→ Is Showit good for SEO? 

→ Does Showit have good SEO? 

→ Is optimizing your site for SEO easy to do on Showit?

→ Please for the love of God tell me Showit has good SEO so I can feel confident about buying one of your gorgeous Showit website templates? Is it? IS IT???

(Okay, we may have made that last one up. But you get the gist.) 

And we get it, the questions are absolutely valid! We know how important it is to consider the SEO capabilities of a website builder, like Showit, when you’re determining which one to choose. 

So, we’re here to (hopefully) make your decision to choose Showit a little bit easier, by squashing your Showit SEO nerves once and for all. 

Addressing Your Showit SEO Concerns 

We’ve answered a LOT of Showit SEO questions in this post already, but we thought of a few more you may be wondering…

“Does the website platform you choose directly impact your SEO ranking?” (like, is WordPress the best for SEO?)

Not technically, no. 

Your website as a whole doesn’t rank, your individual website PAGES are responsible for getting you that ‘ranking’—aka that #1 spot on the front page of Google. 

…which, if you ask us, is great news – because this means that you have the power to put as much (or as little!) effort into optimizing your website as you want, and your results will be directly related to the content you decide to add to each webpage. 

And when you’re a Showit user, adding, optimizing, and designing content couldn’t possibly get easier. 

For our visual learners, here is a quick 8-min video by our very own Showit SEO expert, Ryan Moreno:

“I know you just said no, but… tell me the truth: are there other website building platforms that are better for SEO than Showit?”

While a lot of website builders look different when using them, no matter what builder you use—it will spit out code that your browser converts into a nice looking website. And while the quality of the code does matter, what matters more is the valuable content on your website.

This means that a Showit website will have the same potential to rank as a full SquareSpace, WordPress, or Wix website.

But if you’re curious about how Showit measures up to other website builders, check out this post about whether or not Showit is better than Squarespace, or this post about whether or not Showit is better than WordPress.

“Which elements of SEO can you customize in Showit?”

All of them! We recommend consulting our friend (and go-to Showit SEO expert) Ryan Moreno’s Showit SEO Guide—or take his Showit SEO course!—for more in-depth info, but we’ll give you the Sparknotes version of which SEO elements you can adjust in Showit. ⬇️

Page titles: (alternately referred to as “title tags”) the name of your page, used to help readers and search engines appropriately navigate your website. Keep in mind this title doesn’t show up anywhere on your Showit website, just in Google search results pages! 

Meta descriptions: the short blurb (usually no more than 150 characters) that describes the content of your page, and shows up below the title tag on search engines
(These two elements together make up your site’s metadata.)

Shared images: the image that appears in connection with the link when you share a webpage on social media

Media: all of the images and video you share on your site (which you’ll want to make sure you optimize by always adding both a title and description for in your Showit settings)

Text tags: the techy HTML stuff—aka the hierarchy of text that indicates to search engines which elements of your copy are most important (with H1 being the most prominent headlines, H2 a close runner up, H3 as subheadings, p as paragraph text, div as design-focused elements, and nav as your navigational links)

Why is Showit good for SEO?

#1 – It makes editing your SEO settings easy

And we’re not just saying that. It’s extremely simple and intuitive to figure out where and how to update your SEO settings in Showit, because it’s conveniently located in the same tab as all of the design settings you’re already using, located on the right of your screen.

(We can’t say the same for other platforms…) 

See for yourself:

#2 – It uses WordPress integration, with the support of SEO plugins 

WordPress is an extremely powerful platform, which is why it’s practically been the industry go-to for blogging since blogging started. 

And because SEO goes wayyyy beyond titling your pages, writing meta descriptions, and optimizing your images/videos, blogging is a huge element to consider when selecting the right website builder—and, in this case, its convenient integrations!—for you.

There’s nothing search engines love more than fresh, new content being regularly published to your site, and thanks to the support of WordPress, and its seamless integration with your Showit site, writing content and optimizing it for SEO is as straight-forward as it gets.

With WordPress’s blogging platform, you’re able to use special SEO-specific plugins, like Yoast, which handles all of the technical optimization of your site and assists you with performance, allowing you to rank higher on Google and other search engines.

#3 – All of your metadata optimizations are done on a page-by-page basis 

This may seem like a pain, but it’s actually exactly what search engines want from you. Having duplicate title tags and meta descriptions for your various web pages is a big SEO red flag, signaling “hey, something’s up here, not sure if this site’s user-friendly or if it has a bunch of repeat content!”

(SEO tip: make sure your title tags are less than 65 characters, your meta descriptions are under 150 characters, and that your shared image is visually appealing! This will help your site be more searchable and your content more click-worthy. For more *easy* to understand resources that will help you go from invisible online to page #1 of google check out our SEO resource hub.)

#4 – Mobile site quality is amazing

In fact, we’d even go as far as saying that Showit’s mobile-friendliness is superior to any other platform on the Internet. 

You may not realize this, but your mobile design and responsiveness actually has a LOT to do with how well your website does in the SEO department.

Because the vast majority of your website traffic comes from people viewing your sites on their mobile devices—usually more than 70% of your site visits—paying attention to user experience on mobile is so important to the health of your site.

…and you know who deeply cares about UX and the health of your site? Search engines. Because search engines don’t want to send anyone to a website that isn’t going to give them a good experience.

So, thanks to Showit’s ability to allow you to customize your mobile design independently of your desktop design, you’re able to ensure that everything works perfectly for the users who prefer scrolling your site on their phone.

Ps. did you know that many times Google search results are different on mobile and desktop? That means you can rank well with your desktop site, but not with your mobile site. And if 70% of your website traffic is using a mobile phone to search on Google, you might be missing out on a lot of traffic!

#5 – Automatic SSL certificate included

When you sign up for Showit, you’re automatically granted an SSL certificate, which is a must-have for ensuring search engines that your website is safe to browse. It’s very rare a website with no SSL will make it to page #1.

(In fact, when you don’t have an SSL certificate, search engines will flag your site as unsafe and pop a big, fat ‘error’ message in its place.)

#6 – Option to customize your 404 error page

You know by now that SEO is not only about getting found on search engines, but also being worthy of being recommended by search engines, right? And that’s why user experience matters so much?

Okay, cool. Wanted to make sure before we launched into yet another element of user experience that search engines value customizations on: your 404 error page. 

Whenever a user lands here, it’s by accident. No one wants to click a broken link. But when that uncomfortable error message does show up, your site’s viewers are MUCH less likely to “X” out completely when they’re brought to a beautifully customized 404 error page, as opposed to the factory setting standard.

The longer a reader stays on the page, the more search engines view your site as credible (and worthy of that rec).

#7 – The ability to set nofollow links

A nofollow link is, for all intents and purposes, exactly what it sounds like. It’s a link you don’t want Google to follow. 

Nofollow links vs dofollow links is a whole other conversation—one we recommend you have with SEO guru Neil Patel—so we’ll leave you with this: having the option to indicate you’d like a link not to be followed is important for your SEO link-building strategy.

Here’s how to make a nofollow link in Showit:

In conclusion—Showit is the perfect website builder for you if you care about SEO.

Now all you need is a gorgeous, strategically-designed Showit website template to go with it. 😉

Want more SEO tips and tricks delivered to your inbox each week? 

Subscribe to The Simply SEO Newsletter written by our very own in-house SEO expert, Ryan Moreno! This is for you if:

✔️ You’d like to drive more traffic to your website

✔️ You want Ryan’s best tips and tricks to increase your rankings on Google

✔️ You want easy-to-understand breakdowns of SEO concepts and strategies

✔️ You want stress-free SEO training that’s actually practical and applicable

Here at TONIC, we are all about making the complex technicalities of how SEO works—Simple. We love SEO and are committed to creating *easy* to understand resources that will help you go from invisible online to page #1 of google.

The post Is Showit Good For SEO? appeared first on Tonic Site Shop.

…Ok, so if we answered them all we could end up with a novel, but we’re definitely here to answer the top SEO questions that you have when it comes to getting your Showit template souped up for that race to the top of Google.

If you’re looking for Showit SEO help, we have the best FREE Showit SEO guide called “3 Days to better SEO” that will help you not only get started with SEO, but also show you how to track your SEO efforts!

Here’s are the questions we’re going to cover

• How does SEO work in general?
• Should all images have alt-text?
• Are podcast show notes good for SEO?
• What is no-indexing? Will it harm my SEO?
• How do I pick keywords for my blog posts?
• What if there are no keywords for my industry?
• Where do I find keywords? (Free keyword research tools)
• Is it ok to have multiple H1 tags on a single page?
• Why do my social media links show up before my website in Google?
• What can I do for SEO that doesn’t require spending money?

Do you have any Showit SEO questions? We’d love to hear from you! Feel free to leave a comment.

Q. How does SEO work in general?

Short Answer: SEO, in general, is optimizing your website with text and keywords so that Google knows and understands who you are and how to rank you.

Long Answer: The intention of SEO is to make your website very clear about what the site is about. Each page on your website has a purpose and that page can be found in Google if you are clear enough about the topic of the page. Remember, you are trying to rank pages on your website, not the website as a whole.

The best way to do this is to use text to very clearly describe/explain the purpose of that page. When Google scans your website pages, they are looking for what that page is about. They do this by analyzing the text on that page and determining the overall topic of that page. They will then relate search terms that people are searching for in Google to your page. This is how you get indexed in Google (a.k.a show up on a Google results page).

Q. Should all images have alt-text?

Original Question

I was hoping for some guidance on alt text for images that are just decorative and don’t have a specific meaning. (I’m a coach not a creative/photographer) so I use photos to break up text and give visual interest. Best practice to leave the “SEO Description” blank or can I still add some key words (without stuffing)?

You can definitely add keywords to your pretty images!

Let’s say you’re a coach, and you have a pretty image of a clean and organized desk on your services page, you can add an alt-text that says something like –

“[industry] coach in [town/city] – [brand name]”.

Or how about –

“Coaching services for [industry] in [town/city] – [brand name]”

You can also leave them blank but adding a general description of your page and/or business in the alt-text is better than nothing.

