Comprehensive 60 SEO Tips for Squarespace [Checklist Included] (2023)
If you are creating a website on the Squarespace platform, it’s extremely helpful to build in optimization right from the start.
If you have an existing site, know that even if you didn’t get a chance to think about your Squarespace SEO when you (or a developer) first created it, you can take steps to optimize it now.
In this mega guide, Launch Happy has compiled 60 best practices to share with you so you can optimize your Squarespace site, wherever you may be in the development process.
After you’ve reviewed our guide, feel free to reach out to us if you need any custom Squarespace SEO help. We’ll put our ample experience to work for you.
Table of Contents in Detail Hide
1. Do Your Keyword Research
People looking for what your business has to offer will try to find what they need by doing online searches. The search terms they use are the keywords you need to incorporate into your site’s content.
That’s why it’s important to do keyword research. Find out what terms people are using the most when searching for products or services like yours. Then, add these terms throughout your site, using best practices to avoid the perils and penalties of keyword stuffing.
2. Add Internal Links
Go through your site and add links to other pages on your website (without overdoing it).
If you have a popular blog post, revisit it and add links to some of your service or product pages.
If you have a particular page that everyone seems to be landing on, optimize it by adding links to other relevant pages on your site.
Doing this helps direct users to additional material they might find helpful. It also boosts your Squarespace SEO, since it keeps visitors on your site longer.
3. Write Custom URL Slugs
When you create new content on your site, whether it’s a new page, product listing, blog, or other type of content, a random URL slug is created for you. Change it.
Rename every URL on your site to a custom name that is descriptive and (preferably) includes a relevant keyword. Clarity is important if you want users to click on your URLs.
4. Create Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business Page)
A lot of business owners ignore a Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business (or GMB, for short), but it really is in your best interest to take advantage of this service.
It’s another way for potential customers to find you. Your free Google Business Profile provides interested parties with a convenient way to learn about your business at a glance, from your location and hours to reviews and directions.
When you fill out your profile, make sure to include multiple service areas and write a keyword optimized description of your business. Fill in as much of the info as you can for a complete profile users will find helpful.
5. Add Meta Descriptions to Your Pages
On Squarespace and just about every website development platform that’s out there, you have the opportunity to write meta descriptions for your pages. Do so.
Create unique meta descriptions for each page. They should be around 160 characters in length, and it’s a good idea to include a different contextually relevant keyword for each meta description you write.
While you’re at it, write a unique website title of around 60 to 70 characters in length for each site page.
Treat your meta descriptions like informative advertising copy that encourages someone to click on your site from the list of options that a search generates.
6. Register Your Site With Search Console
After creating your Squarespace site, you want to let Google know that it exists. Do this by submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console (GSC) to verify your site.
Squarespace’s help center walks you through how to verify your website with GSC; they even include a video to take you through the process.
However, we understand this can be a little tricky. If you’re trying to connect to GSC and verify your site but you’re running into issues, we can help you set this up as well as provide additional customized assistance via a video call. We’ve verified sites on GSC countless times and can walk you through it, or complete the task for you, quickly and correctly.
7. Add Alt-Tags to Your Images
An often-overlooked area for adding keywords is your set of site images. Your images should have accompanying alt-tags.
What are these, and why do they matter? Alt-tags are attributes you can assign to your images. Each is a description of the associated image, and it’s helpful to users and crawlers alike.
Googlebots and other search engine crawlers can’t make sense of pictures alone, but if each photo has a written description attached to it, these images can now be crawled via their text descriptions. Alt-tags, then, boost your Squarespace SEO reach. Include relevant keywords in your alt-tag write-ups.
In addition, visually impaired individuals rely on alt-tags, which can be read by accessibility software. Screen readers can read aloud the info you add about images to users who are blind.
8. Test Your Site’s Speed
How does your Squarespace site’s loading speed compare to similar websites? Go to GTmetrix, a speed testing site, and type in the name of your site. Then click “Test your site,” and you’ll get key insights about your website’s speed.
Repeat the process for competitors’ websites and for popular sites like Wikipedia or Youtube. Compare the analyses for your site and these other sites. How does your Squarespace site’s loading speed compare?
If it’s about the same, you’re probably in good shape. If it’s significantly slower, you can put some of our other best practices into play to improve your site’s loading speed.
