This post is about using a Showit SEO checklist to improve your rankings.
If you want to improve your website performance and reach your goal of attracting more organic clients that flock to your website from Google, then you can follow this Showit SEO checklist to help you improve your rankings.
Over time, of course.
Keyword Research and Optimization
You should start by brainstorming the main keywords for your website. Write a list of keywords relevant to your brand. Let’s use a Realtor in Orange County as an example.
Importance of Keyword Research for Targeting Relevant Audiences.
Type your main keywords on Google search(Realtor, Real Estate in Orange County), or you can get even more specific and write Newport Beach Realtors.
Then, open Excel, or I like to use Google Spreadsheets. Start adding all the keywords you find, and you can categorize and title the spreadsheet by doing the following.
- Keywords
- Supporting keywords
- Traffic Volume
- Meta Data
- Image names
- Blog post idea
- The best time to post
Target keywords to Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, Headings, and Content.
Next, you’ll want to use the keywords all over your website but in a clever way. Use the main keywords to fill out your page title and metadata, add relevant keywords to your headings, and create content.
You also want to name your images before you add them to your website. You never want to upload images named “IMG_089.JPG,” but instead, you want to name them like this.
Say you have a profile image of yourself as a realtor. I would name it the image “Sam Smith—Best Orange County Realtor.jpg.”
This way, you are using the main keyword, but you are also not keyword stunning, so you add a correct description for what is actually in the image.
You’ll want to do this for your alt texts as well. For ATL texts, use descriptive sentences so screenreaders can understand the message.
High-Quality Keyword Rich Content
Here are my best tips for creating high-quality content that hopefully ends the user’s search.
Start with the main keyword and create a title people want to click on.
Here are some extra tips for titles:
- Use numbers; for some reason, odd numbers work best.
- Don’t go over 60 characters; you can check your character count on MOZ.
- Use your primary keyword at the beginning of the title.
When you write content, always write for the user, not search engines. The Google Helpful content update explicitly mentions this and the importance of writing content for the user—the reader.
AI for Ideation
If you do use AI, use it for ideation, outlines, and titles. This is how I use AI.
I always write all the actual content myself.
Otherwise, my blog posts wouldn’t sound like me. Being a native Finn with English as my third language, no AI content machine can replicate how I write and speak, which brings me to my next tip in this Showit SEO checklist.
Write As You Speak
Always write naturally and normally, like you are talking to your friends and helping them with your content.
And surprisingly, this statistic blew my mind.
More than half of Americans between 16 and 74 (54%) read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. (source APM Research Lab)
So, if most people read at middle school grade levels, we should consider this when writing SEO content online to attract clients and customers.
You don’t need to write like you had to in high school—the extended essays and proper language. Forget all that and write like you would text or email a good friend.
But you do need to remember to write helpful and valuable content. I recently read Backlinko’s article about information gain. What I got out of it was that you could write better content.
By showing and not telling…
This is not easy, but we can at least try. I’m trying to do this more in my blog posts.
So, show people what to do and how to do it instead of just talking about it.
Here is an example of showing versus telling:
- ” The plane was crowded.”
- ” When I walked into the airplane, I saw how many people were in there; I couldn’t even fit my bag above the seats because they were all full.”
Then, whenever you can, add relevant keywords to your blog post, some relevant keywords would be anything related to the main keyword.
For example, if our main keyword is Orange County Realtor, some relevant supporting keywords could be home, house, renovation, open houses, square feet, etc.
If you follow these steps, you can craft more high-quality content that readers will want to read more of.
On-Page SEO
Okay, no, we can get to one of my favorite topics. On page SEO.
Your Showit SEO checklist for on-page SEO is as follows:
- Page title
- Keywords
- Meta descriptions
- Header tags( h1, h2, h3)
- Image optimization
- Internal links
- URL structure
How to Optimize Elements for Better Search Engine Visibility.
Page title
Name your page title accordingly, and use your h1 tag for the title. Use no more than 60 characters and add keywords, but make sure they sound natural and relevant t the page content.
Keywords
Use the keywords you found at the beginning of this blog post, but use them naturally, and try not to use keyword stuff.
You can use long-tail keywords for lower competition and more targeted searches. If you forget something while improving your SEO settings on Showit, you can refer to this Showit SEO checklist.
Meta descriptions
Write meta descriptions that utilize the main keywords and explain what’s on the page. Include calls to action at the end of your meta descriptions.
