Squarespace SEO Services

SEO Agency for Squarespace websites

SEO is a much-needed practice that involves optimizing the website and its content to get approved by the search engine for higher rankings of SERP (Search Engine Results Page). When done well, the SEO process can bring traffic to your site and help invite potential customers and sales to the site (especially on eCommerce sites).

SEO in Squarespace, although it does not involve any technical stuff to tackle still, there may arise a need for SEO experts to manage at times. Here’s what the SEO process looks like on Squarespace websites:

• Integration of social media: Squarespace templates bring along the options of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and others to facilitate engagement and shares on the site. Google and other search engines note the activity and traffic on the site, which marks the site as credible and boosts its ranks in the SERPs. 3% of traffic on Squarespace sites comes from social media, according to ThriveMyWay. Social media further helps increase the site’s recognition, visibility, and traffic.
• Structured and neat interface: A clean and organized site is preferred by Google. Structured sites promise ease of use, better navigability, and enhanced user experience. Surveys reveal that the site’s easy navigation is a crucial factor for 94% of the visitors, according to Small Business Trends. Squarespace, fortunately, has nicely structured “configuration boxes” wherein you can enter the meta description and title for your content. The best part is that this SEO function is easy to do and urges no technical knowledge.
• User Control on Squarespace: Squarespace also has the facility to incorporate and edit codes by oneself to integrate advanced features and techniques. However, this does not facilitate everyone, especially those lacking web development knowledge. However, to enjoy the exclusive benefits of this step, you can hire Squarespace SEO services to do the job while you focus on other activities!
• Meta Title and Meta Description: These are HTML elements that convey to the search engine and the users about the content on your site. Meta title appears as the headline of a post in the search results. Where meta description is the concise introductory text that appears under the meta title, you can customize meta titles and descriptions in configuration boxes accessible on every post and page. A remarkable meta description and title lures the visitors to click on the site and thus pitch in traffic.
• Bing Webmaster Tools: Squarespace provides free faculty for managing the site factors that enable the website’s appearance in Bing and Yahoo’s search results. For this, you need to verify your Squarespace website with both these search engines. Do you know that Bing has 1.08 billion searches, according to Statista, while Yahoo gets approx. 500 million searches worldwide as per SEO.com. This is an opportunity to grab more traffic from sources other than Google.
• Uptime & Speed: Uptime is the percentage of time a web server has been active and available to produce results on the website. Just a day of downtime seriously fluctuates the SEO of the website, as said by John Mueller. Whereas websites that take more than 5 seconds to load experience around 37% bounce rates, the suggested page load speed is recommended to be under 2 seconds, according to Trinity. Further, Google considers the speed factor while ranking the site, thus, directly impacting SEO. Squarespace offers appreciative infrastructure, enabling excellent uptime and speed to help your rankings in SERPs.
• Image Alt Tags: Squarespace also allows you to add alt tags which are concise descriptions of images to tell the search engine what an image is all about. Search engines consider alt text while ranking the site as they cannot read the images. Scribing a keyword-rich alt text is supportive of Squarespace SEO and site growth.
• Mobile responsiveness: Mobile friendliness is highly vital as 68.1% of the world’s traffic comes from mobile browsing, as per the data from Perficient reveals. Hence, it is important to have a website that seamlessly fits the phone screen and operates smoothly. Squarespace’s designs and templates are equipped with this feature and can be crawled and indexed by search engines.
• Sitemap: Sitemap is the full catalogue of the web pages on your site, which is submitted to the search engine. A search engine uses the map, an XML file, to understand the site structure. You can get the sitemap by adding “/sitemap.xml” to the tail of any URL, and there you go! Each Squarespace site tag and a sitemap automatically get updated as you add or remove webpages to the site.
• 301 Redirects: There are instances when you alter the URL of a page. 301 directs come in here to redirect the users to the new link and enjoy the information easily. You can avail of this feature in Squarespace by going to the advanced section of the settings on the site and using URL Mappings. Not using 301 directly can affect your site’s performance tremendously as the visitors will land on 404 error pages and would likely not prefer to visit again. 301 directs a splendid tool to upgrade SEO and garner more visitors to the site.
• Encryption with SSL certificate: SSL certificate ensures a secure and encrypted connection between the server and the user’s browser, such as Google Chrome, Opera, Firefox, etc. Furthermore, Google even declared it a potential SEO ranking factor in 2014 to improve the user experience. Sites without Security Sockets Layer (SSL) are being penalized, and it is becoming a norm to have a site with an SSL certificate. It also plays a role in elevating the traffic of the Squarespace site, as 46% of the visitors leave the site if it is HTTP and not HTTPS considering it as hacked or spammed, according to a study conducted by Real Business. Squarespace offers free SSL certificates to all the websites running on the platform.

Squarespace SEO services manage all the actions in SEO, including technical aspects of the process to take website optimization to the next level.

Does Squarespace have good SEO capabilities?

Squarespace offers great benefits to the users with its simple and easy-to-use interface that even a beginner could accomplish SEO settings. Still, the platform also erects the SEO roadblocks that would, at times, make one crave switching to WordPress. Squarespace comes with in-built SEO features to optimize the site, such as availing Sitemaps, SSL certification, customizing meta description and titles for the blog posts, default 404-page generation, the ability to customize it, and so much more.

Although it offers a hassle-free SEO process, there are still certain issues related to SEO one may face and would like to call an SEO expert for resolution.

Do you have any problems with SEO on your Squarespace website?

SEO has improved a lot. Still, some glitches can make you irritated. It no longer pastes the site description on all the pages and has proffered SEO settings for blog posts. Squarespace is widely appreciated for its themes and designs and is recommended for small businesses who wish to rank on Google. Here are details of some common SEO problems that users face:

• No Clear configuration box to place Alt text: Applying alt tags to images on Squarespace is a nuisance. There is no clear space to put it on the site. While on WordPress, there are input boxes for alternative text for every picture on the post. You can customize it your way. However, in Squarespace, putting alt text depends on your block type. Usually, putting alt text is even irritating as it pulls it from the image caption.
• Squarespace 7.0 vs. 7.1: Another hiccup is Squarespace version 7.0 users do not have access to the templates and features integrated into the improved and latest Squarespace version 7. 1. One cannot even move to Version 7.1 easily or at all in anticipation of enjoying the facilities of cutting-edge coding improvements. So, as an old user, you are stuck with Squarespace version 7.0.
• Site description for every page: Google commands to keep descriptions unique for every blog post. However, Squarespace drags site meta descriptions to use in multiple posts spontaneously. One cannot customize and add different blog posts and pages.
• No faculty to customize meta title and description for posts: Fortunately, Squarespace has curated an SEO tab in Page Settings. However, the feature cannot be exploited for blog posts. Rather automatically, Squarespace will pull the excerpts from the blogs and pose them as meta descriptions. Another challenge with Squarespace is that meta descriptions need to be alluring to get high CTR. For that, you would require control over customizing the meta description.

There are certain technical hitches while working on Squarespace related to SEO and others, which the dedicated team of Squarespace is persistently working on to improve. For now, you may face instances when you find Squarespace SEO not working up to the mark. Still, its pros do flatter the user.

Is Squarespace SEO-friendly?

So, you have been thinking of launching a new website without fiddling with developers and technical elements. You must have then considered Squarespace, for it offers many impressive designs and themes to create your own website. However, the words about the town of Squarespace being terrible for SEO have held you off, and then you might be scratching your head, “Is Squarespace SEO good?”.

But here’s the deal: these are nothing more than rumours and misconceptions. These dishes go about not since Squarespace is bereft of SEO capabilities and tools but because it demands some time to grasp the interface and carry it out on the platform. SEO is a cornerstone for the success and growth of any site on the web. Most big enterprises spend $5000 to $10 000 on search engine optimization of their websites every month, as revealed by (RS)WEBSOLS. Squarespace has its SEO faculties which are often downplayed in public. Apart from its great availability of templates and designs, Squarespace also harbours an impressive gamut of SEO tools to extend the optimization competencies of the platform further. If you already know basic SEO practices, you may find it straightforward to handle Squarespace for SEO.

Here are Squarespace SEO features to know. Dive in!

