Showit SEO Guide: 6 Steps to an SEO Friendly Website

So you just purchased a new Showit website template and you’re now looking to optimize your site.

Good, news, you’ve come to the right spot!

In this simple Showit SEO guide, I am going to show you 6 simple steps you can take to improve your Showit website’s SEO.

This SEO guild is intended for Showit users, but the principles talked about can be applied to every business owner looking to improve their website SEO.

SEO is a great way to get more leads and book more clients. I love when I get to tell people that SEO makes you money, because it does.

SEO is not just for the advanced business owner. It’s for every business owner that has a website.


Before we jump into this post, I wanted to let you know that if you’re looking for more SEO help, I have a few ways I can help you.

Showit SEO Checklist

I have a free SEO blog post checklist that you can download today that shows you how to craft beautiful, SEO-friendly blog posts.

I also have a really great, easy-to-use, Showit SEO Course that covers everything you need to know about Showit SEO all in one place.

And lastly, I create a ton ofΒ free SEO resourcesΒ for Tonic Site Shop. Check them out!


In this post I’ll cover

  1. SEO titles & meta descriptions
  2. Optimize your Showit images
  3. Create SEO friendly links
  4. Optimize text tags
  5. Organize your Showit website
  6. Blog to grow your website traffic

Before we jump into the 6 steps that will make your Showit website SEO friendly, let’s cover the basics. What is SEO?

What is SEO

Simply put, SEO is optimizing your website to be better found on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.

Even though it takes a while to get where you want to go, in my opinion, it’s so much better than running ads on Google or Facebook.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for running ads, but the instant you stop paying, your ad dissapears.

With SEO, your goal is to put your website in a google search results page for highly targeted keywords of your choice.

If your website is in the top 3 results of a strong keyword, it will act as your 24/7 365 salesmen that you don’t have to pay! If you put in the hard work, that listing can bring in thousands of dollars every year.

Let’s take a look at how you can optimize your Showit website, grow your organic search traffic, book more clients, and make more money!

1. How to add Showit SEO Titles & Meta Descriptions

SEO titles and meta descriptions are your individual page’s titles and descriptions.

These titles and descriptions are not seen on your website anywhere, they are HTML tags in your website code.

They are, however, used for the website title and description in a search results page.

Showit SEO titles and Google - Moreno Collective

Sounds crazy but trust me, it’s so simple to update these!

I will start off by saying SEO titles and meta descriptions are a fundamental step in optimizing your website.

This step should not be skipped and should be applied to every page on your website.

I talk a lot more in depth about Showit, SEO titles, and meta descriptions in a previous post I wrote which you can find here.

What should SEO titles and meta descriptions be?

example of meta description - Showit SEO - Moreno collective

I like to describe SEO titles and meta descriptions as a front window display in a mall.

Let’s say you’re at a mall and there are only 7 stores. You’ve never heard of any of them. Which one do you choose?

Most of us would base our decision by the name of the store and the clothing they are displaying in the front window.

We think to ourselves, “Oh, I like the look of that”, or, “That looks beautiful”, and it draws you in.

SEO titles and meta descriptions are the same in that they need to speak very clearly and attractively to potential site visitors about what they are clicking on.

By doing so, you build trust before they even enter your site.

How do I add SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions in Showit

Adding SEO titles and meta descriptions in Showit is very easy.

  1. Navigate to the page you want to edit
  2. Click “SEO Settings” in the right side panel in Showit
Adding SEO titles and meta descriptions in Showit - Moreno Collective

I Can’t Find SEO Settings in Showit

If you can’t find your SEO settings in Showit, its most likely because you have a canvas open on that page.

To get the SEO settings to appear, click on the page’s title under the “PAGE” tab in Showit, and then you should see “SEO SETTINGS” on the left.

Here is how to find your Showit SEO settings in Showit app.

2. How to Optimize the Images on your Showit Website

Optimizing your images is another fundamental step in boosting your Shoit website’s SEO. A fast-loading website help keeps visitors on your site and makes Google happy.

There are 2 uploading locations if you use Showit and your blog is on WordPress.

You upload images to Showit’s media library for you Showit pages.

And, you upload your blog images to your WordPress Media Library.

These two libraries are different and should be treated differently.

Luckily, Showit optimizes your JPEG images for you as you upload them to your Showit media library. This is a big relief as a slow loading website can drop your ranking.

Showit only recommends that you upload images up to 3200px wide and will only optimize JPEG images, not PNG’s.

How do I optimize PNG images for Showit?

It’s simple! Just use ImageOptim.

