Showit SEO settings give you real ranking controls – but they’re distributed across three separate locations in the platform, and many photographers never find all of them. If you went live without working through every setting, you’re almost certainly missing indexed pages, serving blank meta descriptions to Google, and leaving image alt text empty on dozens of photos.
This is a complete, ordered walkthrough of every Showit SEO setting – where to find it, what to write, and why it matters.
Showit SEO settings live in three places: Site Settings (global defaults), Page Settings (per-page titles and meta), and your WordPress dashboard (blog SEO via Yoast). You must configure all three. Start with page titles and meta descriptions on every main page, then work through image alt text and WordPress Yoast setup.
The Three Locations for Showit SEO Settings
Before starting, understand the architecture. Showit has three separate places where SEO lives – and each one controls a different part of how Google sees your site:
- Site Settings → SEO tab – Global settings that apply across the entire site: site name, default title format, Google verification, and your default social sharing image
- Page Settings → SEO tab – Per-page settings you configure individually for every page: the actual title tag, meta description, Open Graph image, and robots directive
- WordPress dashboard (blog) – All SEO configuration for your blog posts: Yoast or RankMath per-post meta tags, schema markup, XML sitemaps, and blog-level settings
The common mistake is configuring only one or two of these. A photographer who sets up great page titles but never installs Yoast on WordPress is leaving their entire blog unoptimised. A photographer who installs Yoast but never writes per-page titles in Showit’s Page Settings is serving generic title tags on their main site.
Site-Level SEO Settings
Access these by clicking the Showit logo in the top-left → Site Settings → SEO tab.
Site Name
This is the name that appears across your site in title formats and can appear in browser tabs. Use your business name exactly as you want it to appear publicly: “Jane Smith Photography” or “Smith Visuals” – not a keyword string. Consistency with your Google Business Profile name matters for local SEO signals.
Default Title Format
Showit lets you set a fallback title template that applies to pages where you haven’t written a custom page-level title. A safe default format is [Page Name] | [Site Name]. This ensures no page ever has a completely blank title tag – a blank title is treated by Google as having no page identity at all, which is significantly worse than even a generic fallback.
Google Search Console Verification
Paste your Google Search Console HTML verification meta tag here. This confirms site ownership with Google without requiring you to touch any code files. Do this before launch so you can monitor indexing from day one. Go to Search Console → Settings → Ownership Verification → HTML tag to get the code.
Default Social Sharing Image
Upload a 1200×630px image here. This is the image displayed when anyone shares any of your pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, or elsewhere. Use a strong portfolio image with your name or logo – not a random gallery photo that could confuse visitors arriving from a social media share.
Page-Level SEO Settings (The Most Important)
For each page, click the page name in the left sidebar → Page Settings → SEO tab. You must do this individually for every page you care about ranking: Home, About, Portfolio, Services, Investment, Contact.
Page Title (Title Tag)
This is the single most important SEO field on any page. It’s what Google displays as the blue link in search results. Rules for photography page titles:
- Keep it under 60 characters – this is a firm limit, not a guideline. Longer titles are cut off in search results
- Put your primary keyword near the front of the title, not at the end
- For local photographers: include your city and specialty: Austin Wedding Photographer | Jane Smith Photography
- Every page must have a unique title – two pages with the same title signal to Google that you have duplicate content
- Do not leave any page with a blank title or the default template title
Here are working examples for a wedding photographer’s main pages:
- Homepage: Nashville Wedding Photographer | Jane Smith Photography
- About: About Jane | Nashville Wedding & Portrait Photographer
- Services: Wedding Photography Packages Nashville | Jane Smith
- Portfolio: Wedding Photography Portfolio | Nashville, Tennessee
- Contact: Contact | Nashville Wedding Photographer Jane Smith
Meta Description
Write 140–155 characters that describe the page, include your keyword naturally, and give a searcher a compelling reason to click your result over the others. Google doesn’t always use your meta description – sometimes it generates its own from the page content – but writing a strong one improves click-through rate when it is used, which in turn signals to Google that your result satisfies the search intent.
Good meta description example: Nashville wedding photographer capturing natural, emotional moments at venues across Tennessee. Outdoor, film-inspired style. Booking 2026 and 2027.
Bad meta description: Welcome to my website. I am a photographer in Nashville. Contact me for more info.
Open Graph Title and Description
These override your SEO title and meta description when the page is shared on social media. You can leave these blank – Showit will use your page title and meta description as defaults – or write custom social-specific versions. If your page title is very SEO-focused (like “Austin Wedding Photographer | Jane Smith”), you might prefer a more human Open Graph title (“Behind the Beautiful Moments – Jane Smith Photography”) for social sharing.
Open Graph Image
Upload a 1200×630px image specific to this page. For your homepage, use your strongest hero image. For your portfolio page, use your most striking gallery image. This is what appears in the preview card when someone shares your page link on Facebook or messages a link to a friend.
Robots Setting
Leave every main page set to Index, Follow. This is the default and means Google can crawl and index the page. Only set a page to “Noindex” if it’s a page you don’t want appearing in search results: client gallery delivery pages, thank-you pages after form submission, or private portfolio previews.
