Meredith's Trip to Tonga

Meredith's husband 0:00

Do you remember going to Tonga ? Yes , yeah , a few months ago a handful of months ago now you went to Tonga , a place pretty much on the opposite side of the world from where we are . So while you did that , I did a very short episode on my own oh , and I said oh , meredith's away in Tonga swimming with humpback whales . While she's there , I'm planning on doing something special for ShowIt users . While she's there , I'm planning on doing something special for ShowIt users . If you're on ShowIt and you want to offer some of your website information so I can make this thing more valuable , whatever it's going to be , share your Google Search Console data with me . And some people did it Excellent . And so I started going about creating what I was going to call a fundamentals for show it SEO . Fundamentals for show it because there are some very specific things about show it . It's very good for SEO . It's very I understand a lot of people like it . Is it easy to use ? I think it's pretty . I haven't used it in terms of designing a website , but in

Creating SEO Fundamentals Series

Meredith's husband 1:00

terms of SEO , there are some very specific things that you need to do that you don't need to do anywhere else . You don't need to do on WordPress , you don't need to do on Squarespace , you don't need to do these things anywhere else that I'm aware of . So I wanted to do a little demo . Hey , if you're on show it , make sure you do these things . So some people again shared access to their Google search console with me and I started doing it , and as I was doing that , I realized , okay , well , some of these things are also going to be applicable to people using WordPress , and so I created one that shares some of those videos , some of those lessons , and I did one for WordPress . And then I started thinking well , you know what ? Wix , not Wix , no , squarespace , squarespace . Since you have been on Squarespace for a little over a year now , I have learned a lot of things about Squarespace and some mistakes that you might want to avoid . Oh , yes , so I did one for Squarespace too , thank you . So I'm going to talk a little bit in this episode about the fundamental series yes , and with emphasis on the ShowIt and WordPress , yes , and then next week I'm going to do one on Squarespace . Okay , specifically on the things that you want to make sure you get squared away if you're using Squarespace . Get it , ha ha ha , squared away on Squarespace . Okay . So the thing about ShowIt is that it's half on ShowIt servers , which is kind of like Squarespace , in the sense that you have pages on ShowIt , they're not on WordPress , they're not HTML , you can't access them . They are literally on ShowIt .

Meredith's husband 2:37

There's like what we call a WYSIWYG . What you see is what you get . You do not call it a WYSIWYG . You absolutely do call it a WYSIWYG

ShowIt's Unique Platform Structure

Meredith's husband 2:45

. What you see is what you get . You do not call it a WYSIWYG . You absolutely do call it a WYSIWYG . What you see is what you get . Designer , it's a visual builder . Wysiwyg , wysiwyg . Yeah , really , people are using that . Okay , that makes me really happy . Yes , it's a WYSIWYG builder . It's a visual builder like Squarespace , and supposedly people really like it .

Meredith's husband 3:08

I've seen it .

Meredith's husband 3:09

I have not built the website .

Meredith's husband 3:11

What's not to like about WYSIWYG ?

Meredith's husband 3:12

Yeah , well , it looks to me .

Meredith's husband 3:15

I've seen the pages and I've looked at them to see what features are available . It looks to me like Adobe . Oh , it looks like the screens that you often have on your own monitor that are either Adobe Go , not Go Live , adobe Lightroom , thank you . Or Photoshop . You're talking like I talk . Go Live actually was Adobe , but it was years and years and years ago . That's where I came up with it . I never even heard of Go Live . Yeah , of course you didn't . It was like more than two decades ago . I was not even born , yes , so I understand , especially if you're a photographer , why you like it . It looks like home , it looks like an Adobe interface and that you know . Hats off to show it for doing it that way . If that was the intent it , I think it worked well , looks nice , but that's just part of your website .

Meredith's husband 4:03

If you have a show at website , you have your main pages on show it and then you have all your blog pages are going to be actually on WordPress . Oh , really , so you're split between these two different platforms and so what happens is you need two different site maps . Okay , that's already so overwhelming . Yeah , it's a little weird . It creates a very unique situation for SEO , because nothing else does that . What's the benefit of that ? There is no benefit . That is a major downside , unless you do some things to make sure to sort of remedy it . That was the reason for the fundamentals course in Show . It is how do you get around this ? Because if you don't , you are effed . Yeah , like there is some potential

The Two Sitemap Problem

Meredith's husband 4:44

really big downsides to that and it doesn't tell you on Show it , on the Show it blog , at least last time I checked , watch out for this yeah how you can get around it . It just says something like make sure you do good SEO or like something like that . So I did that .