Also, take into account the suggestions the speed testing tool provides. These can help you take steps to make your site load faster and improve the experience for your users.
One tip: Google PageSpeed Insights is a confusing analyzing tool, so I recorded a video if you are curious on how to understand your PageSpeed Insight score, specifically around Core Web Vitals.
9. Change Your Default Social Sharing Images
You want control over the look of social posts on Facebook and other networks that link back to your site. With Squarespace, you have the ability to change your default social sharing images to something that’s attractive, compelling, and related to your site in a meaningful way.
Squarespace offers help pages that explain how to add a social sharing logo or an alternate social sharing image. The right images can draw more visitors to your site and improve your Squarespace SEO.
10. Add a Favicon to Your Ecommerce Site
Also called site icons, favicons are branding elements that appear in browser tabs and bookmark lists. A favicon could be your company logo or a marketing design associated with your primary product line.
Ecommerce sites benefit from having favicons because these mighty little icons help increase brand awareness. Essentially, site icons help users identify and trust sites quickly. In addition to showing up at the tops of browser tabs, favicons can appear in bookmarked lists, within search results, and in browser history areas.
In terms of SEO, favicons help indirectly by creating a better user experience and greater brand awareness.
11. Use Google Analytics
If you have not yet started to make use of Google Analytics, start now. This powerful platform can be your best friend when it comes to understanding and improving your Squarespace SEO. With GA you can:
See where visitors are coming from
Learn which keywords are bringing in more traffic
Gain insights on your bounce rate and length of time people spend on your site
Understand the behavior of your site visitors
And much more
12. Get Backlinks
When other sites, especially ones that are popular and respected, link back to your Squarespace website, it’s like getting a huge vote of confidence, and users notice this.
Also called inbound or incoming links, backlinks from reputable sources tell the audiences of those sites that you are someone worth looking into and possibly doing business with.
In addition, backlinks signal to Google and other search engines that your content is approved by other sites, even some that have been around a long time.
When many sites link back to the same webpage, it’s more likely that a search engine will place that page higher on search results.
13. Remove Duplicate Content
Keep content on your pages original; avoid copying and pasting from one page to another. The reason? Duplicate content confuses search engines. They won’t know which page to point to.
If you have a page that you’d like to rank higher for a specific keyword, but for search results Google chooses another of your pages with duplicate content, your optimization efforts will suffer.
To keep search engines from getting confused, get rid of any duplicate content. Rewrite these duplicate sections using sound keyword practices.
14. Add a Chatbot
Many Squarespace sites, particularly ecommerce ones, can benefit from the addition of a chatbot. This provides a means to engage with potential customers even when you’re on vacation or asleep. Chatbots work around the clock and can address questions automatically for you, which sometimes can make the difference between gaining or losing a potential client.
In addition, chatbots can help visitors stick around longer on your site, which can push you up the ranks in searches over time.
15. Include Clear Calls to Action
Some people write terrific web pages but then fail to invite the visitor to take action. Even if your pages read beautifully, you may lose sales and customers if you don’t provide a clear, easy to find call to action on every single page of your site.
Calls to action (CTAs) can include:
An invitation to contact you via email, phone, or contact form
An offer to download an electronic freebie
A suggestion to check out related products
A recommendation to read your exclusive reports
An invitation to schedule an appointment
Calls to action guide your visitors on what they need to do to access the information, products, or services you offer. Add CTAs in different places and in different ways, including internal links, buttons, pop-ups, and more.
16. Reduce the Sizes of Your Image Files
Large images often result in painfully slow page loading times. This creates a poor user experience and penalizes your Squarespace SEO. You risk losing visitors who don’t want to wait, and you end up with uncomfortably high bounce rates.
To avoid these problems, simply resize your image files. Make them smaller. Unlike images used for brochures and other print materials, your online photos don’t need to be super high-res. Shrinking the file size of your online images throughout your site will make all your pages load faster.
You can resize photos manually, or you can use a handy image compression tool such as Imageoptim. This free tool can make your images load faster for a better user experience and, over time, better Squarespace SEO. With this and similar tools, you’ll be able to maintain image quality (very important) while reducing file size.
17. Remove or Disable Dead Pages
Dead pages are no good. They mislead and frustrate visitors, result in high bounce rates, and waste your audience’s time. Dead pages can cost you in terms of SEO; if search engines start to deem your information unreliable, you’ll end up lower and lower on search engine results.
