Mastering Search Engine Optimization on Squarespace

On-Page vs Off-Page SEO

SEO involves two main types: on-page SEO, which focuses on optimizations within your site, and off-page SEO, which involves enhancing external factors to bolster your site’s credibility. While both types are crucial for attracting more traffic from search engines, even small, incremental site enhancements can lead to substantial SEO gains. Google’s strategy for managing its extensive portfolio of websites emphasizes this point:

“…beyond standard SEO tactics, there are alternative methods to increase your site’s visibility. Consider integrating paid media, social media posts, and display advertising. However, when executed proficiently, SEO remains a powerful and cost-effective method for organic growth.”

Start by enhancing your site’s on-page elements using the detailed checklist provided below before delving into off-page strategies like digital PR and backlink building to ensure your site is optimized for search engines.

Is Squarespace SEO-Friendly?

Indeed, Squarespace is designed with SEO in mind. Although its promotional materials might overstate capabilities with claims like, “every Squarespace site incorporates all known SEO best practices,” the platform genuinely offers robust SEO features. Explore the inherent SEO tools and plugins Squarespace provides.

Squarespace SEO Features

• Sitemaps: Automatically generated XML sitemaps update regularly to include all your URLs and relevant image metadata, facilitating search engine indexing.
• SSL Certificates: Squarespace ensures that all users have access to free SSL certificates, providing a secure browsing experience for visitors.
• Mobile Optimization: All themes are responsive, ensuring your site adapts to various devices and screen sizes—crucial for maintaining Google’s favor.
• Streamlined HTML and URLs: The platform ensures your site’s HTML and URLs are structured for easy indexing.
• Robots.txt: Squarespace automatically generates a robots.txt file, with options to customize crawler restrictions.

Implementing SEO on Squarespace

Note: The ability to implement advanced features like code injection may depend on your Squarespace subscription plan.

Step 1. Conduct Keyword Research

Modern SEO transcends simple keyword use and focuses on topics and user intent. Start your SEO process by identifying key phrases and topics relevant to your audience. Conduct thorough research to uncover related questions and topics, assessing your competitors’ strength to gauge the difficulty of ranking higher than them. Remember, the goal is to create content that organically fits user searches without stuffing keywords.

Step 2. Deliver High-Quality Content

As search engine algorithms evolve, the importance of quality content cannot be overstated. Deliver content that is not only unique and engaging but also addresses the needs of your audience. According to Search Engine Journal:

“Throughout the year, websites with deeply informative content saw a significant boost in rankings, whereas those with less substantial content did not perform as well.”

Focus on content that aligns with the intentions of your searchers. Aim for a natural writing style, avoid repetitive use of specific phrases, and prioritize comprehensive coverage over sheer volume. High-quality, consolidated content tends to perform better than multiple pages of lesser value.

By prioritizing the needs of your readers, you ensure that search engines can accurately interpret and rank your content, which is crucial for effective SEO on Squarespace.

Step 3. Optimize Your Page Title Tags

By default, Squarespace generates title tags from the page’s title and your site’s name, though you have the flexibility to customize this. To update titles, hover over a page, click the settings icon, and navigate to the SEO tab. While titles should be rich in keywords, they should not appear spammy. A title tag should accurately and succinctly describe the content of the page and entice clicks from search engine results.

Keep title tags under 60 characters to ensure full display in search results. While Google does not limit title length, it recommends avoiding excessive length. Tools like Moz’s Title Tag Preview are useful for checking how your titles will appear in search results.

Ensure each title is unique, descriptive, and captures interest. Titles should avoid merely listing keywords or using repetitive variations.

Note for Squarespace 7.1 users: Remove any generic language automatically added based on page type, such as “Blog 2” or “Contact 3”, found in the SEO settings of each page.

As of 2021, Google may modify your page titles if they don’t adhere to best practices, although this is intended to assist sites with title tag issues and can generally be avoided.

Step 4. Use Keywords in Headings and Meta Descriptions

Incorporating keywords into headings and meta descriptions can enhance SEO performance. Typically, the primary keyword of a page is placed in the <h1> tag. Subsequent content should be clearly organized with <h2> and <h3> tags. According to Google, using multiple H1 tags on different sections of a page is acceptable if structured correctly.

Meta descriptions, while not a direct ranking factor, play a crucial role in improving click-through rates from search results. These descriptions should be written naturally to entice users from the SERPs. Be aware that Google may choose to display different text from your page to better respond to a user’s query.

Here’s how to add meta descriptions in Squarespace:

• Home page: Go to Settings > SEO Appearance > SEO Site Description.
• Individual pages: Navigate to Pages > Page Settings > SEO > SEO Description.
• Blogs, products, or events: Select the item, then Edit > SEO > SEO Description.

Step 5. Keep URLs Simple

Consider shortening URLs to enhance readability and shareability, especially on platforms with character limits like Twitter. For instance, a blog post titled “Learn Dog Walking From A Top Trainer” could have its URL simplified to:

example.com/blog/dog-walking-advice

Use hyphens to separate words in URLs for better readability. Avoid unnecessary words to make URLs concise and easier to share.