Now, with that said, I do not recommend stuffing keywords like mentioned. A keyword stuffed alt-text would be something like, “creative coach, business coach, business coaching, coaching for photographers, coaching for athletes, coaching, celebrity coach, health coach, atlanta, new york, san diego”… that’s no good. At TONIC we’re huge fans of organic SEO. Let your copy and keywords be true to who you are.

Q. Should we assign a SEO description (alt-text) for our header logo?

Sure! You can do something simple like, “[description of what you do] – [brand name]

For example, If I were to write alt-text for Tonic Site Shop’s logo, it would be something like, “Tonic Site Shop logo – website templates for creatives”

Is this going to make or break your SEO? No, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll optimize where possible!

Want to learn more about on-page SEO for your Showit website?

Q. Are podcast show notes good for SEO?

Question

I don’t plan to have a blog but I will soon have a podcast. Can I use my podcast for SEO purposes in a similar way to a blog – i.e. add great content & some key words to the show notes and the brief post for each episode that’s posted on my website?

Yes! Absolutely. Show notes are blog posts. But just like any blog post, you can have posts that don’t go into great detail and won’t get ranked.

Remember, just because we have a blog doesn’t mean we are going to rank for whatever we want. We need high quality content that covers a topic well and answers users questions.

If you position your show notes to be more than a bullet point list of what you talked about and more of a well written 1000+ word recap of what you talked about, you’ll have a chance at ranking for terms related to your show’s topic.

It’s almost like transcribing your podcast, just not word for word. That would be boring. Recap, explain, and answer questions that people are searching for online and you’ll do great!

Q. What is no-indexing? Will it harm my SEO?

Question

Will hiding pages from SEO/Google while I work on them harm my chances of them being found in the future?

No-indexing (hiding) pages will only tell google to not place your page in a search results page. Google will still be able to see it as well as users who type that link into their browsers or somehow find it another way.

I do not recommend no-indexing (hiding) pages temporarily as this can set you back months. What I do recommend is placing a temporary coming soon landing page up on your website. If you’re just working on one page, keep the original up while you work on a copy of that page. Once that new page is done, simply swap the pages and you’re good to go!

Q. How do I pick keywords for my blog posts?

Remember, keywords are not just single words. They can be, but oftentimes (especially for blog posts) keywords are going to be more like “phrases” or “terms”. These phrases are always going to be related to the main page/post topic.

So the easiest way to pick keywords for each post is to ask yourself, what are questions related to the main topic of this post. Let’s take a look at the example below.

Eating vegan for beginners (main topic)

• What is vegan food (sub topic)
• How do you start being vegan? (sub topic)
• Is vegan meal prepping easy? (sub topic)
• Will eating vegan help me lose weight? (sub topic)
• Etc…

From the list above, we can see keywords like eating vegan, vegan food, vegan meal prep, and lose weight. All of these are keywords that will help Google understand what your post is about!

Q. What if there are no keywords for my industry?

Question

I think for me it’s hard to pick keywords that actually match the content I create but that are also going to have a shot at ranking in search. When you’re a small site it almost feels like you have to create content that fits keywords which seems backwards.

This one is a bit difficult to answer without seeing your website or knowing your industry, but I would say that there is always content to be created that can help your ideal website visitors.

For example, let’s take a look at our website, Tonic Site Shop. We sell website templates. Our main audience is creatives looking for a website design.

Now we can go and create blog posts about how to create a website design and website templates, but that would not reach the right audience. Our audience is not looking to design a website. They want a website designed for them. So what can we write about?

• SEO tips and tricks
• Showit tips and tricks (the platform we design websites in)
• List building (most of our clients are businesses)
• Recipes (that’s right, it’s on brand!)
• Copywriting tips
• Brand discovery tips

You see, we’re not writing about “how to design a website from scratch”. That’s what we do. We write about topics our ideal clients have questions about within our industry.

We need to think about our ideal clients’ needs and see if we can answer questions they have. A blog is the best place to do this. Let’s take a look at some industries and ideas of content they could be creating.

Wedding Planner

We are not going to write about how to be a wedding planner or how to run a wedding planning business. Our ideal clients are looking for a wedding planner, not to be one.

You can write about

• Best wedding venues in your area
• How to choose the right florals for a fall, winter, or summer wedding
• When is the best time to get married in your town
• The pros and cons of hiring a wedding planner

Health Coach

• 5 easy meal prep ideas for maximum weight loss
• 45 min home cardio workout you can do on your lunch break
• Which veggies have the highest amount of protein
• Should you eat sugar after working out?

Remember, we’re not necessarily writing about what *we* do in our business, we’re writing about topics that will help our dream clients.

This is going to draw in people that are looking for knowledge you have. Chances are they will get to know you and your expertise (blog post), get interested in your service, and contact you.

Q. Where do I find keywords? (Free keyword research tool)

Question

Where do we REALLY find the keywords we’re supposed to use (w/o paid tools)

Great question! My favorite *free* keyword research tool is google.com!

You can use Google to search for keywords and terms that you believe your ideal clients are looking for online.

Use the “Related searches” and “People also ask” areas to get related keyword ideas. You can also use page 1 results to study what is popular for that search.

