How to Create a Blog in Squarespace for Your Business
Looking to start a business blog on Squarespace? Look no further! I’ve broken this post down step by step to show you how to set up your blog.
Now I want to answer the question…
Is Squarespace good for blogging?
I’ve used Wordpress and Wix, and I absolutely love Squarespace the best. Chances are that if you’re reading this, you might already have a website set up in Squarespace for your business.
If not, here’s a couple quick reasons why I love Squarespace for your business:
Domain, hosting and Gsuite setup is all managed in one place
Their website templates are clean and minimal. And of course you can customize your own website.
The blog area is straightforward
The backend is a lot loss overwhelming than Wordpress
SEO (search engine optimization) is just as good on Squarespace as Wordpress (for the purpose of online business owners, anything against that is a myth)
In case you’re on the fence of starting a blog and you’re just reading this out of curiosity, blogging has many amazing benefits.
The biggest is getting found through Google, creating instant authority, and growing your email list on autopilot. That means not relying off of the Instagram and Facebook algorithm, which only shows your content to a fraction of your audience. That why I offer SEO as a service in addition to Squarespace website design.
So blogging sounds pretty sweet right?
My hope is that you can take this post and start your own blog.
Without further ado, here’s how to create your blog inside Squarespace.
1. Add a blog page
Click Pages. From here, decide where you want to start your blog. I’d recommend scrolling down to the Not Linked section. That way, no one will be able to see your half-finished blog as you’re designing it.
Click the + icon and choose a blog page. Now this is the only blog page you’ll need for your website. I’ve seen a couple instances where business owners think this is a blog post and will add multiple to their website. Don’t do this. This one blog page will house all of your blog posts.
In this area, you’ll see a search bar followed by a tab with selections - all, drafts, review, scheduled. You can use the search feature and other tabs to find blog posts quickly.
2. Click the + to add a post
An Edit Post box will pop up with a few different tabs. I’m going to walk through each of these one by one.
3. Content tab
Add your blog post title
Add a strong and clear title at the top. What does this mean? Someone should know exactly what they’re going to learn on the other side of your blog post title.
This is why listicles are great, for example - 4 ways to, 5 strategies to, 3 reasons for…
Keep your title to 60 characters because anything longer will get cut off in the Google search results.
Add your content and images
A text box will automatically appear. Drop your written content in here.
Inside the text box, you’ll notice a black bar pop up with different formatting options.
If you want to add an image, you can use the insert point to choose where you’d like it to go inside the post. If you want to indent the photo in any way, you can use spacer blocks by dragging them so that they line up with the images.
Make sure you format your blog posts for SEO and user experience
Add Heading 2 to your main points
Add Heading 3 to break your content down further if needed
Add bullets and numbers to break up content ideas...like this;)
Quick Note - if you want to view and edit your content as it would appear live, you can click save, then click on the post from the left panel. This will bring up the post on your screen and you can click edit on the actual post. Now you’ll be able to see your brand fonts and colors. This is only for Squarespace 7 and not 7.1.
Add categories and tags
Categories are the main topics of your business blog.
For example, if you’re a fitness coach, your categories might be:
Mindset
Nutrition
Exercise
Each of your blog posts would fit under one of those categories, maximum two categories.
Tags are the individual topics discussed in your blog post. Let’s say your blog post is “5 Easy At Home Workouts,” and it falls under the exercise category.
Your tags could be:
home workouts
work out from home
dumbbells exercise
exercise at home
weight lifting
hand weights
workout program
beginning workout
30 minute home gym exercise.
You get the picture. I’d recommend between 5 and 15. You don’t want this space to look spammy.
Comment settings
You should have your comment settings turned on for every single post.
Why?
Because when people leave comments…
It allows readers to interact with your content by asking questions or leaving feedback
It shows Google that your post is getting attention and for a post that is years old, it shows that it’s still active and people still find it relevant
So that you don’t have to do this manually for every single blog post, you can make this universal by going under Marketing - Blogging - Comments (double check).
Click on Draft
This is where you can manage when your blog post goes out.
Draft
This means your post is saved in Draft format.
Published
This will publish your blog post once you click save.
Want to change the order of your blog posts? Simply change the date it was published. Squarespace will always show the most recent blog posts at the top of your blog page and the oldest on the bottom.
Scheduled
This is the great feature that lets you plan your blog posts in advance. You can batch multiple blog posts at once and then schedule them out by the day and time.
Needs Review
This is great if you have a team working with you and need to mark that a post needs to be looked over before being published.
4. Options tab
Thumbnail image
This is the image that appears on your blog page.
This is a great place to put your pin-worthy vertical image for Pinterest.
However, if you click “search for image,” you’ll see a popup window with images. These are being pulled from Unsplash - you can search for images through here if you’d like. Or you can see the other images that you’ve uploaded before.
Post URL
This is the URL where the blog post will be accessible from. Many business owners will copy and paste their whole blog post title in here, but you don’t want to do that.
You want to only add only the keywords from your blog post title so it’s optimized for SEO.
Author
This really only applies if you have a team of writers. I just keep this to my name.
Source URL
If you’re writing your own content, you can just disregard this.
Excerpt
This is what can show up on your blog page. Basically, it’s a small snippet that appears below your blog posts, and gives the reader the ability to click read more.
This can also appear on your homepage or dedicated Instagram link-in-bio page as a preview of recent blog posts.
Featured
You can check this off if you’d like to include certain blog posts in a featured area on your website.
You can also feature and showcase blog posts by category or tag, which I will explain later.
