8 actionable steps for boosting your squarespace seo
For the first time EVER, I’ve hired a pro to write a post. If you’re wondering, “Why now?” it’s because I want to provide truly valuable content not only for my own Squarespace clients, but also anyone looking to level up their SEO. We can ALL use that, right?! The trouble is, SEO changes as frequently as social media algorithms, and, as a designer/business owner, I can’t keep up. So, I asked Alexis to step in and write a 3-part series on SEO for Squarespace.
The good news is, these steps are basic enough that you’re going to set a great foundation for your site no matter what. Even if Google or Pinterest start to favor one specific thing over another, you’ll be one step ahead if you continually publish relevant information that benefits your readers.
If there’s anything else you’re dying to know more about, send me a message!
- xo - Nikki
BY ALEXIS SCHROEDER
Implementing SEO strategies on your website has major benefits, including increased online visibility and targeted organic traffic. This means customers who land on your site are actively looking for your services and products and are more likely to convert to paying customers.
In this guide, we’ll go over the top SEO tips and strategies for Squarespace websites. Whether you’re a small business owner, blogger, or creative professional, these simple tips will help you rank higher on Google and, hopefully, get more customers.
Here’s a list of 8 steps to take for boosting your website’s SEO:
1. Update Your site information
Squarespace recommends completing a couple of tasks before publishing your website. Don’t worry if you haven’t completed these things as it’s never too late to fix! Here’s what you can do right now to help Google understand what your website is about.
Add a site title and site description. To complete both of these tasks in Squarespace, go to your homepage, navigate to Pages, and click the gear icon that appears when you hover over a page title. A pop-up will appear with SEO as one of the options to choose from. This is where you can add a site title and add a 150 word description explaining to Google what your site is about. Google’s search engine cuts off descriptions at 150 words, so keep this in mind.
A high-quality description should talk about what problems your website solves, and how your product, service, or site can help a reader. Your description is going to encourage a reader to click through to your website.
Here’s a great example of a Google site description for a travel website: “Your one stop site for discovering all things travel. Explore expert-curated travel guides, insider tips, and must-see places worldwide. We are your go-to destination for finding the best tropical beaches, historic landmarks, and off-the-beaten-path experiences.”
2. Create high-quality content
Publishing high-quality content on your website improves your website’s visibility on Google, increases organic traffic, and helps establish authority in your niche. The best blog posts understand the reader’s needs and answer their question right away at the top of the blog post. Use the rest of the blog post to dive deeper into the topic. For example, if someone typed in Google “best coffee machine”, it’s ideal to let the reader know the best coffee machine at the very beginning of the post and use the rest of the blog post to explain why.
High quality content directly addresses the reader's intent and doesn’t beat around the bush. Blog posts should be informative and give readers the best tips and resources to help answer their questions. Citing reputable sources and including links to relevant topics is beneficial.
Squarespace SEO Checklist:
Use the keyword in the post title
Use the keyword in the URL
Use the keyword in the meta description
Use the keyword within the first 200 words of the post
Link to relevant posts on my website
Link to relevant posts on other authoritative websites
Optimize images and use keyword in Alt-text
Completing these seven tasks is an easy way to boost your rankings on Google!
3. Optimize page titles and meta descriptions
A quick and easy way to boost your website’s SEO is by optimizing page titles and meta descriptions. Doing both of these things will increase your site’s visibility on Google by giving Google a clear answer as to what your website and blog posts are about.
To edit page titles and meta descriptions on Squarespace, navigate to the page you want to edit on your site.
Below the page title field, there’s a section called “Description” where you can write a description under 150 words that includes relevant keywords and how your post will help the reader.
For example, a great meta description sounds like this:
“Discover the best tips from SEO experts on boosting your Squarespace website’s Google traffic. This comprehensive guide covers how to find keywords, on-page and off-page SEO, improve site speed, and actions you can take today to increase organic traffic.
4. Mobile-friendly website
A mobile-friendly website is crucial for the customers visiting your website. A site that is fast and responsive keeps readers staying on the website longer and lowers bounce rates. Google likes both of these things and also ranks mobile-friendly websites higher in search results. Luckily, Squarespace makes it easy to choose mobile-friendly websites since all of their templates are mobile-friendly.
It’s still important to test your site’s performance on Google PageSpeed Insights. Enter your site’s URL and click “analyze”. In less than one minute, Google will analyze your website’s performance on both mobile and desktop devices. A list of recommendations will pop-up provided by Google to improve your site speed.
5. Optimize site speed
Improving your site’s speed is crucial because a fast site provides a better user experience which can potentially improve your site’s rankings on Google.
Here are a few quick tips to improve your site’s speed:
Optimize images with a service like TinyPNG which will compress images
Limit the use of custom fonts
Remove unnecessary characters like comments (unless you value interacting with readers via the comment section)
One of the most important things you can do is choose or create a lightweight Squarespace template. What makes a fast Squarespace site? Templates and designs with few graphics, animations, effects, widgets, and fonts. Also, plugins can add up and make your site run slower. This is why I recommend putting your site through a quick site speed test to make sure it’s still running as fast as before.
6. Verify your website on Google
A small but important step to improving your site’s SEO is verifying your website with Google Search Console. Once you’ve verified your site with Google, you can see which keywords bring users to your site and receive email alerts when Google is having issues with your site.
Go to Google Search Console and sign in with your email account. You’ll be taken to the Google Search Console dashboard where you can add a property. Enter the full URL of your website including the https://. The final step is verifying your website with Google so Google knows you’re the real owner of the website.
7. Utilize Squarespace SEO settings
Squarespace makes it simple to incorporate SEO onto your website by enabling SEO edit sections throughout your website. Some of the key SEO settings available in Squarespace include page titles and meta descriptions, SEO-friendly URLs, the use of header tags, alt text in photos, and more.
Adding alt text to photos helps give your site an SEO boost as it’s another way to tell Google what the website or blog post is about. To add alt text to a photo, navigate to the image you uploaded, click the image or edit button, and scroll down to Alt Text. This is where you can add a keyword and describe your image to Google to potentially increase SEO rankings. Alt text should be short and under 12 words.
Google uses header tags to understand the content on your website which makes this an important step in SEO. To edit headers on your site, hover the text you want to turn into a header, press Edit Text, and a pop-up will appear. Choose “Change Heading Tag” to change the heading style. Here are a few things to remember when using header tags:
Only use one H1 tag per post or page
Use headers to break up text
Include keywords in headers but avoid keyword stuffing
8. Monitor Performance
Squarespace has its own analytics dashboard that you can access by going to the home menu, and clicking on “Analytics” or “Insights”. Here, you will find information like:
Where your traffic is coming from (organic traffic from Google, social media, etc.)
Details about your website's visitors (location, demographic, etc.)
See which keywords are driving the most traffic from Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo
Most popular content to create more of for your audience
Squarespace sites are built with Google SEO in mind, but anything you add to your site plays a role in where you rank on Google. By implementing these simple strategies in your blog posts, you’ll start to see yourself ranking on Google and getting more visitors to your website.
About the Author
Alexis Schroeder is a freelance writer in the blogging and SEO industry. In college, she started a personal finance blog while paying off debt, and worked several different side hustles to make money. Now she teaches others how to build their blog from scratch and rank on Google.