Remember Keywords are just search terms. If you use terms that people are searching for on a page or post with high quality content, you’ll win.

Now with that said, I do want to mention that Ubersuggest is a keyword research tool that has a free and paid version. The free version gives you 3 keyword searches per day which is not a lot. I’ll go through 5-10 searches easily for one post or page. The good news is that the paid version is only $29/month. If you plan on doing a handful of SEO edits in one month, just pay for a month 🙂

Q. Is it ok to have multiple H1 tags on a single Showit page?

Question

If your page has an H1 but some of the evergreen site canvases on the same page have an H1 tag, do we remove the H1 tags from these canvases that are used in various pages of our site?

I would simply update the H1 tag in the Showit site canvas to be an H2 (or whatever tag is appropriate). If that same site canvas is used at the top of a different page and should actually be an H1, turn that site canvas into a page canvas and then set that one only to H1.

Q. Why do my social media links show up before my website in Google?

Question

I’m trying to get my website to show up on google searches before social media listings.

This is fairly normal for newer businesses. If you search for your business name in Google and your social media handles are the same as your domain (i.e. @tonicsiteshop and tonicsiteshop.com) then Google will pull up links to your website and social media platforms.

If your Social media links are showing before your website, it’s most likely due to the age of your website. Keep your website updated, post blogs fairly often, and add your website link to your social media accounts and eventually this will change.

If your website is not new, then you need to work on making it very clear to Google what your brand name is on your website. Adding your brand name to your SEO titles is one of the best ways to do this. I recommend reading our post about SEO titles and meta descriptions.

Q. What can I do for SEO that doesn’t require spending money?

Question

What are three things I can quickly implement that don’t require another purchase?

This is my favorite question. I’ll get straight to it.

1. Add your main keywords to your homepage
2. Update your SEO titles and meta descriptions
3. Set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics

Once those are done, I would focus on creating blog content that goes in depth about topics your ideal clients are looking for online.

Many people are afraid of “giving too much information away” in a blog post.

Don’t be. People don’t pay for information. People pay for organized information.

This means that people won’t find your blog and not want to hire you. They’ll find your blog, see that you’re an expert in your industry, and want to hire you for personalized (and organized) information (i.e. a service like coaching or your product).

Do you have Showit SEO questions?

We would love to hear them! Add a comment below and we’ll help you out as much as we can!

The post Your Top Showit Website SEO Questions: Answered appeared first on Tonic Site Shop.

But chances are you’re reading this because you know you need SSL on your website.

SSL is a must have for SEO purposes. It essentially adds a layer of security to your website, making your information and the users information more secure.

If you use Showit then getting SSL on your website is incredibly easy. It’s as easy as chatting with Showit support and asking them to set up SSL on your website.

In this post we will go over very simply:

• What is SSL?
• How do I know if I have SSL or not?
• How to get SSL on your Showit website
• How to get SSL on a WordPress website

What is SSL?

SSL stands for secure sockets layer, a fancy way of encrypting your website information and the information people put into your contact forms.

SSL is a must for SEO. Let me repeat that, it’s a must!

Why?

Google and other search engines value their customers (Google users like you and I). They put more ranking priority on websites that are secure.

Google ranks secure websites higher than unsecure websites

How do I know if I have SSL on my Showit website?

If your website URL has HTTPS in the beginning then you have SSL.

If your website loads with just HHTP then your website is not secure.

You will also see a lock symbol next to your URL if your website is secure with SSL.

The lock symbol should show on all of your showit website pages.

Some of my Showit pages are not secure (SSL)

If the SSL lock icon does not show on all of your Showit or WordPress website pages, then most likely there is mixed content on that page.

This usually does not happen but if you notice that some of your pages are secure and some are not, then contact Showit and they should be able to correct the mixed content issue.

Mixed content means that your website has SSL (HTTPS) but some media, like images, are loading unsecured versions (HTTP).

How do I get SSL on my Showit website?

You may be worried that getting SSL on your Showit website is a super complicated process.

It’s quite the opposite!

Getting SSL on your Showit website is incredibly easy. Just open Showit and click on the chat icon in the bottom right.

Send them a message asking for SSL on your website and they will put in your SSL request.

This process usually takes no more than 24 hours, and I’ve had some completed in less than 20 min! (Thanks Showit!)

How do I get SSL on my WordPress website?

If you have a full WordPress there are a handful of ways to get SSL on your website.

However, I like to make things really simple so you can focus on your business, and not techy stuff like manually encrypting your website!

So if you use WordPress and are looking for SSL here are 2 ways you can get a free SSL certificate for your website.

Contact your hosting provider

Many hosting companies will provide you with a free SSL certificate.

Getting SSL on your WordPress website is as easy as contacting your hosting provider and asking them to make your website secure with SSL.

However if, If you’re using a hosting provider, like GoDaddy, that does not offer free SSL then you’ll have to use the clourflair method.

Get a Free SSL certificate using Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a company helping build a better internet. They are like the middle man between your website and your visitors. They offer tools that help secure your website and also speed up your website.

When signing up for Cloudflare, they will automatically transfer your DNS records and walk you through how to update your NameServers.

The last step is clicking on the SSL/TLS lock icon and toggling SSL to Full.

The post SSL for Showit and WordPress users appeared first on Tonic Site Shop.

And if they are, what pages?

What if your favorite page was the least visited, or had the highest bounce rate?

Wait, bounce rate? What’s that?

It may not seem important to you but collecting your websites visitor data is indispensable. It gives you insight into what pages are popular and which ones you need to update.

Even if you don’t use it now, it will come in handy when you’re ready to use it. Chances are if you’re reading this, you understand or are starting to understand the importance of Analytics.

Thankfully, Google Analytics is free and extremely easy to install on your Showit website.

In this post I’m going to show you:

• What Google Analytics is and why it’s important
• How to sign up for Google Analytics
• How to how to add google analytics to showit
• How to navigate through Google Analytics’ interface

Why Google Analytics is Important

Google Analytics is a free tool offered by Google that allows you to gain insights on the visitors coming to your website.

These insights allow you to understand your user and make good choices on design and content.

Google can show you:

• How many visitors you’ve had in the last day, week, month, etc.
• Which pages are most visited
• How you acquire visitors (direct, google search, social media)
• Where your visitors are searching from
• Which device your visitors are using (mobile, Desktop, Tablet)

This is all incredibly valuable information.

Knowing who your visitors are and where they are going on your website gives you a heads up on how to improve the overall experience you give them.

Successful businesses are not built on guesswork. They make decisions based on data.

How to add Google Analytics to your Showit website

If you’re like me and you learn by watching videos, enjoy this video tutorial on how to install Google Analytics on your Showit website.

Signing up for google analytics is very easy. If you don’t already have a Gmail account, this will be your first step.

1. Go to https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/ and click on “Start for free”
2. Sign into Google using your Gmail account and Click “Sign up”.
3. Fill out the page titled ‘New Account’ and click “Get Tracking ID”.

Now that we have a Google Analytics account, we can install the tracking ID on our Showit website very easily.

Here’s how:

1. Copy the Tracking ID which starts with “UA-” followed by a series of numbers.
   

   

2. Next, jump over to Showit and log in.
3. Click on your website name in the top left and select “Third Party”
4. Past your Tracking ID where it says “Google Analytics ID” and click Close.
   

   

5. Publish your website.

Pasting your tracking ID here will add the necessary tracking code on each of your web pages including your blog.

How to use Google Analytics

At first glance, Google Analytics can look overwhelming. With all of the options, you probably don’t know where to even start.

In the video below, I walk you thought a few key parts of Google Analytics that will help you get started.

Fortunately, we don’t need to know everything about Google Analytics to start reaping its benefits.

Knowing the terminology used is the key to understanding Google Analytics. Once you understand the meaning behind the words, everything will make sense.

There are 3 categories I find to be the most important.

• Audience: A detailed outline of who is visiting your website
• Acquisition: How visitors are finding your website
• Behavior: What are your visitors looking at on your website

These will be the most insightful categories, and thankfully the most exciting!

With that said, let’s dive in.

Audience

‘Audience’ is what it sounds like. It’s ‘who’ is viewing your website.

By clicking on “Audience -> Overview”, Google Analytics will show us a very useful overview of visitor data.

To better help you understand the terminology:

• Sessions: A session is any time a user is actively engaged with your website. One user can have multiple sessions by coming back to your site. This is great for ranking high in Google.
• Users: Users who have initiated at least one session during the date range.
• New Users: The number of first-time users during the selected date range
• Bounce Rate: The rate at which someone leaves your website without interacting.

By scrolling down, you’ll see more information regarding your users like

• Demographics (age and gender)
• Mobile type (iPhone, Android, tablet)
• System type (PC, Mac, Chrome, Safari, IE)

On the left-hand sidebar, you will see more subcategories under Audience that allow you to go even deeper into Demographics, Interests, Geo (location), Behavior, Technology, and more.

I won’t go into these as I find the overview page works 99% of the time for me.

Example:

If you see a lot of visitors are viewing your site on their phones, you know to make sure that every page on your site works and looks good on a mobile device.

This is why all Moreno Collective website templates are perfectly responsive to mobile devices.

Acquisition

Acquisition -> Overview

The Acquisition category allows you to see how visitors are finding your website.

There are multiple different channels and subchannels and all of them are really helpful in understanding where to focus your attention while marketing and where you should improve.

Top Channels:

• Direct – Someone typing in your website URL directly into their browser
• Organic Search – Someone finding you on a search engine
• Referral – Someone you found your site from a link on someone else’s site (backlink)
• Paid Search – Google Ads
• Social – Instagram, Facebook, or any other social media platform

Example:

A goal of many wedding professionals is to get featured on industry blogs like Style Me Pretty, Magnolia Rouge, and Wedding Sparrow to name a few.

Let’s say you have been featured on all 3 but the post from Style Me Pretty brings you the most traffic.

This tells you that your work speaks to the brides/users visiting Style Me Pretty the most. It would be worth knowing this when submitting shoots to be featured as it should be number one on your list!

Behavior

Behavior -> Overview

This may be the most important one.