Resize your image in Photoshop or Preview (mac users), and then drop them into ImageOptim. Now you’re ready to upload them into Showit.

Check out this video on how to resize your images and use ImageOptim.

How do I know what size my Showit blog images should be?

It’s a good idea to be conscious of your blog images before you upload them. Showit will not optimize your blog images for you.

I always try to resize my images to be double the width of my blog container and then use ImageOptim to compress and reduce the file size.

Let’s take a closer look at my single post template page in Showit.

Optimizing your images for Showit SEO - Moreno Collective

As you can see, my blog content container is set to 800px wide.

Therefore I want to resize my images to be 1600px wide.

Once you’re done resizing your images, drag them all into ImageOptim. Now you’re ready to upload them to Showit!

Using a Plugin to optimize your blog post images

I don’t recommend solely relying on a WordPress plugin to optimize your images as they can be pretty extreme on the compression, or not compressing enough.

However, I do think it’s a good idea to have one installed just in case you forget to optimize your images before uploading.

The plugin I use is called Smush Pro by WPMU DEV.

3. Create SEO friendly links in Showit

Creating SEO friendly URLs is often overlooked or simply not understood by most creatives new to SEO.

Slugs are the ending or your URL. I know, why would they call them slugs??

SEO friendly URls in Showit - Moreno Collective

Studies show that shorter, simpler slugs rank better than long slugs. Here’s an example that I used in my post all about slugs.

domain.com/jess-and-garys-summer-anniversary-session-that-could-not-be-more-romantic-downtown-austin

Vs

domain.com/romantic-downtown-austin-anniversary-photos

We don’t need to use the clients names or those “filler” words (stop words). People will not be organically searching for specific client names.

Keep it simple, short, and use the keywords that matter the most.

4. Update Your Text Tags in Showit

Text tags are used to differentiate titles, subtitles, and paragraphs from each other.

You may have heard of or seen them before.

H1, H2, H3, and P.

Visually, we achieve this by styling our titles and subtitles to be larger, bolder, and maybe a different color.

This way they stand out and we know that this body of text is different than the rest.

But Google sees code. So we need to tell google which text boxes are titles, subheadings, and paragraphs.

We do this by setting header tags, or text tags as Showit calls them.

Setting text tags in Showit - SEO for creatives - Moreno Collective

Don’t let people tell you that an H1 tag is any more important than a P (paragraph) tag.

If H1’s were the most important, we would all just use H1 tags only. But this is not the case.

They are all important and should support each other.

Without paragraphs, you could not prove your expertise. You’d just have a bunch of titles. Use paragraphs as much as you can!

Ok, I’m going to pitch you for a second. I have an SEO course for Showit users where I go over this topic along with the below topic very extensively. If you have any questions, reach out and let’s see if the course is right for you!

5. Organizing Your Showit Code

This subject could very well be the most important part of this blog post.

The order of your elements in Showit is how your website code is outputted.

Using Showit is a bit like using Photoshop. You have different elements like shapes, text boxes, and images all layered to make a design.

The difference is that Showit outputs your design into HTML code. And we want to make sure the HTML is organized.

Inside of Showit, you have a layers panel on the left hand side.

Showit elements in layer panel to improve your SEO - Moreno Collective

The difference is that Showit is converting your design into HTML code when you click publish.

That being said, we need to make sure that our elements are in the correct order or you’ll have paragraphs that are supposed to be supporting an H2 appear above the H2.

rearranging your elements won’t necessarily change your website design. It only changes the order of your website code.

If your paragraphs that are supposed to be under an H2 are above your H2, then google will not read those paragraphs as supporting the H2.

How do I organize my Showit elements?

There are 2 things we need to understand. Canvases and elements.

Canvases are like “sections” in Showit. Each section has elements inside of them.

Here is the tricky part. Canvases are outputted from top to bottom but elements are outputted from the bottom to top.

To better understand, check out the images below.

rearranging elements to improve your Showit SEO - Moreno Collective

I am a very visual learner, so bear with me πŸ™‚

As you can see, the design goes blue, purple, yellow, but in the layers panel, it goes yellow, purple blue.

We want to make sure that our elements are from bottom to top in the layers panel. The opposite from what is visually in our website design.

This is a bit more complicated but it’s definitely worth understanding and workin on.

If you want to learn more about this, sign up for my free ‘3 Days to Better SEO‘ email training and I’ll send you a video of how to organize your Showit elements!

6. Use your blog to grow your organic traffic

This is where SEO gets exciting. We’ve been talking about technical SEO, and we’re going to end this post with content SEO.

