Add SEO

To make your site accessible to search engines like Google Bing and Yahoo, you can add metadata and perform other proven SEO techniques. SEO and Accessibility shared some of the same techniques (e.g., headings, alt text for images). So, when you employ SEO techniques you make your site more accessible as well (See Add Accessibility).

Add Metadata for SEO

Search Engines like Google looks for key words on your web site to index your web site:

  1. Open the Home Page (e.g., About Me).
  2. Select Page > Page Properties to open the Page Properties dialog box.
  3. Click on the Metadata tab.
  4. Add the necessary Description and Keywords. Optionally, if you had some HTML that you wanted to include in the <head> element for that specific page, you could do it here.

    NOTE:     Keywords are separated by commas and should be words that you would want someone to type into a search field of a search engine like Google. Make the key word different for each page.

  5. Click on the Options tab.
  6. Except for the home page (typically, index.html), ensure that the Page name MATCH the file name.

    NOTE: This will help the search engine know the the page name and its content are related.

  7. Click the OK button to commit all changes.
  8. Repeat the previous steps for EVERY pages.
  9. In Plan View, right-click on a master template (A-Master) and select Page Properties.

    NOTE: You will get a different Page Properties dialog box than clicking on a regular page.



  10. Click on the Metadata tag and in the Page Title Suffix text box enter a space, a pipe symbol ( | ), another space and then the main title of your site (e.g., | Cornelius Portfolio).

    NOTE:     This will append the title to each page and will show in the title bar of the browser.

  11. Optionally, in the Options tab, you can add a favicon.
  12. Repeat the previous step for each template page, if you have more than one.

Add Sitemap

Muse automatically create a sitemap.xml file. However, you need to go the Google Webmaster Tools and tie it to your site.

  1. Submit site to Google using the Google Webmaster Tools:
    • Go to google.com/webmasters/
    • Sign-in using your Google account.
    • Add your site and press ADD A SITE.
    • If you get a failure, click on the Alternate methods.
    • Click on the HTML tag.
    • Copy the meta data and paste it in the <head> tag of your home page.
    • Go to Page Properties of the home page and paste the meta data into the <HTML> tag.
  2. Republish site with new meta data.

SEO Techniques

Below is a list of additional things you can do to improve your search engine ranking. Use: