The Weekly Squarespace SEO Checklist
Good things take time. This is true for summiting mountains, finding true love— or enhancing your website SEO.
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What’s amazing about SEO is that it’s a free, organic way to rank competitively on search engines and capture loads of traffic. However, what’s a little harder to swallow is that SEO is an ongoing process that requires a lot of time, patience, and maintenance.
But here’s the good news: if you can keep a houseplant alive (yes, even succulents), then you can also grow your SEO.
You just need a system to keep you on track. And we’re here to help!
Below, we’ll outline our weekly SEO checklist. This checklist can put you on the path to increasing and optimizing your Squarespace website’s SEO in just about 15 minutes per week.
Ready to get started? Read on.
Table of Contents in Detail Hide
Here’s Your Squarespace SEO Weekly Checklist
Check for dead links
Review analytics from the past week
Post new content
Index new content
Read at least one new article about SEO best practices
Share your website on social media
Below, we’ll dive into how to achieve all of the above, and some specific tools and tricks that can help. We suggest reading through our detailed instructions on each checkpoint below to make things easier and more efficient.
The first time you run through your checklist, it may take a little time. But as you continue to do this week after week, it will begin to feel like a very simple, streamlined process.
Here we go:
Checking for Dead Links on your Squarespace Website
A hyperlink on a website that points to a web page that has been deleted or moved is called a dead link. And unfortunately, if you have these on your site, Google will penalize you for it.
Why?
It’s Google’s (and other search engine’s) job to make sure their users have a great experience on the websites they recommend in their search results. So, if a user clicks a dead link and immediately leaves that webpage, it signals to Google that the site was not a good fit for the search query.
Perhaps worse, once you’ve lost that traffic, it’s likely gone forever: 88% of online consumers won’t return to a website after they’ve had a bad experience.
This is why it’s so important for your SEO to consistently check for dead links on your site. Our favorite tool to use for this is Deadlinkchecker.com. It’s free. Simply put your URL into their link checker bar and it will scan your site for dead ends and 404s.
Be aware that the dead links might not always be your internal links. Sometimes, dead outbound links that you use on your site (like blog sources, etc.) can hurt your SEO as well.
Review Your Analytics from the Past Week
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It’s much easier to troubleshoot any SEO issues when you are checking on the progress of your site every week. This way, you can spot small issues before they become big ones.
We suggest using Google Analytics and your built-in Squarespace analytics dashboard to track both your audience and traffic from the week prior.
Look for underperforming pages (pages with high bounce rates, low traffic, or short visit durations). Investigate those pages for obvious errors. Then, assess the design and content of the page. Ask yourself:
Is the purpose of this page clear?
Is the content written clearly for the audience?
Am I using the right keywords on this page?
Is the call-to-action relevant?
Are there too many different goals on this page?
Is the copy error-free?
Is the design too distracting?
Then, fix any immediate issues you identify or try some different content/layouts to see if you can get the page back up to par.
Really, there’s a lot you can do with analytics tools, and we can’t dive into everything in this article. However, here’s a simple two-step process to use during your weekly SEO check:
Compare how your traffic stacks up to the past week and month
Make a list of improvements that need to be made (this could be posting more content or tagging more photos, etc.)
Using analytics is a great way to pinpoint and target these improvements. If you want to dive a little deeper into how to use Google Analytics (specifically G4), this is a great resource.
Post New Content to your Squarespace Website
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If you want to optimize your website for SEO, it can’t be static. Your website should be an ever-evolving resource for your visitors with a consistent stream of rich new content.
We know most business owners don’t have time to write a 2,000-word blog post every week. But even small content additions can make a big impact. In general, you should aim to add some sort of new content to your Squarespace website every week. This can include things like a new event, a new product, a new image, or a new page.
Why?
Because new content = new traffic. Every time you add something new to your website, it gives your audience another chance to find you on search engines!
When adding new content, there are a few important best practices to remember in order to get the most SEO bang-for-your-buck:
Any new content you add should reflect your website’s targeted keywords and keyword phrases
Be sure to add SEO metadata and image alt tags to any new content that you add. This can be done in the SEO section of your Squarespace dashboard.
So, make a goal to add at least one new piece of content to your site every week. We promise you’ll begin to see the fruits of your labor.
Index New Content in your Google Search Console
Sometimes, just adding new content to your site isn’t enough for Google to automatically find it. A great way to speed up that process is to make sure that any new content you add is then indexed through your Google Search Console.
This is an important step in maximizing your efforts from above. In fact, content creation leads to an average of 434% more indexed pages than websites without updated content!
If you don’t yet have Google Search Console connected to your Squarespace site, follow the steps below to connect it:
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In your Home Menu, click Analytics.
Click Search Keywords.
Click Connect in the panel's pop-up.
Log in to the Google account you want to connect to your site.
Review the permissions, then click Allow.
Wait 72 hours for the data to populate.
If your site is already connected, you can signal to Google that you’ve added content to your site that you’d like them to index for search results. This is done using their URL inspection tool:
How to Index Specific Pages with the URL Inspection Tool:
On the Google Search Console dashboard, select the site you’d like to index from the property menu in the top left corner.
Click URL inspection.
Enter the full URL of a page that hasn’t been indexed and press Enter or Return.
Click Request Indexing.
Repeat for any additional page URLs on pages where you’ve made changes.
It can take time for Google to register the changes you’ve made, but we’ve seen it happen as fast as 1-2 days.
Continue to Grow your Knowledge about SEO Weekly
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As with anything in life, the best way to become an SEO expert is to be a continual student on the topic. If you can dedicate just 5 minutes per week to reading about SEO best practices, that’s 52 articles per year! That’s a lot of actionable information you can consume (especially if you focus on a source that’s specific to improving Squarespace SEO).
Maybe subscribe to some newsletters you find valuable (like this one). This takes the searching off your plate and delivers great tips straight to your inbox. When you find a great tip, make a note to act on it.
If you get wary, remember what you’re working toward:
A whopping 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines. And 70-80% of people ignore paid search results, choosing to only click on organic search results.
If you could capture that traffic, how would it change your business? How would it change your life? Taking small steps each week can equal huge progress in the long run.
Share Your Website (Or Your Newest Content) On Social Media
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Getting more traffic to your website is always going to improve your SEO. It shows Google that people are finding your site relevant and that they should show you in results more often.
One of the best ways to encourage more traffic is to share your website or new content on social media (each week, if not more).
There are a lot of ways to get creative with this. If you already have a social media strategy in place, simply work your new content into the rotation every week.
Link to your newest blog posts. If you change the content on one of your pages, find a way to promote that page on your channels. Remind people of your services. Promote an event on your website. The opportunities are endless.
A best practice to keep in mind is that anything you’re doing online should run through your website.
So, for example, if you’re running a social media contest, build the landing page on your website. Or, if you’re hosting an event put all the information about the event on a blog or website page. Doing everything internally instead of using third-party platforms just helps to garner more traffic to your own site.
On the subject of your social media channels — make sure those are optimized as well. Use your keywords in the About and Info sections. Use appropriate image descriptions and (most importantly) make sure you’ve added links to your website in all your profiles.
ProTip: 46% of all Google searches have local intent, so make sure your business’s location is listed in your social media profiles and on your Google My Business Account.
Not Sure You Can Keep Up? Consider Hiring Out to a Squarespace SEO Expert
We get it. Running a business is time-consuming. Adding one more thing to your plate can seem a bit overwhelming. However, ignoring your SEO can really hinder your growth.
So, what’s the solution?
Hire us for help! For $99 a month, we handle all of your monthly SEO optimizations for you, including:
Onsite & Technical SEO
Writing SEO Descriptions for pages, blogs, events, and/or products
Writing Image Alt Text for New Content
Submitting Your Sitemap to Google Search Console
Handling 301 Redirects as needed
Ensuring domain authority is optimized
Ensuring no SEO penalties are happening
Pointing out best-performing content for your website
Offering possible suggestions for improving SEO
Weigh the cost of outsourcing this service to the cost of spending your time on and see if this solution would be a good fit for you.
We eat, sleep, and breathe Squarespace SEO, and we’d love to dig into your site to see how we can help.
