmaster Tools account
   

3. -Click on the URL of your site
   

4. -Go to Sitemaps, Check the box near the sitemap file name and hit “Resubmit selected” and you’re done.
   

NOTE 1: about Meta-Tags and Search engine optimization:

Some time ago you could "feed" search engines with words by putting them in the meta tags. Nowadays search engines ignore those tags (probably due to spamming) and only look at the content.

I never did any Meta Tags and it seems to me that my site works fine without Meta Tags on google... Google include PageTitle and PageContent and it works great without any optimisation as you see here. Another issue with Meta Tags on iWeb now is that if I publish to a folder I can add MetaTags with text editor but next time I publish to a folder iWeb will overwrite that file and Meta Tags are gone... I then would have to make them all over again... Time... Time... Time...

Bottom line: I see no need for Meta Tags

But people reading this... You're free to decide by your own... it's up to you...

5 TIPS:

1. -Update your sitemaps
   

2. -Make a second nav bar made of text links as previously explained
   

3. -Further use synonyms in your content. Write your content so that it fits as good as possible everything a 'googler' could search for.
   

4. -Search engines don't look for tags, they look for the content of your pages.
   

5. -In the end it’s all about three things: Content, Content and Content
   

NOTE 2: about Google and domain masking:

People report they can’t verify in google when using Personal Domain.

Also: using WebForward with cloaking may also make the sites appear in google without content because it may generate an iFrame embedding the content but the page itself doesn’t have any.

NOTE 3: “I have now been told that the sites are based on images, not text, hence they won't show up on a Google search. help!”

iWeb pages are text. BUT (that's what the one who told you meant) if you use custom Fonts, thus not Internet Standard Fonts, those text fields will be converted in an image by iWeb to be sure that people see the texts as you chose.

Yet, again, as long as you use Times, Times New Roman, Helvetica and other Internet standard fonts it's NOT image, IT IS TEXT.

To see which text fields are gonna be turned into images go to File=>Preferences and check the “Show text imaging indicator” box. iWeb is gonna display a yellow picture symbol on the text field. The symbol will not be published to the net.

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