Squarespace provides you with options to disable or hide your inactive or no longer relevant pages.
Determine if you want to delete these pages (will you ever use them again?) or simply hide them for now from being visible. Your options include:
Enabling pages
Disabling pages
Keeping a page active but hidden from navigation
Keeping a page private for some visitors but visible on navigation
Keeping a page active for visitors but hidden from search engines
18. Secure Your Site
Make sure your Squarespace site does NOT start with http://.
It needs to begin with https:// for security purposes.
It’s a subtle difference, but a very important one. Sensitive information like your customers’ credit card details will be better protected with the https:// option.
For your site’s security, take the following steps:
Log into your Squarespace account and select your site
Find Settings>Advanced>SSL
Choose the Secure and HSTS Secure options
Squarespace provides help pages focused on understanding SSL certificates and explaining different settings. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It’s a technology that makes the connection between your browser and the sites you visit secure.
HSTS stands for HTTP Strict Transport Security. It’s a mechanism that protects sites against certain types of attacks.
19. Make Use of 301 Redirects
If you change a page’s URL, always create a 301 redirect. This is a way to redirect your visitors when they are looking for a page that has moved to another location.
Say someone stumbles across your old URLs, perhaps through a blog somebody wrote about your business a couple of years ago. When they click on that link and get an error message, you’ve lost an opportunity for engagement.
To prevent this, and to get visitors who find your old URLs to stay on your site, enjoy the experience, and help boost your SEO, implement a 301 redirect. With this in place, visitors will automatically be sent to your updated, active URL.
20. Make Your Squarespace Site Mobile Friendly
Some developers take great care to design beautiful websites for desktop and laptop computer screens, but they overlook making their sites mobile friendly.
Make sure your team or your developer checks your site on smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. More and more people are doing online searches through their mobile devices. If they have a poor user experience, they won’t be back. You’ll lose customers and your Squarespace SEO will start to lose its edge.
Globally, more than half of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Ensure your site is attractive and user friendly on people’s phones and other portable devices.
21. Target Long-Tail Keywords
Especially if you’re in ecommerce selling a wide range of products, or very niche ones, long-tail keywords are your friends.
Or if you offer specialized services, long-tail keywords can boost your Squarespace SEO.
Long-tail keywords are simply longer and more specific keyword phrases people can search with; incorporating them into your content can help people find you more easily.
Here are some examples of long-tail keywords:
Rainy day activities for toddlers
Mazda Miata repair specialist
Grow lights for tropical orchids
Honeymoon cash fund registry
22. Add Semi-Professional Images to Your Site and GMB Listing
The more you surf the web, the more you start to see the same stock images over and over again. For some purposes, like blogs or social media posts, free stock images are perfectly fine. But for your website pages and Google My Business (GMB) listing, opt to use semi professional images to distinguish yourself from online visual noise.
Good images attract attention. They evoke feelings and emotions; they may even make your visitors want to do business with you. They can bring you greater credibility, and in turn, more SEO power.
Overly polished images often look staged, and amateur photos look, well, amateurish. Semi professional is the solid middle ground you want your site to stand on.
Either hire a photographer to create images of your products, people, location, and more that you can add to your site, or pay for higher-quality stock images. This will protect you from creating a site that looks too much like your competitors’.
23. Add a Testimonials Page
People want to know what others have to say about doing business with you. Reviews and testimonials offer key, firsthand insights into questions such as:
How’s your customer service?
What type of experience did others have with you?
What do people say about your products? Your services?
Are you reliable? Honest? Courteous? Knowledgeable?
Do you provide services in a prompt manner?
Did your consultation improve someone’s life?
With a testimonials page on your Squarespace site, you can help boost the level of confidence new visitors will have in you and your enterprise. If you don’t have such a page, visitors may be turned off and decide to go elsewhere.
24. Include a Detailed FAQs Page
Some visitors will check out your home page and a couple of your service or product pages and be perfectly satisfied with that.
Others want more information. A lot more information. And they’re willing to hang around your well-crafted FAQs page to read through all the details about your company, your offerings, the ordering process, your origin story, and more.
Give these visitors what they want by providing a well-written, well-designed FAQs page. These pages, when they’re carefully crafted, can make great landing pages and can keep your visitors on your site longer.