Your blog is one of the most powerful SEO tools that you have. It’s where you can provide valuable information and prove your expertise.

To have people organically find you online, you need to provide answers. Why? Because the #1 reason people use search engines is to find an answer.

If you provide the best answer or solution to your clients problems, Google will show your website to searchers.

Why? Because Google’s mission is to “deliver the most relevant and reliable information available”.

What should you blog about?

Your first step is to identify the questions and pain points of your ideal client.

Once you’ve figured out what information your ideal clients are wanting to know, you should make informational blog posts answering each of those questions.

Let’s take a look at this post.

I figured out that a lot of creatives know that SEO is good, but are not sure where to start. They want basic information on where to start and how to get started.

I then created a post that goes over what I believe to be the 6 most important things to know when getting started with SEO.

I also link out to more blog posts I’ve written with more relevant information about the topic at hand.

My gaol with this post is to show you how to get started and to prove to you that I know what I am talking about.

You should be doing the same for your clients.

What blog posts should a wedding professional write about?

I am going to use a wedding photographer as an example since most of my clients are wedding photographers or professionals in the wedding industry.

Let’s take a closer look at your business.

Who are your clients?
brides.

What are they searching for online?
Venues, florists, planners, stationary, engagement locations, etc.

So, what should you write about?
Venue reviews, top planners to work with in your city, favorite engagement locations in your city, etc.

What should my blog posts look like?

There is a big difference between content posts and portfolio posts.

Portfolio posts are to show off your beautiful work. They display your photos, but don’t have any specific answers they are providing. They are a post full of images with little to no text.

Content posts are blog posts that contain text, answer questions, and cover industry topics. These are the posts that are going to rank really well in Google.

Your posts should have the following:

  • An intro clearly stating what you’re going to cover.
  • As much text covering the topic as possible. (1000+ words)
  • Images supporting your topic. (not too many)
  • Videos if possible. (videos convert well and keep people on your website)
  • keywords about your topic. (what would people search in Google to find your post)
  • Links to other posts in your blog

Conclusion

Ok, wow, If you made it this far… bravo!

I hope you found this post helpful. SEO can be a tough task to get started with, but once you do, it’s so rewarding.

Imagine if you created a blog post that brought in thousands of online visitors per year, which led to handfuls of leads and bookings. For many wedding professionals, each booking is thousands of dollars in profit.

This means that in reality, a well written, informative blog post plus a fast loading website could make you tens of thousands of dollars every year.

I don’t know about you, but that excites me. Why not create 10 blog post that bring in thousands of visitors per year and 10xing your chances of being booked.

πŸ™‚

Jul 5, 2020

Ryan Moreno

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Comments & Questions
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  1. Amalia says:

    Hi, thanks for the post! IΒ΄m a little confused.. So basically I do not need to reduce the size of a jpeg image that I upload to the Showit media library? Showit will do that automatically? Thanks!

    • Ryan Moreno says:

      Hey Amalia! Yes, showit will reduce the size of your jpegs however they do recommend uploading images with a max width of 3200px on the long edge simply to reduce the amount of storage on their servers.

  2. Ioana says:

    Thanks for the super informative article! There’s an interesting thing happening when it comes to using your tip about reordering elements within a section that contains a form. In Showit, in order to be able to navigate a form using the TAB key on your keyboard, the form input elements must be in a Top to Bottom order. I was curious to see how these 2 facts may interfere with each other so I went ahead and tested it, using Bottom to Top for all elements in that section except for the actual form input elements, which I kept in their normal, visual order. Unfortunately, the code shows all elements in their proper order except for the form input elements. I’m assuming that small portion of the website doesn’t have a significant impact on SEO but I think it’s important that people know that if they’re going to use the Bottom to Top order for form input elements too, they may be sacrificing a bit on user experience. (I geeked out a little bit, I know ) What’s your take on this?

    • Ryan Moreno says:

      Hey ioana! This is a really great point! I will definitely add this to the article as I do also feel that this is very important. It’s something that I cover in my seo course, but did not mention here in this article. When it comes to seo the form being out of order within the code will not make a difference. The biggest thing about the re-ordering is making sure that your headers are above the paragraphs that support the header.

      • Ioana says:

        Ryan, thank you for the confirmation and further explanation! (By the way, I did not get any emails notifying me of your reply to my comment. I just checked the article again and saw the reply. Thought I’d let you know πŸ™‚ )

        • Ryan Moreno says:

          You’re welcome, Ioana! I’ll definitely check comment settings. Thanks for letting me know. Just gave you a follow on IG!

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