SQUARESPACE SEO

Squarespace already has built-in SEO friendly features. But unfortunately, it has its own limitations too. There are no extensions or Squarespace SEO plugins developed like in WordPress to support Search Engine Optimisation.  However, if you can focus on the below factors, you can increase your Search Engine visibility to a greater extent.

For any website, On-Site SEO factors are critical for SEO success. This guide will only discuss how you can use the existing  Squarespace SEO settings to improve your on-site ranking factors. Please note that you need to improve your off-site ranking factors also to boost your rankings.

Before we move on to how you can edit things on Squarespace, it’s important to understand the basic on-site factors that affect SEO rankings.

Read the content given below and try to understand the concepts. Once you know the concepts, it’s a matter of editing your content and other data on your website.

SQUARESPACE – On-Site SEO Factors 

On-Site Optimisation can be breakdown into key areas.

1. Meta Tags Optimisation

2. URL Optimisation

3. Heading Tags Optimisation

4. Content & Keyword Optimisation

5. Image Optimisation

6. Social Share Optimisation

7. Readability

8. Mobile Friendliness and User experience

9. Internal & Outbound Links

The Perfect Optimized Page for SEO

Below is an example of a perfectly optimised page. This will help to understand this guide much better. The keyword selected here is “Chocolate Donuts”. Check how the main keyword and its variations and synonyms are used in this guide.  ( Source: Moz)

1. Meta Tags Optimisation

Meta Data includes your home page title, page titles and description. If you have your targeted keywords in your page titles and Meta descriptions, that is an indication to Google, about your page content.

Tips

1. Make sure all main web pages on your website have a unique Meta Title & Description.

2. Use your primary keywords at the beginning of the page title except for your home page.

3. Add main keywords to your Meta descriptions.

4. Use calls to action or offers to increase the clicks to your page

There are two ways you can update Meta Tags in SQUARESPACE  

1. Update the master settings that will update the entire website.

Navigation – Settings > Marketing > SEO

2. Changing individual page metadata

Navigation – Pages  > Mouse over the page you want to edit > Click the Settings Icon

2. URL Optimisation

Just like with the Meta tags, you need to have your main keywords in your URL in all your main web pages. This is again a signal to Google about the content on the webpage.

Avoid URls like  https://www.sample.com/new-page-94/

Every URL should be readable, not random numbers or text. Make sure you include your keywords in your URL.

You can change the URL settings on each page settings under the URL Slug option.

3. Heading Tags Optimisation

Make sure your main heading on every page is set as “Heading1”. This helps google identify the nature of your content. If you hover your mouse over the content on one of your pages, a toolbar will appear above it. Select the edit button.

4. Content & Keyword Optimisation

Please refer to “The Perfect Optimized Page for SEO” guide.

Tips

1. We recommend having at least 350 words on a single page.
2. Include your exact primary keyword at least 2-3 times on your content.
3. Include synonyms and related keywords within your content.

5. Image Optimisation

It’s recommended to include at least 1 image or video within your content. Google can’t read the images. Follow the tips to better optimize images.
Make sure your image file names renamed to your main keywords before uploading. And remember to update the ALT tag.

6. Social Share Optimisation

It’s recommended to include social media share button on your pages.  Allow visitors to share your content on social media by adding Share buttons to web pages. The other strategy is to promote your content on Social Media.

Navigation – Settings>Marketing> Share Buttons

7. Readability

Readability is how easily visitors can read your content. If you have small fonts it will affect the user experience. When people can’t read the text it will affect the page bounce rate. Visitors will leave the page more quickly. It’s a negative SEO signal. Make sure you increase the font size.

In Squarespace, you can change the font size by using the HTML editor.

Measure your readability score – https://readability-score.com/url/

8. Mobile Friendliness and User experience

All Square space templates are mobile-friendly. But the user experience can be different to each other. User experience can be increased by different factors. The number 1 priority will be the content. When it comes to other factors such as loading page optimizations, and custom code implementations Square space has its own limitations that we can’t do anything about it as we cannot access the servers of Squarespace.

Test your website’s mobile Friendliness and User experience from this tool.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

9. Internal & Outbound Links

Link your main pages to each other if applicable. The best way to do this is by adding your main page links in the footer. Also when you link to the external website make sure you link to only authoritative websites in the industry. That will send a message to Google about your content authority.

Other Useful Resources 

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/205814568-Increasing-your-site-s-visibility-to-search-engines

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206744067-SEO-and-Squarespace-overview

Tharindu Gunawardana

Tharindu is a passionate digital marketing specialist with over 14 years of experience planning and executing cross-channel digital media campaigns in the Asia Pacific and Australia. He is also known as the SEO wizard due to his extensive knowledge and technical skill in SEO.