Have you recently googled something? Maybe a recipe or to find the most recent celeb gossip? Most likely you have googled something about your business in the last week. Wait! Do you think someone has googled looking for YOUR business in the last week?? No doubt! The better question is, in all their search engine hustle, did they actually find you? If they haven't yet, they will after you put this SEO gold into action! With these five tips for optimizing your Showit website for search engines, you will have so many potential clients, you will wonder why you didn't hop on the SEO wagon sooner!

So, what does it take for people to find your website? Well, in many cases, you might have traffic that comes from your social media platforms or your email list. But one traffic source with high potential for sending quality commerce to your website is search engines—especially Google! Did you know Google facilitates billions of searches each day?

There is no Google Lottery you have to win to be placed at the top of the search engine's page. And it's no coincidence that certain websites get the best exposure via search engines! Those winning websites have worked hard on their online home's SEO. The small business owner behind that website strategically designed it to get a search engine’s attention. And guess what? You have a secret weapon – You have a Showit website! Now SEO is easy to master because your Showit site makes it simple to optimize. 

Here are the five steps you need

So let's dive into the five steps you need to take if you’re going to optimize your new Showit website for search engines.

No. 1 : Verify your Showit site for search engines with Google Search Console.

The first step you want to take is to do what’s known as verifying your site with Google Search Console. Essentially this means that you prove to Google that you own your website. This is important because you won’t be able to take such steps as viewing search analytics or submitting your sitemap (more on both of those steps in a little bit) unless you have demonstrated ownership of your virtual property to Google.

Showit makes this step easy for you by providing step-by-step instructions for several different domain providers. When you have a domain registered with hosts like GoDaddy and eNom, as well as a few others, you have the ability to register directly from the Search Console. If you don’t have that option through your host, you can add a DNS TXT record or a CNAME record, which will provide instructions.

Google actually provides a lot of data about how it “sees” your website. In the Google Search Console, you’ll find data around search performance, what pages have errors, and whether or not pages are mobile optimized. 

No. 2: Submit your sitemap to Google.

A sitemap is pretty much exactly what it sounds like—a map of your website. This provides a list of all the pages you have on your site It also shows how all of those pages are structured and linked together.

This sitemap is what gives Google the ability to access all the different parts of your site. For example, if you have a frequently updated blog, the sitemap uses to index all of those individual pages. A search would also use a sitemap if you have a recently transferred blog with archived posts from another domain.

The beauty of a Showit-designed website is that you get a sitemap of your pages automatically generated as soon as you go live with your site. You’re easily able to access your sitemap at yourdomain.com/siteinfo.xml and submit it to the Google Search Console and other search engines so they can access your site.

Have a WordPress blog with your Showit website? You’ll need to submit a second sitemap. Check out this article for more information on submitting sitemaps for your Showit website.

No. 3: Set up your Google Analytics to track your web traffic.

How do you know whether your website is receiving traffic, and what pages are receiving the most traffic? The easiest way is to track via Google Analytics, which gives you an idea of things like sales, lead generation, how many visitors viewed a specific page, how long they stayed on that page, who downloaded certain files, and on and on. This is such a valuable tool because it helps you understand your customers—you see what works and what doesn’t work.

While setting up Google Analytics doesn’t directly optimize your website for search engines, it helps you evaluate how things like your marketing, content, and products are doing so you can continue with what works and reevaluate what doesn’t. So if you are creating blog posts or landing pages that just aren’t attracting visitors (or aren’t holding their attention very long, or convincing them to make a purchase, etc.), you know you need to make some changes.

Showit makes it super easy to get started with Google Analytics! Just create an account, grab your tracking code, and paste it into the appropriate box in your Site Settings. For more detailed directions, check out this article on setting up Google Analytics on your Showit website. See? It's not as hard as you think to optimize your Showit site for search engines!

No. 4: Utilize all of Showit’s SEO Tools.

Showit has built-in SEO tools designed to help you optimize your website for search engines.

Optimize your page’s SEO Title and SEO Description:

When you create a page with Showit, there are straightforward fill-in-the-blank places where you can add an SEO title and description (also known as a meta-description). A page’s title and meta-description should contain the keywords your page is trying to target. Most importantly, this provides context about your page for website visitors, but it also indicates to search engines what your page is about.

Additionally, those titles and descriptions will be what show up on the Google search results page, so it’s important they clearly convey what content will be found on your site. Otherwise, users might not be as inclined to click on them. (Note: Google and other search engines might opt to show different text than what you specify as the meta-description).

Optimize the images on your website:

Similarly, whenever you load an image, you’re able to give the image an SEO title and description.

Adding an SEO description is the more important task, as it provides what’s known as alt-text. Alt-text not only provides context of what the image is about for those who are visually impaired, but it also helps search engines understand the image.

Beyond adding an SEO title, you’ll also want to make sure you optimize the image file size. Images that are too large can slow down the load speed of a page, making it more likely for a visitor to leave before the page is loaded. 

No. 5: Create high-quality content around targeted searches.

It doesn’t matter how much you’ve “optimized” your website if you haven’t created high-quality content that people are searching for. Optimizing your content should start with keyword research, which can be done with tools like SEMrush and Moz Keyword Explorer.

Keyword research can help you determine how many people are searching for a given keyword or phrase, related keywords, and who is currently ranking for those searches. All of this information can be helpful as you determine what kind of content to create.

What’s one of the best ways to create lots of high-quality content? With a blog! Showit makes blogging easy through WordPress, often considered the most powerful blogging platform available. Adding a WordPress blog to your site will let you create a greater amount of content related to your industry and your area of expertise, thus giving you more opportunities for search engines to find you.