The more you attract visitors and the longer you can keep them on your site, the better your Squarespace SEO will become.
25. Post New Content Regularly
Whether it’s posting blogs every month, creating new product pages, or adding more content to existing pages, posting new content regularly helps with your SEO. It keeps your site from becoming stagnant, and it gives search engine crawlers new material to sort through.
Just make sure you add quality content that visitors can benefit from. Optimize your new content for keywords you’d like the page to rank well for.
26. Optimize Your Videos
Are there videos on your site? You can optimize them.
Whether videos make up a central component of your site, or you’ve created a few instructional videos your visitors can benefit from, know that quality videos can improve user experience and keep visitors at your site longer.
For optimization purposes, take the following steps:
Upload your videos there
Write keyword optimized descriptions for your channel and for each video
Use the code YouTube provides to embed your videos in your Squarespace site
27. List Your Location
To improve your local ranking on Google and other search engines, list your business location. Include your location on your:
Contact page
Footer
Home page
Service area page
Google offers tips on how to improve your local ranking. Their recommendations include checking and updating your business information for better visibility. In particular, make sure that you:
Have entered complete and accurate business data, including physical address and phone number
Verify your business locations so that they show up on local search results in Maps and Search
Post accurate business hours
Add relevant photos of your location
28. Load Blogs Faster on Mobile Devices
There’s a simple trick you can use to make sure your Squarespace blog pages load quickly on smartphones and other mobile devices: Enable AMP.
Here’s how to make use of the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) option:
Choose Settings> Blogging on your main Squarespace panel
Scroll to the bottom of the blogging options
Pick AMP Enabled
29. Create a Blog Template
If you’re going to be writing a lot of blogs (and you probably should), creating a blog template will save you time so you don’t have to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel every time.
With a template, your settings and formatting will already be saved so you can dive right in to creating content without worrying about the other details. This is a huge time saver.
30. Create a Custom 404 Page
A 404 error page appears when a visitor tries to access a page on your site that doesn’t actually exist. Default server error pages are plain and uninspiring.
When you create your own custom 404 page, you can make it a whole lot better. Your customized 404 error page can:
Incorporate humor, where appropriate
Provide links to some of the pages on your site that do exist, which the user can click on and visit
Include some of your branding
Just make sure you don’t redirect the error page to your existing pages. Search engines don’t appreciate it, and users find it confusing.
31. Audit Your Site
Your Squarespace SEO may be suffering for reasons you’re not even aware of. The way to find out is to do an audit of your site.
This is a lot simpler and faster than you might think, and it will point out issues you can start fixing right away.
32. Pay Attention to Your Heading Structure
H1, H2, and H3 headings and subheadings break up your content to make it easier for readers to scan your pages and locate what they need. Nobody likes to see a wall of writing; it’s intimidating. Headings make the content digestible.
They also help search engines. Your headings should be informative to readers and, where appropriate, keyword inclusive for SEO.
Headings help users find what they need quickly, enabling them to zoom in on the relevant section and absorb the info found there. Don’t try to be cute or clever with headings; be informative, first and foremost. Headings give your page much-needed structure.
33. Write for Your Target Audience
Who is your target audience? You’ll generate more interest when you fill your website with content that speaks to your audience.
The writing needs to take on the right tone and language for your audience. Say you have a couple of businesses; one is directed at people in their sixties looking at retirement options, and the other is for people in their teens considering career options.
Not only will you be writing about different things for each site, but you’ll also need to modify your writing style to appeal to the target demographic.
People will feel uncomfortable if you’re not speaking their language. They’ll feel as if they’re in the wrong place, and they’ll leave before they’ve even given your site a chance.
34. Try to Get in a Featured Snippet
What are featured snippets? They are those coveted info bits found at the top of search engine results pages.
A featured snippet is that box at the top of organic search results that answers users’ questions. It’s also called an answer box. That kind of visibility would do wonders for your Squarespace SEO.
You can increase the chance that one of your pages will be selected by search engine programs to appear in featured snippets. Try the following:
Do your keyword research
Identify phrases people search for
Incorporate answers to common questions into your site
Ensure your site is visually appealing
Maintain a high level of quality throughout your site
Add long-tail keywords
In your content, answer common questions clearly and concisely
Ensure your images are sized for fast loading
Try this tool from rich results test from Google to review.