Adding Crawlable Text to Showit Pages
This is the Showit SEO step that most guides skip. Showit’s canvas elements – the text blocks you drag onto the canvas – aren’t always crawled by Google as efficiently as standard HTML text. To give Google clean, crawlable text on your key pages, you can use Showit’s “WordPress embed” feature to insert an actual WordPress page’s HTML content inside your Showit canvas.
To do this: create a matching page in your WordPress dashboard, write your page copy there, then in Showit use a blog embed element to pull that content into your canvas layout. The visible design comes from Showit’s canvas; the crawlable text comes from WordPress. This is the approach used by SEO-focused Showit designers to ensure main pages are fully indexed by Google.
Image Alt Text Settings
Every image on your Showit site should have descriptive alt text. To add it: click any image in the canvas → Image Settings panel on the right → Alt Text field. Write a natural description of what’s in the image. Rules:
- Describe what’s actually in the photo: who, what, where
- Include relevant keywords naturally – not stuffed
- Keep it under 125 characters
- Never leave the alt text empty on any image
Examples:
- bride and groom walking through wildflower field at golden hour, Texas Hill Country
- newborn sleeping in white wrap on wooden floor, Austin portrait photography
- engagement portrait of couple laughing on Nashville pedestrian bridge
Alt text has two functions: accessibility (screen readers use it to describe images to visually impaired users) and SEO (Google reads it to understand what your images depict). Both matter.
WordPress Blog SEO Settings
Your Showit blog runs on a full WordPress installation, which means it gets its own complete SEO configuration independent of your main Showit site. Don’t skip this section – your blog is where most of your long-term organic traffic will come from.
Install Yoast SEO (Free)
Go to your WordPress dashboard → Plugins → Add New → search “Yoast SEO” → Install and Activate. Run the Yoast setup wizard. Enable the XML sitemap (critical – this is what you’ll submit to Google Search Console for your blog).
Configure Yoast General Settings
- Search Appearance → General: Set your site tagline (keep it keyword-rich and location-specific)
- Search Appearance → Content Types → Posts: Set your title template to
%%title%% %%page%%– clean, no suffix needed if your titles are already well-written - Search Appearance → Content Types → Pages: Same template
- Features: Keep XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs, and SEO analysis enabled
Per-Post Yoast Settings
For every blog post, fill in the Yoast meta box at the bottom of the post editor:
- Focus keyphrase: The primary keyword this post targets
- SEO title: Write a custom title (don’t rely on the template for every post)
- Meta description: 140–155 characters, includes the keyword, compelling
- Cornerstone content toggle: Enable for your most important, comprehensive posts
Submitting Sitemaps to Google Search Console
Once your site is live and Yoast is installed, submit both sitemaps to Search Console:
- Your Showit main site sitemap – typically at
yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml - Your WordPress blog sitemap – at
yourdomain.com/blog/wp-sitemap.xml
In Search Console → Sitemaps → enter each URL → Submit. After adding new posts or pages, use GSC’s URL Inspection tool to request indexing for the specific URL – this speeds up the time Google takes to crawl and rank the new content. For more on pre-launch SEO, see our complete Showit SEO checklist with all 18 items before going live.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why isn’t my Showit meta description showing in Google search results?
Google sometimes ignores your meta description and generates its own from page content. This happens most often when your page has limited crawlable text – which is common on Showit canvas pages where most text lives inside canvas elements rather than HTML. Adding crawlable text sections using WordPress embeds gives Google better content to work with and increases the frequency with which your written meta description is used.
Q: How do I set different SEO titles for desktop and mobile in Showit?
You don’t – and you don’t need to. Showit uses the same title tag and meta description for both desktop and mobile versions of a page. The page title setting in Page Settings applies to both. Google also reads the same title regardless of which version of your site it crawls. Focus on writing one excellent title per page rather than trying to differentiate by device.
Q: Does Showit automatically generate a sitemap for my main site pages?
Showit does generate a sitemap for your main site, typically available at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Your WordPress blog generates its own separate sitemap via Yoast at yourdomain.com/blog/wp-sitemap.xml. Submit both to Google Search Console so all your pages – main site and blog – are properly indexed.
Q: Should I use the same keyword on multiple Showit pages?
No. Each page should target a different primary keyword. When two pages on your site target the same keyword, Google cannot determine which one to rank and may rank neither – this is called keyword cannibalization. Give each page a distinct focus keyword and make sure the page title, meta description, and page content all support that unique keyword.
Q: How do I verify my Showit site in Google Search Console?
In Google Search Console, go to Settings → Ownership Verification → HTML tag. Copy the verification meta tag. In Showit, go to Site Settings → SEO → paste the tag in the Google Verification field. Publish your site, then click Verify in Search Console. This method works reliably on Showit without requiring any DNS changes or file uploads.
Ready to Build a Website That Gets Results?
If you’re serious about your photography business or service-based website, getting the foundations right makes every other marketing effort work better. Adil Makhdoom specialises in Showit and WordPress websites for photographers and small businesses – built to rank, built to convert. Reach out on TheAdil.me to discuss your project.