Header tags( h1, h2, h3)
Use the header tags property in a proper order. There should be one h1 for each page, most headings will be h2, and h3 will be subheadings for h2. You want to structure your content so that it’s easy for the reader to understand the headings, the content, or the subheadings.
Image optimization
Before you upload your images onto Showit, you can name them accordingly and use an image processor to help downsize the large image files.
And let’s not forget to add alt tags to each image and write meta descriptions.
Internal links
You can internally link blog posts to each other and link relevant pages. You can use Yoast SEO to check all your on-page SEO settings.
URL structure
For your URL structure, make sure to use short URLs. The shorter, the better.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO can be a bit stressful for people who are not into SEO and don’t want to study it.
I know this from my clients, especially the creative ones. They don’t want to get too into the technical parts of their websites, which I understand, and that’s why I’m here to help.
Now, let’s look at the basics of technical SEO for your Showit website.
The Role of Website Speed and Performance in SEO
Site speed is super important. I bet you already know this. You go onto a website, and it’s loading so slowly that you can see what’s on the page. I know you know what I’m talking about.
That’s why site speed is super important. plus, we have no pataince. We want everything now.
the fatster the baetter.
You can improve your site speed on Showit in the following ways.
- Optimize your images before uploading them onto Showit. You can do this by using the image comparison tools.
- Make sure your background videos aren’t too large files, either.
Importance of Responsive Design.
Having a mobile-optimized site is one of the most important ranking factors for your Showit SEO. So make sure you optimize all your Showit pages to look good on mobile.
Optimize Sitemaps and robots.txt files
You can create a sitemap by using Yoast SEO. Then, you can upload that sitemap into your Google Search Console.
If you are unsure what robots.txt files are, they simply tell search engines what files to show and what files not to show.
You can read more about robots.txt files here.
Showit-Specific SEO Considerations
You must consider a few considerations regarding Showit SEO, especially if you buy Showit templates.
Challenges and Opportunities for Showit SEO
If you buy a template, make sure the page structure is good, and the code is clean. Also, you don’t want extra code in the custom code sections that aren’t needed, so use code injections sparingly.
Optimizing Showit Templates and Designs
One of the best practices for Showit templates is to ensure they are user-friendly. If they have complicated navigation or excessive animations, this can affect your overall SEO and user experience.
For good SEO, you want to ensure your user has the best experience on your website.
You can improve your UX by asking the following questions:
- Is the navigation easy?
- Can the user find what they’re looking for quickly?
- Is the user journey streamlined?
- Are fonts legible?
- Do colors have enough contrast?
Off-Page SEO
Now that we have covered on-page SEO, technical SEO, and other best practices, let’s look at off-page SEO.
The Importance of Building High-Quality Backlinks
Having high-quality backs is one of the ranking factors on Google. So it’s super important that you take the time to start generating them.
There are a few ways you can start building high-quality links.
- Guest post outreach
- Organic backlinking from good quality content you create
Guest post outreach
You can get high-quality backlinks by guest posting on high DR(domain rating sites). You can do this by creating a spreadsheet of high DR sites you would like to write content for and then emailing them with value-driven emails, and many of them will let you write. Guest post, and then you can add a link to your site.
The more backlinks you get, the higher your domain rating.
Showit SEO Checklist Backlink Benefits
Second, if you create high-quality content, people will find you read your blog post and organically link to your site or blog post because it is of high value.
This way, you can grow your domain rating without cold emailing for guest posts.
Strategies for creating shareable content
Suppose you think back to the section where I linked the articles on Google’s helpful content update.
In that case, you will read that, as I’ve mentioned in other blog posts, about Google organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.
If you try to create content based on that statement and follow the helpful guidelines, and if you study content that gets many views, I love to read the Backlinko blog. He gets hundreds of thousands of monthly readers, and his content is super helpful and beautifully organized.
Most importantly, he gets tons of organic backlinks from creating sharable content.
To create shareable content, consider writing:
- Checklists
- Data-driven posts
- Ultimate guides
If you create valuable and sharable content, you can naturally gain more backlinks and traffic to your site.
For the realtor, you could create a housing market blog post with visuals and infographics.
Showit SEO Checklist Bonus Tip!
You can use social media to improve your SEO efforts.
I’m not a fan of social media, but utilizing Pinterest, YouTube, and maybe Facebook groups is a great way to drive more traffic to your Showit website.