Is Squarespace Good for SEO?
I’m guessing you’ve stumbled onto this blog post because you’re trying to figure out whether or not to use Squarespace for your website. And one of the key factors you want to know is whether or not you can customize the SEO settings.
If you’re not familiar with SEO, it stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process of increasing organic reach of your website in search engines like Google.
Between the interwebs and Facebook groups full of online entrepreneurs, there are some common themes that are said about SEO…
“Your website will be easier to find on Google search with Wordpress”
“Squarespace SEO sucks”
“Everyone else I see says you’re missing out on SEO not being on WordPress”
Have you heard this?
Statements like this make me cringe because for the sake of online business owners, creatives like photographers and floral designers, and other small business owners, this simply isn’t the case.
It explains why many clients come to me with so much confusion around SEO when there’s tons of misinformation spread around.
I worked in the SEO industry for 2 years on accounts for some of the biggest brands in the US and high profile individuals, and I can tell you that is all crap.
In this post, I’m breaking down the truth that most small businesses owners don’t know of. I hope this really provides some clarity around Squarespace and its SEO capabilities.
How sites rank in Google
First, let’s talk about what it takes for your website to reach page 1 of Google.
Just note that this is the “CliffNotes” version specifically for online entrepreneurs and other service providers.
When you search something in Google, its goal is to show you the most relevant and unique content to satisfy what the searcher is looking for.
There are dozens of important ranking factors, but when your content and the technical aspects of your website and blog posts are optimized for the keywords you want to show up for, THAT is what is going to cause you to rank, not the platform.
However, I do want to note that you should stay away from Weebly or Wix because they are known to be low quality website builders. And I have seen for myself how Wix websites aren’t optimized for different screens, which is very bad when it comes to SEO.
Squarespace, Showit and Wordpress are all fair game.
When you are consistently blogging or adding unique and in-depth content to your site around a topic, you are sending signals to Google that your website is…
Fresh (being updated)
Authoritative (expert status)
Relevant (connected by common themes in your posts)
Your goal is to produce top-notch content that is worthy of a page 1 ranking. Just as important, you have to make sure you’re using the right keywords - words and phrases that you want to rank for.
You can be on Wordpress with a website that has no blog and be lost in the abyss of Google or be on Squarespace with a blog that gets updated weekly/biweekly and consistently show up on page 1 for various terms relating to your business. And vice versa.
The saying that “content is king” is no joke.
People think Wordpress and the Yoast SEO plugin are the holy grail of ranking, but at the end of the day it is merely a checklist. You enter your keyword and it tells you if your post can be more optimized for what you want to rank for.
That’s great for sure, but simply having Yoast or using Wordpress does not give you a boost in the rankings. It doesn’t make your site quicker, and it can actually do the opposite if you have too many plugins.
With Squarespace, you can still optimize your post manually.
Is Squarespace SEO friendly? Yes - here’s why
In terms of Squarespace's SEO "capabilities," it has all the necessary bells and whistles.
Squarespace features include...
AMP
AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It’s an optimized view for your blog posts on mobile, which helps to increase the loading time.
Clean URLs
You can customize all of your URLs, and all of them can be indexed and read by search engines.
Clean HTML Markup
HTML refers to the code in the backend, which is easily indexable by search engines.
Image optimization
Not only can you adjust the image file name after you upload it, but you can also add custom alt tags so Google better understands your images. For some formats, image descriptions are converted to alt tags.
Read more: How to Resize & Optimize for SEO on Squarespace
Google Search Keywords Analytics
The analytics panel inside Squarespace pulls in information from your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts (learn how to set that up here). This means you can view the most important website data directly from your Squarespace dashboard. Talk about being hella convenient!
Meta tags
You can change the title tag for your website as a whole and each individual page. You can also add a meta description for your website and all of its pages, including blog posts. These meta descriptions appear below your website title in the Google search results
Redirects
This makes it easy to switch domains and URLs for pages. So for example, when I changed my domain name from taylardigital.com to laurentaylar.com, I just made laurentaylar.com my primary domain in the backend and Squaresapce set up the redirect. I didn’t have to input any code myself or jump through any hoops to make this possible.
If you want to change URLs on your website and don’t want to send visitors to a 404 page, Squarespace makes it easy to do so.
Site map
A site map is a list of all your URLs that helps search engines like Google understand the structure of your website. Squarespace automatically generates this.
SSL
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. All domains through Squarespace automatically come with an SSL certificate. This shows Google that each page of your site has a secure connection and is encrypted.
Products can appear as rich results
Inside Squarespace, product images have the ability to become rich results, which includes the product name, a product image, description, price range, availability, and product page URL.
Mobile optimization
This is important because of the Mobile First Index. Google is ranking the mobile version of your site instead of desktop. Since user experience is important, Squarespace makes sure all websites look good on mobile
To sum it up, you can customize all the necessary SEO settings inside Squarespace.
How do I increase my SEO on Squarespace?
If I’ve convinced you that Squaresapce is a great platform to build your website and now you’re wondering how to boost your rankings in Google, then keep reading...
Optimize your website
Consider this the foundation of SEO - the bare bones.
First, you need to correctly optimize your website for both the content and technical elements for your pages. Many of these elements were mentioned above.
Read more: Squarespace SEO Guide: How to Optimize Your Website
Start blogging
After you’ve optimized your website, it’s time to start writing content! There’s many benefits to blogging for business - the best reason being that it gives you the power to show up in Google search and attract ideal clients for your services and digital products.
Adding content to your website can look like many things:
Writing blog posts from scratch
Repurposing your Instagram and Facebook written content
Podcast transcriptions
Video transcriptions
Whichever route you choose, it just needs to be added in a blog post format. Don’t already have a blog set up? Here’s a quick guide.
With your blog posts, there’s several elements you want to make sure are optimized:
Blog post title
URL
Meta description
Content
Images
and more!
Read more: Squarespace SEO: Ultimate Blog Post Guide to Rank in Google
Still not convinced? Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz, one of the top SEO blogs in the industry, praised Squarespace for its SEO capabilities.
"The Squarespace team has put together a remarkable platform. Every aspect of the product - user experience, featureset, SEO friendliness, design and more - all work together to create one of the few content management systems I'm proud to recommend."
If you’re not seeing a boost in traffic from your blog…
If you’re not results from your Squarespace blog, there could be a couple reasons for that:
You haven’t been blogging long enough or consistently enough
Your posts aren’t in-depth enough
You’re blogging isn’t focused around a 3-5 related themes or categories
You’re not optimizing your posts correctly
That’s where my blog posts listed above really come in handy! They’ll help you autocorrect so you can start showing up higher in the Google search results!
Looking to grow your organic reach through Google? Tired of your website and blog being buried in page 10 of the interwebs? Let’s chat about how we can explode your visibility and sales through my Squarespace SEO packages!
Looking for more Squarespace SEO tips? Check out these blog posts: