Just Launched your Squarespace Website? 4 Tips to Run a Comprehensive SEO Audit
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If you just launched a Squarespace website — congrats! Squarespace is an awesome platform to begin promoting, selling, or marketing your business. And you’re well on your way.
However, you may also realize that launching your website is just the first step. Next, you need to make sure that your website can be found by online customers.
This is where SEO comes in.
If you’re not familiar, SEO (which stands for search engine optimization) is an important part of making your website a success. (You can read a more in-depth guide about Squarespace SEO optimization here.) And one of the fastest and easiest ways to know where your SEO stands and how to improve it is to do an SEO audit.
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In this blog, we’ll explain why SEO audits are so important, what to prioritize, and we’ll share our favorite tool for making things really simple.
Let’s jump in:
Why Perform an SEO Audit?
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A comprehensive SEO audit is the fastest, most efficient way to determine if your Squarespace website is ranking as high as it should be.
There are quite a few reasons that your website may not be performing its best. Sometimes these are obvious, but other times they’re not. Some of the most common reasons for underperforming SEO include:
Dead Pages
You might have dead pages or broken links on the back-end of your site that you haven’t linked anywhere— but Google has. They could still be showing those 404 pages to users without your knowledge, which is going to hurt your SEO.
These types of small errors can add up to be really damaging. This is especially true if you haven’t connected your Squarespace website to Google Analytics and performance isn’t being monitored regularly.
Not Connecting Your Website to Google Search Console
Not connecting your Squarespace website to the Google Search Console is another common reason for poor SEO performance. Connecting your site to Google Search Console helps Google to verify and index your website content so it will show up in search engine results.
Your Content isn’t SEO Optimized
Often, website content is created without SEO in mind. But surprisingly, a few tweaks can do wonders for your SEO ranking!
If the majority of your content (blogs, webpage text, image alt text, etc.) does not include your top 3 to 5 keywords often, think about rewriting it for a major SEO boost. (If you aren’t sure what your top 3-5 keywords or keyword phrases are, here’s how to find out.)
Of course, these are just a few things that could drag your SEO ranking down. There are plenty more, which again, is why an audit is so important.
Here’s how to perform one:
What to Focus on in your Squarespace SEO Audit
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User Experience
The first area to focus on in your Squarespace SEO audit is user experience. This basically means the ease at which users can navigate, read, and access your website pages.
It’s best practice to keep things as clean as possible. Include a simple navigation without too many drop-down options. Don’t use a distracting amount of imagery. Keep your readability high (dark font on light background works best). Pay attention to details like:
Colors - Are yours in-line with your brand and pleasing to the eye?
Fonts - Easy to read sans serif fonts work best.
Font sizes - Should be larger than 10px.
Line Length - The amount of words per line (50-75 characters is ideal).
Line Height - The space between lines should be large enough to provide easy readability (line spacing of 130%-150% is normally perfect, depending on your font size).
Easy Navigation - Keep it the same on every page.
Include a Footer - Be sure to include a footer on your website. Internal linking structure is great for your SEO.
Technical Optimization
Next, you’ll want to take a look at your technical SEO optimization. This is essentially the engineering that makes it easier for search engines to find your pages.
For this, we suggest using our SEO Audit Tool. The tool will scan your website for 15 specific SEO issues and provide you with actionable steps on how to remedy them.
Your Website’s Authority & Traffic
Authority and website traffic are important factors in your SEO success. These are the metrics that tell search engines that your site is helpful to the users it sends your way.
Normally, authority is gained by how often your users interact with, share, or consume your content. It’s measured in the form of links to your content, views, downloads, etc. The more users engage with your website, the more search engines will see your site as useful— and the more you’ll show up in search results.
You’ll also want to pay attention to your traffic. The amount of people that click on your site in a search engine results page proves to the search engine that you were a relevant match for their query.
Look at how these two metrics are performing on your site and come up with some specific action items on how to increase them.
Content Relevancy
Content relevancy refers to your website’s ability to answer a customer’s question or inform them about a specific topic.
If a user finds your webpage is valuable it keeps their attention. The more they linger on your site, the more credit a search engine will give to your site. (If you’re not sure how to create content that will really connect with your audience, check out our SEO content services here.)
So don’t wait! Run your SEO audit today to begin improving upon your website SEO. Then, sit back and enjoy your new influx of traffic.