• Optimizing meta description and title: Meta description is the brief introduction of the content your page entails. It should be keyword-rich and smartly scribed to attract visitors to your site. Whereas meta title is a title shown in search results above the meta description. It ought to be concise, crisp, and have the main keyword smartly placed in it.
• Optimizing images: Images are often neglected during the optimization process of the Squarespace site. However, do you know that heavy images can make your site lag and lower page load speed? Optimize your images to the proper size and format. Prefer JPEG or JPG formats instead of PNG. Also, add alt text to the image to facilitate the search engine in understanding the point of your image. It helps in improving the SEO and traffic of the site.
• Removing the duplicate content: Duplicate content is a potential trauma to the website on Squarespace. You need to pull out and clean all the duplicate content before Google Panda comes into action and determines the ranks on SERP.
• Schema Markup: Schema Markup allows the addition of bits of extra information about your content. It includes rich snippets like cooking time, time and date of events, etc. Snippets give the site in search results a stand-out experience to the user, thereby pitching in to boost the SEO and drive traffic to the Squarespace site.
• Sitemap availability: Squarespace automatically generates a current sitemap, including the pages you have added and removed. You can submit the map to Google Search Console and kick off the crawling and indexing by the search engine.
• Apt keyword research: One should focus keenly on the searcher’s intent while trying to build a blog post or other content. Avoid stuffing keywords into your content; else, it could lead to penalties from Google.
• 404 custom pages: 404 code is generated to indicate the broken links. When moving to a new URL, these links occur when the URL is not updated. Squarespace provides 404 pages which can be customized as well.
• Speed and Uptime: Squarespace offers great speed and impressive uptime to website owners and users. Still, the speed can be further boosted by different SEO acts such as image optimization, site organization, etc.

Squarespace has a lot of in-built SEO tools to optimize the site. However, it does not have any plugins or applications to take the process a step further. Still, one can accomplish search engine optimization (SEO) hassle-free and without having to grapple with web development-related technicalities.

How to optimize Squarespace for organic results?

According to Thrive my way, Squarespace is powering over 4485373 websites worldwide and with a market share of 10.9% in 2020. The platform’s traffic which is 89% primarily, is constituted by organic searches, where 20% of traffic comes from Google only, as disclosed by Thrive my way again. To get your Squarespace webpage ranked, it is crucial to consider SEO. The process is not hairy and just requires simple steps to carry out.

To clarify, SEO is not a one-time strategy to bank on for acquiring. Rather, it is an ongoing process. You need to work continuously to maintain and upgrade your Squarespace website’s ranking on search engines. If you run an e-commerce store on Squarespace, search engine optimization will get you more traffic and higher conversions. One can gauge its gravity from the fact that large enterprises spend over $65 million on the SEO process to facilitate a higher click-through rate (CTR), as shown by Web FX. Squarespace SEO involves on-page SEO – optimizing the website and pages- and off-page SEO – raising signals from other credible web sources to fortify the site’s authority. Search engines recommend both these practices to secure consistent traffic on the site. However, search engines prioritize on-page optimization, as stated by the Search Engine Journal. This does not mean at all that links and other strategies are unneeded.

How to do SEO in Squarespace?

While you delve into getting quality backlinks, reviews, and other off-page best SEO practices to boost your website’s authority, ensure you accomplish the following steps to optimize your website.

• Consider Keyword research: Keyword research involves more than simple hogging phrases and terms. You need to grasp the user intent and then build and optimize your content accordingly to resolve the visitor’s query impressively. Instead of chasing high-volume search words, try and think like your audience, ask yourself, “what do they want to know,” “what can give value to my readers” and so forth. This is the first step to getting noticed by search engines and the users and boosting your SEO and rankings.
• Prioritize your content quality: A word goes around, “Content is the king”. Although pretty hackneyed, this expression is too relevant and indispensable for all the content creators out there. Generating quality content ought to be prioritized and clutch a covetable rank in SERPs. Offer unique and quality content to the user that satisfies them and adds value to them. This is one of the healthiest tricks to drive crazy traffic to your site and perk up the site’s SEO and ranking.
• Title Tags Optimization: Titles should include the focus keyword strategically placed therein. It should not be greedily gorging on keywords and looking awkward to read. Rather, keep it neat and precise. In Squarespace, it is automatically generated for your product, event, or blog post. However, it can be customized as you please. To edit and optimize the Squarespace site title tags, simply go to settings, tap the SEO tab, and make the changes.
• Headings and Meta Description Optimization: Main keyword of the post is incorporated into the H1 title while the rest of the content is sorted using H2 and H3 tags. A meta description is a synoptic text you notice below the SEO meta title of the post. It should be smart and attractive to entice the user to click the post. Although the meta description does not directly impact the SEO, it improves the site’s ranking.
• Keep the URLs neat: The URLs are generated spontaneously by the platform, which looks messy and weird in numbers and symbols. Instead, optimize your URLs by customizing them and making them clean and concise. Such URLs are not only user-friendly but are appreciated by search engines too.
• Optimize your images: Often, while optimizing the site, the images face some neglect. However, heavy images can impact your site speed and ranking. Compress them to the desired size and put alt tags behind each image. Alt tags are concise, descriptive text for the image, which tells the search engine what the image is all about. This directly impacts the ranking, SEO, and traffic of your site.
• Pull out the duplicate content: Duplicate content kills the website as it triggers Google Panda to rise into action and reduces the ranking of low-quality sites or “thin sites”. Avoid and remove duplicate content as it raises the competition among the pages of your site and deteriorates site health in the long term. Do some scrubbing, sleuthing, and clean up the duplicate content. You can employ Screaming Frog, SiteLiner, CopyScape, and other tools to assess your site for the duplicate content issue.
• Activate SSL certificate: The Security Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate was endorsed by Google in 2018 and has become one of the SEO ranking indicators. To boot, 64% of the users exit the website instantly if it is not HTTPS as they believe the site to be hacked, dodged, and a scam. Squarespace automatically activates free SSL certification for all the websites running on the platform. Old Squarespace webpage holders are unfamiliar with free SSL certificates on their websites. They must turn in the HTTPS version of their website to Google Search Console.
• Incorporate schema markup: Schema markups enable rich snippets in the search results on your Squarespace website below the meta description or title. Rich snippets are different from featured snippets and are slight extra details about your content such as ratings, event time and location, cooking time, reviews, and so forth. Studies show that rich snippets can augment the site’s traffic to about 20-40% and boost click-through rates by 677%, as stated by Moz. These factors greatly capture the users’ attention, thereby directly enhancing search engine optimization (SEO) and surging traffic and rankings.
• Mobile and voice search optimization: 68.1% of website traffic worldwide is constituted by mobile browsing rather than desktop, according to Perficient in 2020. Thus, it is a no-brainer for a site to be responsive to mobile devices, else you will miss an incredible deal of traffic. Now, coming to voice search, surveys reveal that by 2020 over half of the smartphone users will engage in asking voice queries on search engines. And for now, 41% of the adult users employ voice search a minimum of once per day, as the data from DBS Interactive discloses. It is imperative, therefore, to zero in on optimizing the Squarespace webpage and the content according to the user intent. Understand what your audience asks and how to build your content to solve their queries. This would significantly impact the SEO and website traffic even in the future.
• Build a custom 404 page: 404 error occurs when a webpage is missing from a particular URL, also known as a broken link. The possibility of having broken links augments as the site grows in size. It may occur because the user mistyped the URL or your oversight in replacing the link with the proper one. Unlike the common misconception, the best strategy to tackle 404 code errors is not to redirect the user to the Squarespace site homepage, as it may be difficult to reach the desired page. Such experiences usually end up in frustration, and you lose substantial traffic. On the other hand, the greater the time visitors stick around your site, the more it is appreciated by Google and other search engines. The average time users spend on the site is an important metric considered by Google, as stated by the Hosting Tribunal, that affects SEO and, thus, the site’s ranking.

To accomplish SEO in Squarespace, you do not necessarily have to deal with techie jargon and techy folks to handle it. Rather, you may start with basic steps that tremendously work to boost your rankings on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), grab increased traffic and greet more potential customers (if an e-commerce site).

Is Squarespace good for technical SEO?

