It’s no secret that Showit is my favorite website platform for so many reasons, and one of those reasons is because Showit makes implementing proper SEO easy breezy. The only thing better than a beautiful website, is a beautiful website that converts. Understanding and properly using each of Showit’s SEO settings will lay the foundation of optimizing your website.

6 Must-Know SEO Settings for Showit Websites.

Page Titles

The Page Title gives a preview or overview of what the Page is all about to readers, and search engines use the Title to deliver relevant results to searchers. Here are some tips to keep in mind when it comes to your Titles:

• Capital letters take up more character space. To me, a character is a character, but that’s not the case here. Google does what Google wants.

• Long Titles can get cut off in search engines so keep your Titles around 60 characters, (but no longer than 70 characters). Moz tool will help you test out Titles for Pages. When it comes to Blog Posts, the Yoast WordPress plug-in has this feature built in for you.

• For Pages, select Focus Keywords or Keyphrases (more details on this below!) relevant to your business and keep them at the beginning of the Title (Brand & Showit Website Designer | Abigail Dyer Design Studio). These keywords should describe the content of the page and/or your business.

• Keep your Page Titles consistent, but don’t make them identical.

• And as for Blog Posts, use the Yoast SEO plugin, and instead of using Keywords. I suggest that you use the Blog Post’s actual Title followed by your business name or website’s domain name (A Showit Beginner’s Guide to SEO | abigaildyerdesign.com) or an abbreviation of the Title if character count is an issue.

Meta Description

The Meta Description (also known as just Description) is exactly what it sounds like – a description of the content of the page. Its job is to grab people’s attention and encourage them to click on your Page or Post when searched. Here are some helpful tips regarding Meta Descriptions:

• The length of your Description should be around 150 characters.

• Write your Description in paragraph form with real sentences.

• Including your Focus Keywords or Keyphrases is good practice. But don’t stuff it with keywords because that looks spammy!

• Every Page or Blog Post’s Description should be unique.

Keywords

Before we dig into Keywords, we need to set a quick Keywords term differentiation. Keywords in Showit are different than Focus Keywords or Keyphrases. Focus Keywords are very important and are used by Google to analyze content to determine if your Page or Blog Post is optimized for that Focus Keyword(s).

However, adding Keywords in it’s Showit SEO section adds meta-keywords to your page, which are actually useless. In fact, Google has stated they don’t use them for a ranking factor, and some SEO experts say that using them could have a negative effect on your ranking. So just remember to keep the Keywords section empty in Showit’s SEO settings.

Shared Image

Your Shared Image is the image that will auto-appear on social media when you share that Page’s URL. (Note: When you share your Blog Posts, it will share your Featured Image.) I encourage you to do this for every Page on your website to make your shared Pages and Posts more attractive.

Text Tags

Using HTML Text Tags helps search engines index the content and structure of your web pages. When you add these Tags, Google can better understand the information or content that’s on that Page or Blog Post.

Thankfully, Showit makes things user-friendly yet again because Text Tags are automatically applied to your text. This means if you stick with your Type Style Settings (found in the Design Settings in the left panel), you won’t have to go in there and tag every text element yourself!

Think of heading tags like a hierarchical system, where h1 is the most important or highest ranking tag.

h1: titles or main headings.
h2 : less important headings.
h3: subheadings.
p: paragraphs text.
div: design elements (i.e. logos).
nav: navigation links.

Images and Media

Optimizing your Images and other various Media is important for SEO ranking too! So often we upload images in the file names they were originally saved by, but this won’t help search engines index and better rank your site. Google can’t read or view your image to know if it’s relevant to your content or what’s being searched. And because of that, it’s best to also include a Title and Description to your Media files. To do this, simply follow the same Title and Description tips listed above!

How These Settings Look On The Web

Before we start implementing these settings on Showit, here’s a visual breakdown of a few of the most important Page settings and how they look or work on the web. I’m such a visual person, so seeing how these settings actually work or look when searched may better help you understand too!

This is how search engines display your Title and Meta Description.

And this is how the Title is displayed in a browser window.

Implementing SEO Settings In A Showit Website

First, you need to know that you must complete the following settings on a Page-by-Page basis inside of Showit. This means that you must include the Title, Meta Description, Text Tags, etc. onto every single page (Home, About, Services, etc.) of your website so your readers and search engines know what that Page is all about. A common misconception about SEO is that your website ranks on Google; however, it’s your website pages that rank you in searches and completing these settings will help you achieve better ranking. You only have to input these settings once per Page – meaning you won’t have to input these settings on both Mobile and Desktop versions.

Title, Meta Description, and Shared Image

First, log into your Showit account and select a Page in the left panel. Then head to the right panel and go to the ‘SEO Settings’ tab. Here is where you will place your Title, Meta Description, and upload the Shared Image.

Text Tags

As you now know, text tags have relevancy and are important for SEO. Set each Text’s Tag by selecting the text you would like to tag. Then go to the right panel, select the ‘Text Properties’ tab, and under the ‘Advanced’ section, set the appropriate tag. Most of these tags will pre-populate if you have your type styles set up correctly (in the ‘Design Settings’ section of Showit).

Images and Media

Lastly, optimize your images and other various media forms in Showit by selecting the element. Once again, head over to the right panel. Under the ‘Image’ tab, you can input both the SEO Title and Description.

What are you questions about Showit and SEO? I’m here to help!

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