Understanding which pages your visitors are landing on, where they are going from there (or not), and how long they are staying on any specific page can tell you a lot.

From there, you’ll know which pages are performing best, which ones you need to update or delete, and what type of content you should create more of.

Example:

Let’s say you create a blog post about your favorite venue. You highlight the venue benefits, lighting, architecture, and why you’d recommend this venue to any bride getting married.

Now let’s say this post has the most page views out of all of your posts and has the greatest organic search acquisition.

What does this say? It says that it would be worth your time to write more posts highlighting venues, caterers, florist, and other industry professionals you’ve worked with!

You’ll see your pageview skyrocket and of course, the inquiries will follow.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is simple to install on any Showit website and easy to learn.

Every creative should take advantage of this free tool to understand their visitors and create a better user experience online.

Start out by scheduling out 1 hour a week to better understand your visitors and their behavior, and watch your online engagement grow.

The post Why You Need to Install Google Analytics on Your Showit Website Today appeared first on Tonic Site Shop.

Now that the boring stuff is over, let’s talk about why they important, specifically slugs.

Why are slugs important for SEO?

Slugs play a key role in your website’s SEO. They should help Google and humans understand what the page is going to be about. Just like SEO titles and meta descriptions, slugs can boost your page’s SEO by containing relevant keywords and keyphrases.

Can you tell me what this link will be about?

domain.com/?p=123

How about this one?

domain.com/arizona-wedding-photography-pricing

Slugs not only aid in helping Google understand what the page is about, but it also helps potential visitors know too. Google will also use the words in your slug as keywords in search results.

Now that we know that slugs can help boost your overall SEO, let’s go over 5 simple ways to create SEO friendly slugs.

Use Keywords

Keyword usage in a URL will act as a ranking factor. Google uses the words in your URL to make it more clear about what your link contains.

Adding keywords to your slugs is a great way to increase the keyword relevancy, however, you do not want to keyword stuff your slugs, it will only make your site look spammy. This leads us to our next topic.

Keep it simple

When creating your slugs, it’s important to keep them really simple. Leave out any words that do not bring value to your slug, like client names and stop words.

Example:

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

Vs

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

Avoid keywordless subfolders in your domain

It’s generally recommended that you don’t use subfolders for your blog post URLs if they are not absolutely necessary and/or don’t contain keywords.

Of course, you’ll need them for some pages, like category and tag pages. But when it comes to the actual post’s URL, leave out the subfolders.

Example:

domain.com/2019/10/16/stunning-tuscany-italy-summer-wedding/

Vs

domain.com/stunning-tuscany-italy-summer-wedding/

Use hyphens to separate words

Most of you know to do this, but it’s worth adding to the list as its a must. Hyphens make your slug readable and understandable to both Google and humans.

domain.com/aboutme

Vs

domain.com/about-me

Don’t let WordPress auto-choose your slug (permalink)

When you first create a blog post, WordPress will use the initial post title as the post slug (permalink). Often times this is not good, because your title may contain stop words, client names, and other filler words.

You should update your slug manually using keywords and keeping it simple.

How to find your slugs (permalinks) in Showit and WordPress

Showit

1. On the left-hand side of Showit, double click on the name of the page you want to update the slug for
2. By changing the name of the page, you will update the page slug

Adding a space will automatically add a hyphen.

WordPress

1. When editing a post or a page, click on the “Permalink” tab on the right-hand side of the editor.

Final thoughts

• When creating slugs for your blog posts and website pages, remember to keep them simple, readable, and understandable. It’s a must when it comes to growing your overall SEO.
• Use your primary keywords, but do not keyword-stuff your slugs.
• If updating the slug of an already published page, remember to create a 301 redirect.

Putting thought into your slugs will definitely help your overall SEO and help build a reputation with Google.

The post Slugs & Permalinks: 5 Simple Ways to Create SEO Friendly URLs appeared first on Tonic Site Shop.

In this post, I will be showing you what SEO titles and meta descriptions are, how to format them, and how to add them to your Showit website and WordPress posts.

If applying good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to your website can bring you in even one client that otherwise would not have found you, isn’t it worth it?

For most wedding professions (photographers, florists, designers, planners, and venue owners) this means thousands of dollars. And often, those clients will recommend you to their friends and so on.

SEO for wedding photographers is really important no matter where you are at in your business. And if done well, it should bring you in more than one extra client per year!

A large following on Instagram is great, but when the Instagram algorithm changes or your account gets hacked and you lose everything you’d built on that platform, you’ll want to know that you can still book weddings another way.

If you’re just starting out with SEO, this is a great place to start. Updating your SEO titles and meta descriptions for each of your Showit and WordPress website’s pages is really easy, and best of all, it really helps your SEO.

What are SEO Titles?

SEO titles are not actually visible titles on your website or blog. These are title tags that are inside the code of your website. But don’t worry, you don’t have to edit the code to add them to your Showit or WordPress website.

Both Showit and WordPress make it really easy to update the SEO title and meta description.

SEO titles are the titles that show up in search engine results pages like Google. They are important to the search engine and the person using the search engine.

Ideal SEO title format

When creating your SEO titles it’s best to stick to the same format for each page. Using keywords or keyphrases inside your titles will tell Google and the user what the page is about.