You can optimize your Showit website for search engines

All it takes is a little bit of working with the Showit platform to really appreciate its power when it comes to creating stand-out websites with little to no frustration along the way. But no matter how impressive your finished website ends up being, it won’t reach its full potential unless the right people (i.e. your customers) can find it.

Remember, having a website optimized for search engines is a tricky game because it’s not perfectly clear how the algorithms of these search engines work. But by taking advantage of the resources Showit provides to create a website that’s easy to index and find, you’ll increase your chances of attracting (and, more importantly, converting) new customers from the moment you go live. For more specific information around optimizing your website for search engines, be sure to check out our help documentation.

If you are feeling pumped to optimize your Showit site, but realize you don't have one yet – let's fix that! Start your free 14 day trial TODAY!

Oh, 2016!

How you continued to kick us in the teeth over and over again with the endless supply of bad news and celebrity deaths. This year we lost Prince, a Princess, and a marriage that we all thought would truly be a til death do us part situation – #brangelinaforever.

But even with all the bad news happening in Hollywood, we here at Showit are determined to hit the ground running in 2017! We want to share a few of our personal New Year's Resolutions to help you guys get started with yours. We also wanted to take this opportunity to introduce many new faces around the office that you will be seeing this year.

Todd Watson – All I do is win win win, no matter what what what. I'm going to try hard to let others win this year –maybe not that hard.

Elisa Watson – Embody each of the 16 Meyers Briggs personality types and live out one personality for each month of 2017

Aaron Griffy – My New Year's Resolution in 1998 was 1024×768. This year I'm aiming for at least 1080p. Maybe 4k… haven't decided yet.

Jason Lackey – Skittles.

Cassandra Campbell – Finally settle my internal debate on who is a better hero: Wonder Woman or Jynn Orso or Rachel Green.

Tammy Watson – Swapping kale for kelp. Not for nutritional purposes but for the fact that I LOVE The Little Mermaid. Also try brushing your hair with a fork. Changes your life.

Christian Peterson – Starting a year without Prince for the first time in my life, my resolution is to find a new reason to be proud to be from Minnesota.

JT Pals – Pet More Dogs. THEY'RE SO FLUFFY!

John Okken – Get SWOL and buy a watch.

Field Denny – Really Embrace the TX lifestyle and sign up for that 100% City Slickers reenactment of a two-week cattle drive from New Mexico to Colorado. #danielsternismyspiritanimal

Nate Sees – Get Disorganized. I know where I put everything. For once I would like to have to look for my keys or phone in a panic before leaving the house.

Jed Smith – Consider giving sour cream a try again. Adding that 5th layer back into the beefy 5-layer burrito may be what I have been missing this past year.

Jeff Wilmes – Try for a double man bun hair-do. Had a single in 2016. Two can only make next year better. #InHerHonor #LeiaOrganic

Jon Watson – Watch the movie Rookie of the Year more times in 2017 than in 2016. 46 is the number to beat.

Jihae Watson – Get a cookbook and actually make some of the recipes. Been in a real rice, rice, rice, repeat rut this year.

Ben Junk – Finally move forward with litigation against Black Eyed Peas and their song, My Humps.

Kylen Downs – Life's not about the destination, but the journey. For life is our greatest adventure, so I'm off to search for Sampson's hair brush.

Cassie Jones – Stop saying Y'all. Just kidding y'all. That is never going to happen.

Eddie Smith – Go deep undercover to find out when and where School of Rock 2 is being filmed, and finally hold Jack Black's hand.

Quita Remick – Figure out what is the deal with all this shrimp talk around the office.

Thanks for an awesome year friends. 2017 is going to be another big year for us at Showit and we hope to see you along for the ride!

Happy New Year!

Wow 2015!

That was fast! Its seems like only last year we were busy listening to Happy, by Pharrell, and freaking out over this Budweiser Super Bowl Commercial. But no, that was 2014. 2015 brought us so many more songs, many more viral videos and so many good memories. The staff at Showit took some time to write down a few of their favorites! Take a look!

Todd Watson –

“Saw Jason Lackey walk into a spider web. He flipped out and started flailing his arms like crazy. Haha it was hilarious.”

JT Pals –

“One day I pet 8 dogs in a single day.”

Field Denny –

“That one burrito!”

Cassandra Campbell –

“Being carried away by a Unicorn. It was scary at first but if it didn't happen I never would have met my husband, who is also a Unicorn.”

Nate Sees –

“Dropped a Hot Pocket and caught it before it hit the ground!”

Tammy Watson –

“A guy on the internet wrote your instead of you're. I corrected him. It was awesome!”

Jason Lackey –

“My participation trophy for the local Turkey Trot 5k. I didn't realize you were literally trotting with turkeys. I'm Highly allergic and didn't finish.”

Elizabeth Langford –

“I saw Robert Redford! He was at the mall. I whispered to my husband, ‘Look! It's Robert Redford!' He told me it was just a coat rack with a fedora on it, but he was wrong, I know what I saw.”

Aaron Griffy –

“I flipped a quarter into the air at Starbucks and it landed RIGHT ON TOP of a bald dude's head! I WAS DYING. He got up to use the bathroom and when he came back IT WAS STILL THERE! I'll never forget it.”

John Okken –

“Adele. Her new album is amazing. Set Fire to the Rain is SOO good!”

It's possible that these memories were slightly changed once they were submitted to me. Or maybe these are my favorite memories from 2015. I don't know.

I do know that 2015 was a great year for us here at SHOWIT and we could not have done it without all of you. Thank you so much for taking this journey with us. We have a big year ahead of us and we plan to hit the 2016 ground running. Hope to see all of you at WPPI in March!

Happy New Year

–Christian