Ensure that your URLs use meaningful words. In Squarespace, be cautious of automatic URL slugs generated from unsaved titles, which can result in nonsensical strings of characters.

If changing a URL, remember that it equates to moving a webpage. Implement URL redirects to prevent broken links and maintain SEO integrity.

Step 6. Improve Your Images

Optimizing images enhances page speed and overall user experience. Before uploading images to your site, use online tools to compress their file sizes.

Images can also appear in search engine image results, potentially driving more traffic to your site. Ensure that alt text is descriptive and relevant, improving accessibility and SEO. However, purely decorative images do not require alt text.

Step 7. Remove Duplicate Content

Avoiding duplicate content is crucial for SEO. Not only is duplicating content from other sites frowned upon and potentially penalizable, but even internal duplicates can harm your site’s performance by causing URL competition in search queries. Check if your Squarespace-built domain has been indexed, which could result in duplicate content issues within Google’s index.

For long-term site health, it is important to clean up your content.

Maintaining your site’s health goes beyond monitoring it through Google Search Console. Several free tools can offer deeper insights and pinpoint underlying issues:

• Screaming Frog
• SiteLiner
• CopyScape

When reviewing your site, apply common sense. It’s acceptable to duplicate content across multiple areas if it logically fits, but sometimes duplication may suggest problems.

Step 8. Turn on SSL

Google advocates for the use of HTTPS to secure the web. SSL is enabled by default on new Squarespace accounts, but older account holders may not realize they can activate this feature at no cost. After enabling SSL, update your Google Analytics to monitor the correct property, submit your HTTPS site and sitemap to Google’s Search Console, and update your social media and other external links to reflect the change.

Step 9. Link Internally

Maximize internal linking beyond just your navigation menu. Link relevant pages or blog posts within your content to aid both users and search engines in discovering more of your website.

Step 10. List Your Location

If you run a physical business, prominently display your address on your site and ensure your Contact page is easy to find. This makes it simpler for customers to locate you and enhances local SEO efforts.

Step 11. Add Schema Markup

Schema markup or structured data tells search engines more about your page’s content. For example, a recipe blog would need specific markup to show up in search engine recipe thumbnails. Although schema doesn’t directly affect your ranking, it can enhance your appearance in search results through rich snippets, which might include ratings or other extra details about your content.

Step 12. Consider Hreflang

For sites serving multiple languages or regions, hreflang tags are essential to target content appropriately across different demographics.

Step 13. Optimize for Mobile & Voice Search

Optimizing for mobile and voice search is critical, considering the growing reliance on mobile devices and voice queries. Check your site’s speed with Google’s tools and adapt your content to match the natural language and context of voice searches.

Step 14. Create a Custom 404 Page

Custom 404 pages improve user experience by clearly communicating that a page is missing and guiding them back to relevant content, thus retaining visitors longer on your site.

Step 15. Submit Your Sitemap and Content Changes

Regularly submit your sitemap to search engines like Google and Bing to ensure they’re current with your site’s content, particularly after updates or new additions.

Step 16. Learn How to Write and Structure Content

Understanding content structure and writing is crucial for SEO success. Well-organized content may lead to capturing featured snippets in search results, increasing your site’s visibility.

Step 17. Understand Featured Snippets

Featured snippets provide direct answers and appear above organic results, which can significantly boost your click-through rates. Keeping track of how snippets affect your site’s traffic is key.

Step 18. Check your Favicon

Your favicon, while small, plays a part in branding and could impact user engagement and click-through rates from search results. Ensure your favicon is optimized for visibility across devices.

Step 19. Noindex Categories and Tags

Consider using a “noindex” directive for categories and tags to prioritize crawling of more significant content by search engines, ensuring they spend their resources indexing content that enhances your site’s value.

Optimize Image File Names and Tags

Images play a crucial role in enhancing the visual appeal and user engagement of your Squarespace site. However, beyond aesthetics, properly optimized images can significantly boost your SEO efforts. Effective optimization of image file names and alt tags not only improves accessibility but also enhances your site’s visibility in image search results.

Choosing the Right File Names

Begin by renaming your image files before uploading them to your Squarespace site. Instead of using default camera names like “IMG_001.jpg,” use descriptive, keyword-rich file names that reflect the image content and context. For example, a file name such as “handmade-wooden-coffee-table.jpg” is much more informative to search engines and users alike.

Using Alt Tags Strategically

Alt tags serve as text alternatives for images on web pages, crucial for both SEO and accessibility. When creating alt tags, incorporate relevant keywords that describe the image accurately and succinctly. This helps search engines understand the image context, contributing to better indexing and ranking in search results. For instance, an alt tag for a coffee table image could be “Handmade wooden coffee table available in espresso finish,” which is both descriptive and keyword-relevant.

Impact on SEO and User Experience

Optimized file names and alt tags enhance the SEO of your images by making them more likely to appear in targeted search results. They also improve site accessibility for users with visual impairments, utilizing screen readers that rely on alt text to describe images. This dual benefit of SEO and accessibility underscores the importance of meticulous image optimization on your Squarespace website.