There’s no denying Showit is an incredible platform for aesthetics, ease of use, and limitless design capabilities. But is Showit good for SEO? Or is it lagging behind in SEO capabilities to actually get you found online? Let’s talk about how Showit compares to other platforms when it comes SEO.
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First off, what goes into good Google SEO? Knowing what actually makes for a search engine optimized website is crucial to understanding how Showit compares. Here’s a list of the top things that go into a website that Google wants to show people in search resilts:
User experience (UX) is crucial to great SEO, because Google tracks how long people are sticking around on your website, and whether they’re running into things like broken links or dead-ends. Creating a website that makes for a smooth user experience is crucial to both Google, and to ensuring that your website traffic converts.
Content is king, especially on your website. From page content to blog posts, the amount of “helpful” content you provide is going to be crucial to showing up in search results. One key piece in growing the amount of terms you’re ranking for is to continue to grow your authority with high-quality, well-optimized blog posts.
Closely linked with your content strategy, keyword strategy is an important part of ranking in search results. Carefully chosen keywords will help you rank for terms that people are actually searching for, and that don’t have huge websites already vying for the top spots (making them easier to rank for).
Page speed is an important part of SEO because in today’s fast paced world, no one wants to wait for your site to load, and Google knows that. Ensuring that our sites are loading quickly can help Google bring our site higher to the top of results.
Your images are an important part of your SEO strategy because images can also rank in search results! Ever notice the “images” tab when googling something? These are top ranking images that Google is showing based on your query. Many people prefer this tab when looking for visual inspiration. I actually sold a website template from someone who told me they found an image of it this way!
The technical aspects of SEO are essentially the “how-to” in creating a website that communicates well with Google. Inside the code you’ll find the essence of how your website communicates with Google’s robots to index your content.
Accessibility is an important part of ensuring that everyone online is able to use your website and consume your content. Google wants to ensure it’s showing content that can be read by screen readers and those with vision impairment, so things like alt text and high contrast text-to-background ratios play in to this.
For many years WordPress has been the gold-standard for SEO capabilities. This is because there’s almost no setting or function you’re not able to edit and access and it has a large range of plug-ins to help SEO. The drawback with WordPress is that unless you plan to completely custom code everything, you’re going to be stuck with very unattractive and website and be spending a lot of time trying to figure out all the settings in the back end.
When Squarespace came on the scene, it provided a very attractive option with it’s block-style, easily editable, visual builder. While it doesn’t offer the same level of customization and advanced SEO as WordPress, you’ll still have the ability to add SEO titles, meta descriptions, and all the other standard settings that are key solid SEO. The largest drawback with Squarespace is it’s limited design functionality, some of which ties into SEO. For instance font styles are connected to text tags. Text tags are what communicates to Google which text on your page is the most important. So if you want to have a certain font style on your page, but tag it differently (say H1 at the top and H2 later on down the page), you won’t be able to do that without some custom coding.
Showit stands out for it’s fully customizable and user-friendly interface that’s completely drag and drop. Originally designed with photographers in mind, the platform gained popularity among creative businesses of all kinds, and is now a favorite among designers. Showit provides an edge of Squarespace in that it utilizes WordPress hosting for your blog, meaning you get all of it’s powerful SEO capabilities along with plugins like Yoast to help ensure your posts are optimized.
A lot less than you might think. While there are definitely some platforms I would not recommend for SEO, the big three (WordPress, Squarespace and Showit) are all going to give you the essential tools you need for SEO. And while WordPress may still have an edge on the rest, an ugly website that’s impossible to edit isn’t going to get you very far, and won’t impress potential clients.
So I’m here to let you know not to overthink this one! Your keyword strategy, knowing how to navigate the SEO settings on your platform, and continually posting high-quality blog content is going to get you so much further than choosing the “best” website platform.
Curious how to navigate your SEO settings inside Showit? I’ve made a video giving you an inside look into how to navigate them:
Here’s a quick checklist to keep in mind when building out a page in Showit:
Add SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions. Providing titles and meta descriptions to each page using the keywords you’re trying to rank for will be key to improving your ranking and communicating what the page content is about to Google.
Add Alt Text to each image, and compress before uploading. Alt text is a key part of accessibility, and will also increase the chances your images show up in search results. Compressing the images before uploading will help with your overall site speed!
Add correct text tags. Tagging your text will help Google correctly categorize the page and is crucial for your SEO. H1 should be used only once, and at the top of the page. H2 Should be for the enxt largest heading, and H3 for subheadings. Use p for paragraphs and button text, Nav for your navigation and footer menus (Think Home, About, Services pages etc.), and Div for decorative text that shouldn’t be indexed.
Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console. This will help Google crawl the page more quickly so it begins getting traction more quickly. Here’s how to access your sitemap.
My Showit SEO services and Brand and Web Design services are built just for you! Whether you’re looking for a brand new website with a solid SEO strategy from day one, or to optimize the one you currently have, I’d love to help you grow your organic traffic. Reach out and let’s chat!
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