Meredith's husband 5:00

And then there are some other issues , like , if you're you know , first , how do you create two different sitemaps ? Because that's very I didn't know . There's literally no other situation where you're going to want to have two different sitemaps for the same domain . How do you ? Yeah , okay , yeah , so that's what I did . That's what I found out thanks to the people who wrote in and said here's my information . I figured that out .

Meredith's husband 5:20

After that , there's like well , what do you do with the WordPress section so that you don't screw up the show in your sitemap ? So I a show it's in your site map , so what do you ? So I did some initial settings . What are you going to do with yoast , the yoast seo plugin for wordpress ? Because show it recommends the yoast seo plugin , although they don't tell you what to do with it . Oh , that's and out of the box . A lot of the default settings in yoast are not going to be good for seo , especially if you're on show it . So I started doing , I extended the series a little bit and then then I realized , like I said , oh , hey , this would also be really good for people who are just running a WordPress site .

Meredith's husband 5:54

So I did that , and in doing that , inside the Yoast settings , first you need to connect your Google tools to your website , your Google Analytics , your Google . Did you just keep thinking like , oh , colin Yoast , the guy on SNL ? I did not . No , every time I see Colin Yoast , I think , oh , just like the SEO plugin . So there are some settings on Yoast that you want to do . You're going to need to connect it to your Google tools , and for that there's several different ways you can do it . I go through those . One of the ways I recommend is using something called the SiteKit

Yoast SEO and Google Tools

Meredith's husband 6:28

plugin from Google . You can do it manually . You did a lot . Yeah , there's a lot here , and that's why it took several months , I would think so .

Meredith's husband 6:36

I thought it was going to be like a five-minute video . It's like 20 lessons . Wow , they're all short . They're all short . Yeah , it's okay , but they're potent . But you need to do them all . Yeah , I prefer that .

Meredith's husband 6:48

So then , how do you connect to your Google Search Console . How do you then submit the sitemap ? How do you check to see if any ? Because once you submit your stuff to Google Search Console , you've got to come back in a couple weeks and see if everything like turned out rosy or if there's a problem . Okay , usually it turns out fine , but you absolutely want to go back . Make sure , because of the fundamentals . If there's a problem you're after forever , right , right , so you need to fix it . You'd want to know , and so you go back . Yeah , but how would you know to go back ? That's in the fundamentals that I'm about to share with you . That's why it's 20 lessons and not just a single podcast episode . And then also since I also consider this fundamental setting up and optimizing your Google business profile . Oh , because that's really important too . That's a fundamental thing .

Meredith's husband 7:41

And so the reason that I did a series of 20 lessons like this is because it's all step by step . Right , because a lot of this stuff , you could , if you want , to dig through all of our podcast episodes and try to do this on your own . A lot of the information is here , but it's not step by step . It's a little scattered , yeah , although people have written in and said hey , you know , I've been a listener and I'm now on page one . I've been doing the stuff you said . I'm on page one . I've been doing the stuff you said . I'm on Patreon . That makes me feel awesome , by the way . Thank you for sharing that . Thank you and congratulations . Yeah , that makes me feel like a butterfly .

Meredith's husband 8:20

So if you have written in and said something like that and shared something , thank you very much . If you have experienced something like that and haven't written in , I would love to hear it . But to the people I'm going to go back to the intro here To the people who did share their ShowIt , Google Search console information with me so that I could do that very initial what I thought was going to be five

Free Access for Contributors

Meredith's husband 8:42

minute thing on ShowIt and how to do the fundamentals . So all this , the fundamentals , are in the paid section of SEIQ . But those people who wrote in and gave me access I know who you are . You get a free month so you get to go in and check out and see what you helped me to create , because I would not have done any of this without you . This is true . So I know who you are . Look for something in your inbox and otherwise you can follow the link below and check it out . I hope it helps .