Keyword 1 (Primary) – Keyword 2 (Secondary and optional) – Brand Name

The first part of any SEO title should be your primary keywords/keyphrases. Google puts the most SEO weight on the beginning of the title.

Adding your Company name at the end of every SEO title is the best way to build a reputation with Google. It is highly recommended.

Your Keywords and Keyphrases should be what you think your clients are searching on google to find serves you offer. Google is smart and doesn’t rely on the exact term, but will match with pages using similar phrases.

Using venue and city names is a great way to get found by someone looking for services in a specific location. Using terms like “Gorgeous wedding photography at {venue location}” lets google and the user know that the post or page is about wedding photos shot at a specific venue.

The example below shows what a bride looking to get married at a venue in the Algarve, Portugal called “Os Agostos” would typically search for inspiration.

Using Client’s names in your SEO titles is not a great idea. Most people will not search for “Jack + Jill” expecting to find wedding photography. It takes up space where you could be utilizing relevant keywords.

Remember, your SEO title is not your blog post title, so feel free to add the names of clients in your post title. Just make sure to update the SEO title to something more search effective!

Example blog post SEO title:

1. Gorgeous Sunset Wedding Photos | Castello Di Potentino | Brand Name
2. Stunning White and Gold Wedding | Bay Harbor, Michigan | Brand Name

The first example uses a scenic description, the words “wedding photos”, and targets a specific location (and venue).

The second example uses a color pallet and targets a specific location.

Example Page SEO title:

1. About page: Meet {Your Name} | Houston Wedding Photography | Brand Name
2. Info page: Wedding Photography Info for Brides in Houston | Brand Name

The first part of any SEO title should be your primary keywords/keyphrases.

What are your brides searching for online? Write content for these keywords and use them in your SEO titles!

Where do SEO titles show up?

• Search engine results pages (Google)
• Web browser tabs
• Social media posts
• Messaging apps like iMessage, Facebook Messanger, and WhatsApp.

Keep in mind while creating SEO titles

• Don’t “Keyword-stuff” it (let it be organic)
• Make it sound interesting
• Keep it short (50-70 characters)
• Make sure every page is unique (Do not use the SEO title twice)
• Add your Brand name!

Meta Descriptions

Meta Descriptions are the short, usually light grey, page descriptions that come after your SEO title in any search engine result.

The purpose of a meta description is to add more value and, well more description, to the results listed. It’s a brief summary of the page.

On every page, you’ll want to use these descriptions to advertise the purpose of the page even more. They are very important as they allow you to organically add more keywords to the search listing and they are sometimes the deciding factor whether someone clicks on your listing in Google!

One thing to keep in mind is that Google will bold any text in the meta description if it matches the keywords in the actual search. This is why it’s important to continue to think about what your clients are searching for when writing your meta descriptions.

Where do meta descriptions show up?

• Search engine results pages (Google)
• Social media posts
• Often times in messaging apps

Keep in mind while creating meta descriptions

• Use keywords appropriately and organically
• You’re advertising your business, be creative and catchy
• Don’t use the same description on two different pages
• Only use alphanumeric characters

Adding SEO titles and meta descriptions in Showit

1. In Showit, select the page that you’d like to edit on the left-hand side.
2. Select the “PAGE” tab in the top left corner of Showit.
3. Make sure that no canvas is selected. To make sure, click on the page’s title in the top left (under the “PAGE” tab)
4. Select the “SEO SETTINGS” tab on the right-hand side of Showit
5. Add your SEO Title (Page Title) and Meta Description
6. Add a Share Image as well. This will be the image that shows when you or someone else post this page to social media.

You don’t have to add any Meta Keywords as google does not use keyword tags to rank a webpage anymore.

Adding SEO titles and meta descriptions in WordPress

Before you add your SEO titles and meta descriptions to your WordPress posts, you’ll want to make sure you have installed an SEO plugin. The most popular plugin is called Yoast SEO and it comes pre-installed on all tier-2 Showit accounts.

1. Login to your WordPress dashboard
2. Open the post editor of the post you’d like to start editing
3. Scroll to the very bottom of the post and look for “Yoast SEO”
4. Click “Edit Snippet” under the Snippet Preview
5. Add your SEO title and meta description

Adding keywords will help the plugin know if your content aligns well with the SEO meta, but will not affect your ranking.

Final Thoughts

It’s important to take your Showit and WordPress website SEO titles and meta descriptions seriously. You’re advertising your webpage in a long list of other related webpages, so be unique and take your time creating the best possible version for each individual page.

The post SEO Titles & Meta Descriptions appeared first on Tonic Site Shop.

Whether your wedding photography business only operates within a small geographic area or serves clients all over the world, search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical component for business sustainability.

In this post, I’m going to show you:

• What is local SEO?
• The difference between local SEO and traditional SEO
• The importance of local SEO for wedding professionals
• What you can do to improve your local SEO rankings
• How to set up Google My Business
• Why reviews are so good for SEO
• Create a direct link to your Google My Business reviews for clients

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is highly effective for all wedding photographers and wedding industry professionals that want to book clients in specific locations.

