Squarespace SEO: How to Rank on Google
You might be wondering how to rank your Squarespace website on Google search in 2020. SEO is the key to getting more traffic from Google and getting your website in front of a larger audience.
This Squarespace SEO guide will cover the basics of search engine optimisation, as well as how to implement some tricks which will help you rank faster.
SEO Basics
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation essentially means how well your website ranks on Google. A good ranking might mean showing up on the first page of Google for a particular keyword, while a bad ranking might mean showing up on the 10th!
Working on your SEO and picking up some good practices will help you rank higher on Google. After using these tricks myself, I moved from the third page onto the first page for the term “CSS for Squarespace 7.1.”
Is Squarespace Good for SEO?
The answer is yes! Unlike other platforms like Wordpress, Squarespace has SEO tools that Google loves built right into the platform:
Title Tags – The title of your page as it shows up on Google
Meta Descriptions – The description of your page as it shows up in Google
Page URLs – The URL of your page as it displays in the search bar
Automatic SSL Certificate – A SSL certificate shows your site is secure, which Google likes.
If you’re thinking about moving to Squarespace, learn more about Squarespace pricing plans and find the one most suited to your business.
The Squarespace SEO Checklist
1. Keyword Research
Before you start editing the other SEO tools on a Squarespace site, think about your post or page itself. Ask these questions:
Is the content useful to my audience?
Which keywords am I targeting?
Are these keywords searched regularly per month?
Does my content have these keywords throughout?
I usually use these questions when creating a new blog post or page to make sure I’m staying on track to rank well on Google. Keywords or keyword research is crucial to ranking high on Squarespace, which is why I recommend a free keyword research tool like Ubersuggest. You can aim for short-tail keywords, like “Marketing” or long tail keywords, like “Marketing for Small Businesses.”
I use Ubersuggest to choose keywords I want to rank for, and make sure these are included in my blog post or page. I can also view my competition for certain keywords and decide whether they are too hard to compete with.
For example, the keyword “Squarespace” is difficult to rank for because there are so many websites and pages with this term that exist. It has a score of 66 (which is pretty high), and I usually avoid keywords above 40. However, the term “Squarespace SEO” has much fewer listings, which is why I’ve chosen it for this blog post!
When writing your content, make sure that the keywords you picked up are included throughout your page.
Don’t oversaturate your content with the same keywords. It’s not about density. Use the keyword in your header and a few times in the main content. My method is just to write first, review after.
2. Optimise Your SEO Title
This is the largest piece of text that will be displayed on Squarespace, so getting it right is important for both your ranking and your click through rate.
On Squarespace, your title tag will default to whatever the title of the page is, unless you fill it in. Yes, these are two different things! Your title that shows up on Google can be different to the title of your page if you want – however I wouldn’t recommend changing it drastically.
Title tags can be edited by hovering over a page and clicking the little cog, then clicking the SEO tab. Make sure your title tag has keywords, but still stays relevant to the main content. It needs to be clear and concise, but keyword rich.
For example, this page’s title tag is “Squarespace SEO tips: How to rank on Google.” There are two keywords in that title, see if you can spot them!
Keep your title under 60 characters (Or Google might cut some off)
Make sure each title is relevant, clear and descriptive
Include keywords, but avoid titles that are just a list of keywords
3. Optimise Your SEO Description
This is the description that will display beneath the page title on Google. Having a relevant meta description will help to increase the number of people clicking through to your website from Google.
Remember to write naturally as people are more likely to trust this opposed to a long list of keywords. A more relevant description will bring the right audience to your website, and help turn this traffic into customers much more efficiently.
You can add an SEO description to your homepage, others pages, blog posts, products and events! To do this, hover over your page or post and click the little cog icon. Then click the SEO tab and you will be able to enter your meta descriptions.
Sometimes Google will change what appears in the search description to better fit the users search terms. Don’t worry about this too much – your default meta description still exists and will always be used if it is the best fit for the searcher (which 9/10 times it is).
4. Adjust Your URLS
Squarespace allows you to adjust the page URL from the default jumble of letters and numbers. Make sure you do this, at it is important for Google’s ability to see how relevant your content is.
Keep these URLs simple. In fact, Google recommends keeping it as simple as possible. I could have chosen to use the page title for my URL too, but that would have been far too long. Instead, shorten it to one long-tail, relevant keyword – 2-3 words is perfect.
Use hyphens to increase readability. For example, this page’s URL is /squarespace-seo-tips, which is much easier to read than /squarespaceseotips.
5. Compress Your Images
Google loves speedy sites. One of the biggest factors affecting the speed of a website is the image sizes. They are often forgotten in SEO, and many people will add huge file size images to their website without realising.
I use tingpng.com to compress my images, because it reduces the file size WITHOUT reducing the image quality. This is useful to me because I often display large, high quality shots of custom website designs throughout my site!
6. Link Internally
This blog posts has several “related links” included throughout. These are called internal links and are great for showing Google that you have lots of relevant content. It also helps your visitors find the information they need much quicker.
Step 7: Submit Your Sitemap and Rank on Google Faster
Google has what are essentially little spiders that crawl the internet and look for any changes or additions made to websites. This “indexing” is what helps Google notice these changes and start ranking your website on search. But this process can take days, even weeks after your website has changed – and no one wants to wait that long.
Luckily there’s a way around the wait time!
By using Google Search Console, you can submit your website for indexing straight away. This tells Google directly that you’ve made some changes, and the spiders will get to work with indexing.
To do this, add your website to Google Search Console. Head into Sitemaps, then submit your sitemap link where it says “Add new sitemap”.
Squarespace has sitemaps built in! Find it here: www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
That’s all my Squarespace SEO tips. Leave a comment below if you’re heading off to use some of them on your own website!