35. Optimize for Bing
As website developers, we all focus a lot of our attention on optimizing for Google searches. This is necessary, but it’s important to remember that other search engines exist, too.
A big one is Bing. Optimizing for Bing makes a lot of sense. It can increase your reach on a search engine that’s less competitive in many ways.
Familiarize yourself with the free SEO tools that are available for improving page rankings on Bing. If you don’t have the time or energy to do this yourself, hire a developer who can add Bing-focused optimization to your Squarespace site.
36. Keep Font Size Simple and Consistent
Mixing up too many font types and sizes on a page can get confusing for users. It can also impact your loading speed.
To avoid these issues, keep font types and sizes consistent. Squarespace recommends using no more than two different fonts. From our experience we feel you’re safe with up to three. But avoid more; it starts to get really messy.
37. Monitor Your Squarespace SEO
Squarespace provides its own set of analytics that you will find useful in determining the performance of your site, including individual pages.
In addition, monitor the performance of your site via Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
With different platforms tracking your visitors, hits, length of time on a page, bounce rates, top keywords, and more, you’ll get a bigger picture of what’s working and what can still be optimized for better results. Make it a habit to check analytics via both Squarespace and Google.
38. Seek More Opportunities to Add Keywords
Image Source: Unsplash
Your page content, blogs, GMB profile, and page titles are great places to add important keywords naturally.
But there are other places, too. We’ve touched upon some already, but here they are again, along with a few new ones:
Headings (your H1, H2s, and H3s)
Categories
File names
Image captions
Meta descriptions
Title tags
Video descriptions
Just make sure to avoid stuffing. If you add any keyword phrase somewhere, it has to make sense. It must fit in naturally. User experience always comes first. Don’t write nonsense just to fit in a few more keywords.
39. Periodically Update Older Blog Content
Image Source: Unsplash
Blogs get old and outdated. From time to time, review your blog content to make sure the information is still fresh and valuable.
If some of your old posts are no longer relevant, spend a little time refreshing them.
40. Add SEO Descriptions
Every page of your Squarespace site needs to have an SEO description. The process is pretty straightforward. Follow these steps for your home page:
Go to the Home Menu
Click Marketing
Click SEO
Find the Search Appearance section
Click the Home tab
Edit the SEO Site Description field
Click Save
Turn to the Squarespace SEO descriptions help guide for more details on adding these valuable descriptions to other pages and to collection items.
41. Fix All Typos, Grammar Errors, and Spelling Mistakes
Image Source: Unsplash
Readability is super important. People will question your company’s professionalism if your site is full of spelling errors and grammatical issues.
It’s not a bad idea to hire a professional writer to proofread and edit your content. When a site reads professionally, people stick around, and your Squarespace SEO benefits.
42. Keep Conversions in Mind
Image Source: Unsplash
Your site needs to exhibit quality and create a positive user experience. It should be attractive, easy to navigate, and informative.
As you create different elements and optimize them, don’t lose site of something your site has to do well for your business to succeed: convert visitors into clients.
There are many ways to develop and grow your fanbase. Here are some points to keep in mind throughout your website creation process:
Encourage visitors to take action on your site
Provide contact forms visitors can fill in and submit
Offer online free items visitors can access in exchange for their email address
Provide a newsletter they can sign up for
Create opportunities to view products and make purchases
Add clear calls to action (CTAs)
43. Analyze Your Data
Take the time to carefully review and analyze the wealth of analytical data Squarespace and Google provide about your site’s performance. Doing so will shed light on which parts of your Squarespace SEO strategy are working, and which parts need to be revised.
Numbers offer key insights on traffic patterns. They can tell you:
When you have more visitors on your site
Which pages visitors gravitate to the most
How long people stay on your site
Which keywords are working the best
Which keywords are ineffective
Changes in visiting or behavior trends over time
And much more
44. Use Dropdown Accordion-Style Menus
Especially if your site has many pages or categories, dropdown accordion menus can maintain your site structure and keep all your navigation organized without your menus looking cluttered.
To keep your navigation bar appealing, inviting, and neat, organize brands, services, and other sections with the ease that accordion menus offer.