5. SEO tab
SEO stands for search engine optimization. In simple terms, SEO involves tweaking the content and technical elements of your website and blog so that search engines like Google favor it. In order for your blog posts to get found in Google search, you need to be utilizing SEO best practices.
Here’s my ultimate guide to rank your Squarespace blog posts in Google.
Search results preview
This showcases how your blog post will appear in Google search.
It will appear as your blog post title followed by your site title.
SEO title
Personally, I leave this section alone.
Your blog post title should already be optimized for SEO, so I don’t recommend that you add anything in here.
SEO description
You want to add a description here. Your SEO description is also known as a meta description.
You only need 1-2 sentences explaining what the post is and you can include a call to action to entice people to click through from Google.
This is not a place to stuff keywords. It’s a common misconception that this area impacts ranking, but it does not. It’s for the user experience to give someone greater context about what the post is about.
Once you put your SEO description in, you can use the Search Results Preview to view how this would look.
6. Social
Social Preview
This is how the link will look when you post the link on social media, like Facebook for example.
Alternative Social Sharing Image
If you don’t like how the social preview looks, you can add a different image here. This image will be pulled in instead.
Similar to the thumbnail image under Options, you can use the “search for image” feature to find a photo from Unsplash.
7. Share
Send Post as Email
If you’re using Squarespace Email Campaigns, it will send out your post to your list when it’s published. This helps to automate the process instead of having to manually send your blog post to your email list.
Social
This is where you can connect your social media accounts.
You can click on the pill to switch it to green, which means it’s set to go. When your post is published, it will automatically push the blog post to those accounts.
You can add your accounts under Marketing - Connected Accounts (double check).
8. Location
I typically disregard this section. However, if you’re a local business, you can add your location details here.
9. Styling your Squarespace blog page layout
As you build out your blog, your blog page will start to fill up with posts. Any aesthetic or styling options can be found under Design - Site Styles.
If you type “blog” in the search bar, you’ll see all the different options that pop up.
I want to note here that I am using the Rally template in the Brine family of SQuarespace 7.0. If you don’t see all the options I do, it’s because you’re in a different type of template.
Blog: Metadata
Here you can choose two different types of meta data to appear on this page.
You can choose from:
Category
Author
Date
Location
Tags
Comments
Common metadata are date and category.
Blog: List
If you scroll down, you’ll see this section as well.
Here you can decide many things.
Style
Here is where you can decide on the layout, between
Grid - posts show in rows (recommended)
Stacked - posts appear one on top of another
Posts Per Row
When you click grid, this will appear.
I’d recommend setting it to 3. In design, there is a rule of 3 when it comes to layout. It’s most impactful for the user experience.
However, if you don’t like how 3 looks, I’d recommend setting it to 2 or 4. Anything more or less will not look good.
Spacing
This is the spacing between blog posts.
Alignement
Here’s a quick and easy way to decide this…
Just blog post title - center align in fine
If you’re including the excerpt - make it left aligned. Why? Because having text longer than 3 lines that is center aligned is difficult to read.
Item Spacing
This is the spacing between the different elements - metadata, title and excerpt.
Show Image
This is your thumbnail image. I recommend keeping this checked.
Image Aspect Ratio
When I started my blog, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to make the images vertical for Pinterest. Well, if you’re struggling with the same thing, here you go!
You can use the dropdown to choose from a few different options. Pinterest formatting is 2:3 Standard (Vertical).
Show Title
If you have the blog post title in your thumbnail image, it’s okay if you take this away. However, just note that people won’t be able to come to the blog page and do “command F” if they’re on a Mac to search for specific info. An alternative is adding a search bar on your blog page.
Show Excerpt
This is where you can choose to add or remove the excerpt from each post.
Read More Link
This is where you can choose to add or remove the read more link from each post.
Read More Link Spacing - this is the spacing between the excerpt and link.
Metadata Position
Whatever metadata you choose, you can choose whether it appears above the title, below the title, or below the content.
Personally, I like to put the data above the blog post title.
Pagination Label
Show Pagination Label - You can only have 30 blog posts per page inside Squarespace. Once you hit 31, Squarespace will add a second page. The ability to click through to that second page will appear at the bottom. This feature allows you to add or remove the label “older” from the bottom.
Show Pagination Arrows - In addition to the “older” link leading to the second page, you can include or remove the arrow.
Pagination Arrow Weight - If you decide to include the arrow, this allows you to choose whether you want it to be hairline, light, medium or heavy.
Blog: Typography & Colors
This is where you can change the fonts and colors associated with the:
Title
Meta
Excerpt
Read More Link
Pagination Label
Pagination Arrow
Under font, you can change:
Font name
Weight
Style (normal or italics)
Size
Letter spacing
Text transformation - uppercase, lowercase, capitalize
Line Height
With the colors, if you click on the hsl code, this is where you can enter the hex code for your color. This is the color code with the # symbol in front.
You’ll want to have your colors organized because if you just drag the cursor around and choose a random color, it won’t be consistent to match your website.
There you have it! That’s how you can get started with a blog on Squarespace!
Have questions about blogging or Squarespace SEO? Drop them in the comments below!
Are you a coach, creative or service-based business owner struggling to drive traffic to your website, grow your leads and make more sales? Tired of the rat race of content creation and trying to show up on Instagram Stories every.single.day?
Creating a strategic blog and correctly optimizing your website can be a game changer in your business.
After implementing SEO strategies for billion dollar global brands and high profile individuals, I help position my clients at the top of the Google search results so they can get seen by the people that need their services most.
Looking for more Squarespace SEO tips? Check out these blog posts: