June 2, 2025 • 10 mins
What began as a quick SEO tip while Meredith was swimming with whales in Tonga evolved into a comprehensive Fundamentals Series ShowIt, WordPress, and Squarespace users.
Visit the Fundamentals Series
https://seiq.meredithshusband.com/c/welcome-fundamentals
In this episode...
[0:24] Origin of the Fundamentals series for Showit users
[1:08] Why Showit needs specific SEO guidance
[2:37] What is WYSIWYG and Showit’s visual interface
[4:03] How Showit splits sites between Showit and WordPress
[5:00] The unique problem of dual sitemaps
[5:20] Configuring Yoast properly for Showit blogs
[5:54] Connecting Google tools (Analytics and Search Console)
[6:48] How to monitor Google Search Console after setup
[7:41] Why Google Business Profile is also a “fundamental”
[8:20] Thank-you message and free access for contributors
---
Meredith's Husband
https://www.meredithshusband.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Meredith's husband (00:00):
Do you remember going to Tonga?
Yes, yeah, a few months ago ahandful of months ago now you
went to Tonga, a place prettymuch on the opposite side of the
world from where we are.
So while you did that, I did avery short episode on my own oh,
and I said oh, meredith's awayin Tonga swimming with humpback
whales.
While she's there, I'm planningon doing something special for
(00:23):
ShowIt users.
While she's there, I'm planningon doing something special for
ShowIt users.
If you're on ShowIt and youwant to offer some of your
website information so I canmake this thing more valuable,
whatever it's going to be, shareyour Google Search Console data
with me.
And some people did itExcellent.
And so I started going aboutcreating what I was going to
call a fundamentals for show itSEO.
(00:44):
Fundamentals for show itbecause there are some very
specific things about show it.
It's very good for SEO.
It's very I understand a lot ofpeople like it.
Is it easy to use?
I think it's pretty.
I haven't used it in terms ofdesigning a website, but in
terms of SEO, there are somevery specific things that you
need to do that you don't needto do anywhere else.
(01:05):
You don't need to do onWordPress, you don't need to do
on Squarespace, you don't needto 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, makesure you do these things.
So some people again sharedaccess to their Google search
console with me and I starteddoing it, and as I was doing
that, I realized, okay, well,some of these things are also
(01:27):
going to be applicable to peopleusing WordPress, and so I
created one that shares some ofthose videos, some of those
lessons, and I did one forWordPress.
And then I started thinkingwell, you know what?
Wix, not Wix, no, squarespace,squarespace.
Since you have been onSquarespace for a little over a
(01:48):
year now, I have learned a lotof things about Squarespace and
some mistakes that you mightwant to avoid.
Oh, yes, so I did one forSquarespace too, thank you.
So I'm going to talk a littlebit in this episode about the
fundamental series yes, and withemphasis on the ShowIt and
WordPress, yes, and then nextweek I'm going to do one on
(02:11):
Squarespace.
Okay, specifically on thethings that you want to make
sure you get squared away ifyou're using Squarespace.
Get it, ha ha ha, squared awayon Squarespace.
Okay.
So the thing about ShowIt isthat it's half on ShowIt servers
, which is kind of likeSquarespace, in the sense that
you have pages on ShowIt,they're not on WordPress,
(02:33):
they're not HTML, you can'taccess them.
They are literally on ShowIt.
There's like what we call aWYSIWYG.
What you see is what you get.
You do not call it a WYSIWYG.
You absolutely do call it aWYSIWYG.
What you see is what you get.
You do not call it a WYSIWYG.
You absolutely do call it aWYSIWYG.
What you see is what you get.
Designer, it's a visual builder.
Wysiwyg, wysiwyg.
Yeah, really, people are usingthat.
Okay, that makes me reallyhappy.
(02:54):
Yes, it's a WYSIWYG builder.
It's a visual builder likeSquarespace, and supposedly
people really like it.
I've seen it.
I have not built the website.
What's not to like about WYSIWYG?
Yeah, well, it looks to me.
(03:15):
I've seen the pages and I'velooked at them to see what
features are available.
It looks to me like Adobe.
Oh, it looks like the screensthat 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.
(03:35):
Go Live actually was Adobe, butit 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 twodecades ago.
