How to optimize Adobe Muse sites for Search Engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the goal of raising the online visibility of site with higher ranking in search engine's list of search results. Sites that are ranked highest appear at the top of the list, which encourages visitors searching online to find a relevant site. Good search engine optimization practices help improve a site's ranking, which tends to increase a site's traffic.

In this article, you'll explore some best practices and tips you can follow to improve the search engine ranking of the sites you create in Adobe Muse. The Adobe Muse workspace includes many helpful features you can use to perform site optimization to increase discoverability and route traffic to your web pages.

In order to list the sites on the Internet, search engines crawl the web by following links that connect web pages and site assets. Search engines evaluate the content of pages and assets in a process called indexing. Indexing is important because it is a constant research that informs search engines of the available content on the web. If a site is no longer available, the search engine removes the website from the search results. Search engines use the results of indexing to determine the content and ranking of sites.

Indexing enables search engines to accurately suggest website links in the search results that match a specific query based on a key word or phrase. For example, if you type "Adobe" into a search engine field and click Search, a list of web pages will appear in the search results. The search results display links to websites that the search engine has determined contain content related to Adobe software and products.

There are many parameters that search engines use to decide which websites are listed highest in the list. High ranking is optimal, because that means that people who search on that keyword or phrase are more likely to visit your website. By following the suggestions outlined below, you can help facilitate search engine indexing, so that new visitors searching online will find the sites you create.

Web pages can contain embedded metadata information such as author, keywords, description, and language. The keywords and description are helpful for identifying the site's purpose and describing the content presented. These meta tags are embedded within the HTML source code; they are not displayed visually when the page is displayed in a browser window.

In the past, search engines would evaluate both the metadata keywords and description during the index process. Web designers would sometimes add hundreds of keyword terms, hoping to improve a site's visibility in the search results. Some modern search algorithms, such as Google's search engine, no longer consider keyword values when calculating ranking, but it is worth investing the time to update them. Keywords may improve ranking in other search engines and in Google Search Appliance used by larger websites. Metadata descriptions are often displayed as the description when your page shows up in a search result list, or as the default description in Facebook, Google+, and other social networking sites. An interesting description may help drive traffic to a site.

Search engines often perform full-text indexing, which means that they parse the entire text content on the page. The text that is placed in header tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.) is deemed especially important because headers generally summarize the information being displayed. Using paragraph styles, you can define paragraph tag containers, to create a page that uses an h1 header for the top title in the text content, an h2 header for a subhead title, and an h3 header as a sub subhead title. Text formatting indicates the importance of the header text at each level to search engines. Defining styles to use paragraph tags and applying them to header text enables you to create well-formed HTML code—which search engine crawlers find especially easy to navigate.

As the indexing occurs on a page's content, images and other linked assets are analyzed. If the assets contain titles or alternative text, this text information is parsed. The tooltips added to hyperlinks are also evaluated. The search engine utilizes all of the text content it finds when indexing sites to make informed decisions about each page's content. Additionally, adding titles and alternative text to images and tooltips to hyperlinks ensures that the pages you create are more accessible for everyone, including visitors using assistive devices to navigate the web.

Be sure to check your sites periodically to remove or fix broken links. If search engines detect broken links, they may assume that the site is no longer being updated. Also resolve missing image files or linked assets. Older sites that are not maintained may be assigned lower ranking in search results.

Adding metadata keywords and descriptions to page properties

When you first create a site in Adobe Muse, you are prompted to set up the site properties. These are the attributes that affect every page in the site, such as the layout values and the appearance of hyperlinks. However, each page also has individual properties that you can set to add specific attributes. For example, you can set Menu Options to control whether a page displays in a menu and update the metadata that is added to the source code, but is not displayed in the browser.

Follow these steps to update the page properties for a specific page:

Adding titles and alternative text to images

After you place images on a page, you can access the Image Properties dialog box to set both a title and alternative text (also sometimes called alt text) that is assigned to the image.

Here's a brief description of each property:

Title: In many browsers, the title is displayed in addition to the image, typically as a tooltip that appears when a cursor hovers over it.

Alternate text: If the image file cannot be shown, this text is displayed in place of the image. Alternate text is also used to describe images to visually impaired visitors using assistive technologies to access page content.

It is ideal to set titles and alternative text for every site asset, to ensure that visitors have the best experience when navigating your site. Tooltips are helpful for including additional information about graphics and alternative text makes pages more accessible for screen readers that verbally present graphic content.

To add titles and alternative text, follow these steps:

Setting tooltips for linked images and text

You can create tooltips that display whenever a cursor hovers over a link. These tooltips display on both images and text that has a hyperlink. Tooltips are helpful for visitors because they can get more information about the linked content before actually clicking the link to view it. Tooltips are also ideal because they provide search engines with a description of the content that is referenced from a site.

To add a tooltip to an element with a hyperlink, follow these steps:

Using paragraph styles to apply text formatting and set paragraph tags

Understanding the sitemap.xml file that is generated when you export or upload a site

When you export your site or upload your Adobe Muse site to a third-party host provider using the Upload to FTP Host dialog box, Adobe Muse generates a file named sitemap.xml that contains a list of all the site pages and assets. This file helps search engines index your site content more easily.

If you host sites on the integrated Adobe host servers, the domain name you add to a site is automatically added to the internal server index and no other action is required.

You can use the site map generated by Adobe Muse during to help improve your site's search engine ranking. If you are uploading the files using Adobe Muse, the sitemap.xml file is uploaded to the host server along with the other files. If you are exporting the site and using an FTP client to upload the files, upload this file to the host server along with the rest of the assets in the exported folder.

For enhancing the search engine optimization of your site, the site maps lists images with an <image:image> tag. The captions for the images are listed with an <image:caption> tag.  With the exception of .png files, the site maps also include images that are rotated and images with effects.

If you upload images with the same file name but different alt text, the images are listed separately with an <image:caption> tag. The caption includes the respective alt text.

Follow these steps to specify the domain name in your exported sitemap.xml file:

To learn how the Google search engine uses sitemap.xml files, visit the Google Webmaster tools help pages.

To get more information about designing sites in Adobe Muse, see Adobe Muse Help. Also visit the Adobe Muse Site of the Day to see inspiring designs as you start creating your own projects.

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