45. Keep Your Keyword Focus Tight
Image Source: Unsplash
Some people want to add dozens of keywords to a page. There’s no need to do this. Instead, focus on one keyword per page.
Avoid the broad, general keywords that other companies that are bigger and have been around longer are already ranking for.
Instead, use longer, more specific terms that can differentiate your business, products, and services.
For example, instead of trying to rank for “landscaping,” optimize your page for the term “low maintenance landscaping” or “front yard landscaping.”
46. Beautify Your Blog Posts
Plain text is boring. Even your most interesting, engaging blogs might be skipped or overlooked if you don’t have visual elements to draw people in.
Consider adding any of the following to your blog posts to beautify them:
Images
Buttons
Videos
Audio
Summaries
Bullet point lists
Spacers
47. Get Unbiased Eyes to Look at Your Site
Image Source: Unsplash
It can be a huge help to have additional pairs of eyes looking at your site. Find people you trust and respect and ask them to review your site. Ask them to answer questions such as:
What do you like best about this site?
Which sections are unattractive or off-putting?
Did you notice any problems with navigation?
What do you think of the loading times?
Can you easily read or find site info with your phone?
What would you change?
An unbiased third party can give you honest answers that can help you improve your site for a better user experience and, ultimately, better Squarespace SEO.
48. Make Use of Google Search Central
We’ve already covered helpful Google resources, and here’s another. Google Search Central is a place to refer to frequently whether you’re a marketer, business owner, developer, or SEO specialist.
This space presents case studies, documentation, SEO starter guides, and much more, all designed to help you maximize your SEO power.
49. Maintain Your Site
It’s one of the great mysteries of the online world, but sometimes, sites just break for no apparent reason. Platform or tool updates can result in your site looking different than how you originally designed it.
Because the online landscape is constantly changing, be sure to keep your Squarespace site maintained. Periodically review every part of your site to ensure buttons still work, links are active, formatting looks good, and information is still accurate and relevant.
50. Prune Your Pages
Overly long pages are not necessary. If your pages get cluttered, too wordy, or endlessly long, users will lose interest and leave.
There are legitimate cases when less is more. Don’t be afraid to cut back on some of your pages if they have become unwieldly.
If you have low-performing pages, it might be time to replace them or remove them altogether. It might come as a surprise to some, but the reality is that Google favors sites that have a few high-quality pages over sites that have many low-quality pages. To achieve better Squarespace SEO, feel free to prune your site when it’s called for.
51. Consult With SEO Experts
You may be a great businessperson or freelancer who knows your stuff. You may not be an SEO specialist.
There is nothing wrong with consulting with Squarespace SEO specialists who live and breathe this stuff. They can redirect you quickly and offer the expert guidance you need to move forward and start seeing your pages appear at or near the top of searches.
52. Guest Post on Relevant Websites
In addition to positioning you as a go-to expert on a particular subject, writing guest posts on relevant websites helps your site gain more visibility through cross-linking.
This means that the site for which you’re writing a guest post will link back to your site.
You’ll also want to write a blog, news blurb, or other piece of content on your site that links to your guest post on the other site.
Cross-linking websites can boost your Squarespace site’s SEO, helping your pages rank higher in Google searches.
53. Improve the Look of Your Site
There are times when rebranding your site is the best thing you can do. If your current Squarespace site is lackluster and in need of a facelift, you can modify its appearance with different colors, formats, page templates, font styles, and more.
For inspiration, take a look at design-flow.io, where you’ll find a wealth of ideas to get your creative juices flowing. New sites are added here daily, so come back often. Check out Square Kicker for the #1 No-Code Design & Animation Extension for Squarespace.
54. Simplify Your User Experience (UX)
Image Source: Unsplash
Great Squarespace SEO isn’t about having the most massive, outrageous site out there. Simple can be much better, for a lot of reasons. Simplifying your website build process can:
Lead to cleaner designs that are easier to navigate
Result in faster page loading times
Be seen as better and more attractive by your target audience
Enable you to get a solid site up faster so you can start seeing SEO benefits sooner
It’s better to keep your design flow streamlined and effective than to try to add a lot of complicated elements that, in the end, might do nothing more than drag your site down. Simple efficiency can lead to better load times and a more pleasant user experience.
55. Troubleshoot Individual Page SEO Issues
If you’re not getting the Squarespace SEO results you want and expect, it’s time to start troubleshooting your site. Take it a page at a time. Start with some of your key pages, like your home page or a page you’ve created for your top services or products.
Check and fix your SEO issues, one page at a time, until all the problems are resolved and you start to get the SEO results you’ve been looking for.
56. Stand Out With Rich Snippets
Rich snippets are different from the featured snippets we discussed earlier. A rich snippet is additional useful information that tells searchers more about your content.
Also called rich results, these snippets are Google search results with extra data displayed. Here are examples of rich snippet types:
Reviews
Special events
Recipes
They attract additional attention and help your site stand out. Google obtains rich snippet data from specific HTML code on your page called structured markup. Schema is a good example of this type of code. You can add schema to your site’s code to try to get rich snippets in search results.
A good web developer can you help you with this one.
57. Write and Schedule Your Blog Posts in Advance
Squarespace’s blog post scheduler is a nifty feature you can use to your advantage. Because ongoing SEO relies on the creation of optimized content, you can benefit from writing new blogs every month.
However, you may not have the time to do this on a regular basis. Here’s where writing in advance and scheduling for later publication comes in. You can make more efficient use of your time and resources by doing the following:
Take your keyword research and select 10 - 20 of your top terms
Come up with blog ideas, one per keyword
Create a list of blog titles
Set aside time to complete 5 - 10 blog posts
Once they’re done, schedule all of them in advance for the upcoming months (posting monthly, bimonthly, or weekly)
This is a task you can either do yourself, if you have the time and writing chops, or source out. Perhaps you have someone internally who can write and post content for you.
Provide them with your keyword research and blog titles (let them improve these titles, if they want to), and create a schedule. Then have them write and schedule out your blogs, each one optimized for a specific keyword.
Do this consistently, and you’ll see great improvements in your organic SEO. Even inconsistent posting can yield positive Squarespace SEO results, but consistency is better.
58. Make Use of Development Tools
Whether you are a site developer or a business owner creating sites for your business entities, you can benefit from using tools designed to speed up and simplify the development process.
There are so many tools out there that it can get overwhelming determining which ones are helpful and which are a waste of time. Ask around to see what other developers you know and respect are using. Conduct searches to see which tools rise to the top of organic searches.
We use development tools when the need arises. Here are some you may want to try:
Squarespace Websites Tools Extension PRO: A paid subscription that gives you access to time-saving shortcuts. A great feature is the ability to see multiple viewpoints to facilitate designing your site for laptops, tablets, mobile devices, and more.
Fonts Ninja Chrome: This free plugin lets you easily determine which fonts are being used on your favorite websites, including colors, sizes, types, and spacing, making it easier for you to replicate some of your favorite looks and styles on your own Squarespace site.
Coolers Color Palette Tool: A useful tool for branding purposes, it helps you come up with the ideal color combinations for your site.
The more streamlined that your site is, and the more intuitive that your navigation and content placement are, the easier it will be for your users to find their way around.
If a user is enjoying the experience of being on your site, they’ll stay longer. As this starts to happen more consistently, your Squarespace SEO will improve.
59. Use Clear & Readable Fonts with Healthy Spacing
If you want your visitors to be able to read your site (and of course, you do!), choose fonts and text spacing that makes it easier for them. If your readers are squinting and getting headaches trying to make out the words on your site, you’ll lose customers, and your SEO power will decline.
60. Focus on Your Clients
Image Source: Unsplash
You can design the most interesting site in the world, but if it doesn’t serve your intended audience and loyal clients, what good is it?
While your site reflects your business, it needs to help your clients in real, meaningful ways. Never lose sight of this important fact. The more that your Squarespace site serves your clients, and the better that they resonate with your brand, the higher your chances of boosting your SEO.
For Additional Help
In the end, Squarespace SEO efforts center around answering specific questions people might have and presenting your site as providing possible solutions.
SEO and user experience are tied together intricately. The better that your visitors are served by your site, the longer they’ll stay, and the more powerful your SEO becomes.
If you’d like to learn more about Squarespace SEO optimization, let us help. We offer several ways you can tap into for site optimization tips and ideas.
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We’ve designed more than 150 websites and optimized more than 700 sites for our clients. As Squarespace SEO leaders, we’re in a prime position to help you get the most from your site development and optimization efforts. Connect with us today.