Traditional, or organic SEO is largely focused on optimizing content in order for the business’s website to catch general Internet traffic. “In traditional organic SEO, search engines are looking for relevant and trusted content.” In contrast, “for local SEO, search engines are seeking out relevant and trusted locations.”

Organic SEO is great for photographers and other wedding professionals wanting to get destination weddings around the world. whereas, local SEO needs to be implemented when shooting weddings in your hometown.

What’s the difference between building local SEO and traditional SEO?

One difference is in the way your business builds credibility in the eyes of Google.

As far as traditional SEO is concerned, backlinks are the currency of the Internet. Each backlink to a website can be compared to a “vote” for its credibility and authority. In general, the more backlinks to a site, the higher the Google algorithm will rank it in its search results.

However, local SEO places more emphasis on citations.

Citations are simply references to your business’s name, address, and phone number. These citations are commonly found on sites like Google, Yelp, and Yahoo!.

While backlinks are still helpful to boost your company’s reputation, citations increase the geographical relevance of your business. This is important because approximately 65% of customers are just looking for the most relevant information.

Citation management, or the process of ensuring that your business location appears in a local search on Google, is one aspect of local SEO. Other aspects include online ratings and reviews, and marketing or engagement initiatives on locally-driven social media.

The Importance of Local SEO for wedding professionals

Why is local SEO so important for wedding photographers?

For wedding photography and other wedding industry businesses that only operate within a relatively small geographic area, capturing local Internet traffic is a crucial factor in attracting customers.

When someone is searching Google for a ‘wedding photographer’, he or she is actively looking for this type of vendor for their wedding and is thus more likely to book in the near future. If your business is near the top of the Google listing, then it can benefit from this.

Exactly how large is the pool of customers to which we are referring? According to Main Street ROI, some 86% of customers use the Internet to find local businesses, and 72% say that using Google is their first choice to investigate a local merchant or business in which they’re interested.

Clearly, a high local SEO ranking is essential for any wedding photographer to stay competitive.

What Can I Do to Improve My Local SEO Rankings?

There are several ways to improve your local SEO rankings. However, this article will focus on 2 methods:

• Google My Business
• Reviews

Google My Business

A great way to boost your local SEO is to create a Google My Business listing.

Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool from Google that allows business owners to have more control over their online presence. A listing with Google My Business does not replace your website but rather complements it by providing your business with a public identity linked to Google.

This is great because Google will put your business in the “business listings” section at the top of a google search, and then you have the possibility to be placed in the organic search section.

How can I set up a listing on Google My Business?

Here are 6 simple steps you can take:

1. Search for your business on Google. If your business has been around for a few years, it may already have a Google My Business listing, and you just need to claim it. Otherwise, you will need to enter your business information in the Google My Business page for adding/claiming listings.
2. Navigate to the Google My Business page for adding or claiming listings by signing in with your Google account.
3. When inputting your business’ contact information, ensure that everything is grammatically correct and accurate. 
4. Choose the most relevant category for your business from the available options.
5. Add service area details to help localize search results.
6. After you’ve submitted your listing request, verify your listing (by mail, if possible).

As a wedding photographer, it is vital that you implement local SEO best practices to capture local traffic and boost customer conversion rates. Local SEO can help your wedding photography business to stand out, drive business growth, and increase revenue.

Reviews

Why are positive online reviews so important for local SEO? One reason is how much weight the Google algorithm for local SEO places on customer reviews. It is estimated that online reviews make up approximately 10% of how Google decides to rank search results. This makes sense because customer reviews are often an indicator of a company’s overall reputation, authority, and level of credibility.

What can you do in order to get more positive reviews? You will likely need to establish a review acquisition strategy tailored to your business’ circumstances. This strategy mainly consist of asking satisfied customers for a Google review.

Create a direct link for clients to review you on Google My Business

If you want reviews you have to make the review process easy.

Asking for a review from your clients does not have to be a complicated process, nor should it be a complicated process for them to review you.

You can create a link that directs your brides/grooms to your Google My Business review page without having to search for you and find the reviews section.

Creating a review link will save your customers time, look professional, and will help you collect more reviews.

Your link will look something like this: https://morenocollective.com/review

For this to work, you will need a Google My Business account and a mobile phone with the Chrome browser app.

Here is an easy to follow video on how to create a direct link to review a Google My Business account. For step by step instructions, please read below.

1. On your mobile phone, open a new incognito window using the chrome browser
2. Search your businesses name so that the Google My Business section with your business’ info shows up
3. Click on the “Reviews” tab and click the 5th star under “Rate and Review on Google”
4. A blue page will show that says “Sign in with your Google Account to write a review” – don’t sign in
5. Copy the entire link on your iPhone and save the link somewhere you can also access it on your computer – Email, Notes, or message yourself
6. Now login to your WordPress dashboard and install the Redirection plugin
7. Once activated, navigate to tools -> Redirection
8. Create a new redirection
   • Source URL -> /review
   • Target URL -> Paste the link you copied from your iPhone
9. Save your redirect and test your link!

The post The Importance of Local SEO appeared first on Tonic Site Shop.