I was not even born, yes, so Iunderstand, especially if you're
a photographer, why you like it.
It looks like home, it lookslike an Adobe interface and that
you know.
Hats off to show it for doingit that way.
(03:57):
If that was the intent it, Ithink it worked well, looks nice
, but that's just part of yourwebsite.
If you have a show at website,you have your main pages on show
it and then you have all yourblog pages are going to be
actually on WordPress.
Oh, really, so you're splitbetween these two different
platforms and so what happens isyou need two different site
(04:18):
maps.
Okay, that's already sooverwhelming.
Yeah, it's a little weird.
It creates a very uniquesituation 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 thefundamentals course in Show.
It is how do you get aroundthis?
(04:38):
Because if you don't, you areeffed.
Yeah, like there is somepotential really big downsides
to that and it doesn't tell youon 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 likemake sure you do good SEO or
like something like that.
So I did that.
(05:00):
And then there are some otherissues, like, if you're you know
, first, how do you create twodifferent sitemaps?
Because that's very I didn'tknow.
There's literally no othersituation where you're going to
want to have two differentsitemaps for the same domain.
How do you?
Yeah, okay, yeah, so that'swhat I did.
That's what I found out thanksto the people who wrote in and
said here's my information.
I figured that out.
(05:20):
After that, there's like well,what do you do with the
WordPress section so that youdon't screw up the show in your
sitemap?
So I a show it's in your sitemap, so what do you?
So I did some initial settings.
What are you going to do withyoast, the yoast seo plugin for
wordpress?
Because show it recommends theyoast seo plugin, although they
don't tell you what to do withit.
Oh, that's and out of the box.
(05:41):
A lot of the default settingsin yoast are not going to be
good for seo, especially ifyou're on show it.
So I started doing, I extendedthe series a little bit and then
then I realized, like I said,oh, hey, this would also be
really good for people who arejust running a WordPress site.
So I did that, and in doing that, inside the Yoast settings,
first you need to connect yourGoogle tools to your website,
(06:02):
your Google Analytics, yourGoogle.
Did you just keep thinking like, oh, colin Yoast, the guy on
SNL?
I did not.
No, every time I see ColinYoast, I think, oh, just like
the SEO plugin.
So there are some settings onYoast that you want to do.
You're going to need to connectit to your Google tools, and
for that there's severaldifferent ways you can do it.
(06:23):
I go through those.
One of the ways I recommend isusing something called the
SiteKit plugin from Google.
You can do it manually.
You did a lot.
Yeah, there's a lot here, andthat's why it took several
months, I would think so.
I thought it was going to belike a five-minute video.
It's like 20 lessons.
Wow, they're all short.
They're all short.
Yeah, it's okay, but they'repotent.
(06:45):
But you need to do them all.
Yeah, I prefer that.
So then, how do you connect toyour Google Search Console.
How do you then submit thesitemap?
How do you check to see if any?
Because once you submit yourstuff to Google Search Console,
you've got to come back in acouple weeks and see if
everything like turned out rosyor if there's a problem.
Okay, usually it turns out fine, but you absolutely want to go
(07:08):
back.
Make sure, because of thefundamentals.
If there's a problem you'reafter forever, right, right, so
you need to fix it.
You'd want to know, and so yougo back.
Yeah, but how would you know togo back?
That's in the fundamentals thatI'm about to share with you.
That's why it's 20 lessons andnot just a single podcast
(07:30):
episode.
And then also since I alsoconsider this fundamental
setting up and optimizing yourGoogle business profile.
Oh, because that's reallyimportant too.
That's a fundamental thing.
And so the reason that I did aseries of 20 lessons like this
is because it's all step by step.
Right, because a lot of thisstuff, you could, if you want,
(07:51):
to dig through all of ourpodcast episodes and try to do
this on your own.
A lot of the information ishere, but it's not step by step.
It's a little scattered, yeah,although people have written in
and said hey, you know, I'vebeen a listener and I'm now on
page one.
I've been doing the stuff yousaid.
I'm on page one.
I've been doing the stuff yousaid.
I'm on Patreon.
That makes me feel awesome, bythe way.
Thank you for sharing that.
(08:11):
Thank you and congratulations.
Yeah, that makes me feel like abutterfly.
So if you have written in andsaid something like that and
shared something, thank you verymuch.
If you have experiencedsomething like that and haven't
written in, I would love to hearit.
But to the people I'm going togo back to the intro here To the
(08:33):
people who did share theirShowIt, Google Search console
information with me so that Icould do that very initial what
I thought was going to be fiveminute 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 inand gave me access I know who
you are.
You get a free month so you getto go in and check out and see
(08:55):
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 yourinbox and otherwise you can
follow the link below and checkit out.
I hope it helps.
Do you remember going to Tonga?
Yes, yeah, a few months ago ahandful of months ago now you
went to Tonga, a place prettymuch on the opposite side of the
world from where we are.
So while you did that, I did avery short episode on my own oh,
and I said oh, meredith's awayin Tonga swimming with humpback
whales.
While she's there, I'm planningon doing something special for
(00:23):
ShowIt users.
While she's there, I'm planningon doing something special for
ShowIt users.
If you're on ShowIt and youwant to offer some of your
website information so I canmake this thing more valuable,
whatever it's going to be, shareyour Google Search Console data
with me.
And some people did itExcellent.
And so I started going aboutcreating what I was going to
call a fundamentals for show itSEO.
(00:44):
Fundamentals for show itbecause there are some very
specific things about show it.
It's very good for SEO.
It's very I understand a lot ofpeople like it.
Is it easy to use?
I think it's pretty.
I haven't used it in terms ofdesigning a website, but in
terms of SEO, there are somevery specific things that you
need to do that you don't needto do anywhere else.
(01:05):
You don't need to do onWordPress, you don't need to do
on Squarespace, you don't needto 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, makesure you do these things.
So some people again sharedaccess to their Google search
console with me and I starteddoing it, and as I was doing
that, I realized, okay, well,some of these things are also
(01:27):
going to be applicable to peopleusing WordPress, and so I
created one that shares some ofthose videos, some of those
lessons, and I did one forWordPress.
And then I started thinkingwell, you know what?
Wix, not Wix, no, squarespace,squarespace.
Since you have been onSquarespace for a little over a
(01:48):
year now, I have learned a lotof things about Squarespace and
some mistakes that you mightwant to avoid.
Oh, yes, so I did one forSquarespace too, thank you.
So I'm going to talk a littlebit in this episode about the
fundamental series yes, and withemphasis on the ShowIt and
WordPress, yes, and then nextweek I'm going to do one on
(02:11):
Squarespace.
Okay, specifically on thethings that you want to make
sure you get squared away ifyou're using Squarespace.
Get it, ha ha ha, squared awayon Squarespace.
Okay.
So the thing about ShowIt isthat it's half on ShowIt servers
, which is kind of likeSquarespace, in the sense that
you have pages on ShowIt,they're not on WordPress,
(02:33):
they're not HTML, you can'taccess them.
They are literally on ShowIt.
There's like what we call aWYSIWYG.
What you see is what you get.
You do not call it a WYSIWYG.
You absolutely do call it aWYSIWYG.
What you see is what you get.
You do not call it a WYSIWYG.
You absolutely do call it aWYSIWYG.
What you see is what you get.
Designer, it's a visual builder.
Wysiwyg, wysiwyg.
Yeah, really, people are usingthat.
Okay, that makes me reallyhappy.
(02:54):
Yes, it's a WYSIWYG builder.
It's a visual builder likeSquarespace, and supposedly
people really like it.
I've seen it.
I have not built the website.
What's not to like about WYSIWYG?
Yeah, well, it looks to me.
(03:15):
I've seen the pages and I'velooked at them to see what
features are available.
It looks to me like Adobe.
Oh, it looks like the screensthat 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.
(03:35):
Go Live actually was Adobe, butit 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 twodecades ago.
I was not even born, yes, so Iunderstand, especially if you're
a photographer, why you like it.
It looks like home, it lookslike an Adobe interface and that
you know.
Hats off to show it for doingit that way.
(03:57):
If that was the intent it, Ithink it worked well, looks nice
, but that's just part of yourwebsite.
If you have a show at website,you have your main pages on show
it and then you have all yourblog pages are going to be
actually on WordPress.
Oh, really, so you're splitbetween these two different
platforms and so what happens isyou need two different site
(04:18):
maps.
Okay, that's already sooverwhelming.
Yeah, it's a little weird.
It creates a very uniquesituation 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 thefundamentals course in Show.
It is how do you get aroundthis?
(04:38):
Because if you don't, you areeffed.
Yeah, like there is somepotential really big downsides
to that and it doesn't tell youon 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 likemake sure you do good SEO or
like something like that.
So I did that.
(05:00):
And then there are some otherissues, like, if you're you know
, first, how do you create twodifferent sitemaps?
Because that's very I didn'tknow.
There's literally no othersituation where you're going to
want to have two differentsitemaps for the same domain.
How do you?
Yeah, okay, yeah, so that'swhat I did.
That's what I found out thanksto the people who wrote in and
said here's my information.
I figured that out.
(05:20):
After that, there's like well,what do you do with the
WordPress section so that youdon't screw up the show in your
sitemap?
So I a show it's in your sitemap, so what do you?
So I did some initial settings.
What are you going to do withyoast, the yoast seo plugin for
wordpress?
Because show it recommends theyoast seo plugin, although they
don't tell you what to do withit.
Oh, that's and out of the box.
(05:41):
A lot of the default settingsin yoast are not going to be
good for seo, especially ifyou're on show it.
So I started doing, I extendedthe series a little bit and then
then I realized, like I said,oh, hey, this would also be
really good for people who arejust running a WordPress site.
So I did that, and in doing that, inside the Yoast settings,
first you need to connect yourGoogle tools to your website,
(06:02):
your Google Analytics, yourGoogle.
Did you just keep thinking like, oh, colin Yoast, the guy on
SNL?
I did not.
No, every time I see ColinYoast, I think, oh, just like
the SEO plugin.
So there are some settings onYoast that you want to do.
You're going to need to connectit to your Google tools, and
for that there's severaldifferent ways you can do it.
(06:23):
I go through those.
One of the ways I recommend isusing something called the
SiteKit plugin from Google.
You can do it manually.
You did a lot.
Yeah, there's a lot here, andthat's why it took several
months, I would think so.
I thought it was going to belike a five-minute video.
It's like 20 lessons.
Wow, they're all short.
They're all short.
Yeah, it's okay, but they'repotent.
(06:45):
But you need to do them all.
Yeah, I prefer that.
So then, how do you connect toyour Google Search Console.
How do you then submit thesitemap?
How do you check to see if any?
Because once you submit yourstuff to Google Search Console,
you've got to come back in acouple weeks and see if
everything like turned out rosyor if there's a problem.
Okay, usually it turns out fine, but you absolutely want to go
(07:08):
back.
Make sure, because of thefundamentals.
If there's a problem you'reafter forever, right, right, so
you need to fix it.
You'd want to know, and so yougo back.
Yeah, but how would you know togo back?
That's in the fundamentals thatI'm about to share with you.
That's why it's 20 lessons andnot just a single podcast
(07:30):
episode.
And then also since I alsoconsider this fundamental
setting up and optimizing yourGoogle business profile.
Oh, because that's reallyimportant too.
That's a fundamental thing.
And so the reason that I did aseries of 20 lessons like this
is because it's all step by step.
Right, because a lot of thisstuff, you could, if you want,
(07:51):
to dig through all of ourpodcast episodes and try to do
this on your own.
A lot of the information ishere, but it's not step by step.
It's a little scattered, yeah,although people have written in
and said hey, you know, I'vebeen a listener and I'm now on
page one.
I've been doing the stuff yousaid.
I'm on page one.
I've been doing the stuff yousaid.
I'm on Patreon.
That makes me feel awesome, bythe way.
Thank you for sharing that.
(08:11):
Thank you and congratulations.
Yeah, that makes me feel like abutterfly.
So if you have written in andsaid something like that and
shared something, thank you verymuch.
If you have experiencedsomething like that and haven't
written in, I would love to hearit.
But to the people I'm going togo back to the intro here To the
(08:33):
people who did share theirShowIt, Google Search console
information with me so that Icould do that very initial what
I thought was going to be fiveminute 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 inand gave me access I know who
you are.
You get a free month so you getto go in and check out and see
(08:55):
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 yourinbox and otherwise you can
follow the link below and checkit out.
I hope it helps.
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