Technical SEO is a subtype of SEO that has to do with the website’s infrastructure to enable crawling and indexing by the search engines. The process involves optimizing the technical aspects of the Squarespace webpage, such as page speed, URL structure, website navigation, schema, sitemaps, 301 redirects, and so forth. Technical SEO promises a properly functioning and speedy website that delivers a better user experience. You potentially lose 88% of visitors due to a bad user experience, as revealed by Blue space, which is harmful to your site’s health.

Most website owners focus on content optimization and on-page SEO; however, they ignore technical SEO as it involves working on the technical parts. They do not grasp technical SEO’s critical role in making a site responsive, speedy, navigable, easy to use, and functional. A hairy and difficult-to-navigate site can shoo away many visitors, as a study by Clutch reveals that over 94% of users prefer easy-to-navigate websites. The website’s aesthetics also has a role in retaining the visitors and may lose 52% due to poor website UX, as remarked by UXCam.

Squarespace has many in-built technical SEO features such as its interface being mobile-friendly and highly responsive, ability to generate sitemaps, structured and easy-to-navigate pages, great speed, excellent uptime, and more. Let’s discuss these in detail:

• Speed & Uptime: Uptime and speed are potential indicators of SEO ranking for Google. Further, users shun website that takes more than 5 seconds to load while appreciating the ones that show up within 2 seconds. Squarespace enhances the website’s speed by allowing image compression, responsiveness, clean code, etc. The uptime offered by Squarespace is also impressive.
• Mobile-friendly: Squarespace has an excellent feature of mobile-friendliness. The designs and templates offer seamless stretch to fit the mobile device screens without compromising the site’s functionalities. Mobile responsiveness is a vital factor counted by Google to rank the site.
• Sitemaps: Sitemaps are charts encompassing the detailed list of the web pages on your site. Squarespace automatically generates an updated Sitemap which includes image metadata and page URLs for easy indexing of the Squarespace site.
• SSL certification: SSL certificate comes free along with every Squarespace domain to ensure an encrypted web server connection with the browser. Further, since 2018, an SSL certificate has been a criterion for ranking and SEO, according to Google. According to a study by Real Business, you may lose 47% of visitors if your site shows HTTP instead of HTTPS. Squarespace’s users do not have to fret here!
• Duplicate content removal: Website owners must know the content of the duplicate issue can cause to their websites. It may activate the Google Panda Algorithm, which degrades the poorer quality sites. To uphold the site health, via technical SEO on Squarespace, you remove the redundant content and avert the competition among the URLs of your website.
• Custom 404 page: 404 code is an indicator of missing original pages from a particular URL, also called a broken link. Such links are inevitable as the website grows in data, and there are endless web pages to manage. Squarespace webpage employs default 404 pages, which can be customized if you please. This glitch is necessary as it may lead to a wimpy user experience.
• Favicons: Favicons are the tiny icons that stand for your brand that usually appear in the browser’s bookmark list, the address bar, and so forth. Google shows the icon in its searches in recent mobile search design. Google has some criteria for favicons that are to be acknowledged. The favicon is changed to the default icon if this is not fulfilled. Although this does not affect the rankings and SEO of the site directly, it does impact the click-through rates (CTR) on mobile phones. Squarespace alters the favicon’s size to 100 by 100 pixels per the site owner’s expectations.

Squarespace is well-equipped with technical and regular SEO features to facilitate better ranking, attract more visitors, and increase sales. Technical SEO should not be ignored despite the technicalities you may have to confront. Instead, try bringing a Squarespace SEO expert to do it for you.

How to improve organic visibility on the Squarespace website?

You can follow these points to enhance the organic visibility of the Squarespace website and enjoy higher traffic and more sales:

• Edit and optimize the title and meta descriptions of the post. You can do this by going to Edit Post, then the SEO tab. This is a crucial step in On-page SEO.
• Shun the automatic, weird-looking URLs instead customize them to make them appear clean and precise. This does good to search engines and users.
• Increase the page load speed by optimizing the images, using CDN, and integrating quality themes.
• Submit the sitemap to Google Search Console and get your site ready to be crawled and indexed by the search engines.
• Squarespace comes with a free SSL certificate facility for all the domains running on the platform. It helps in boosting the SEO further.
• Employ schema markups on your site to enhance the user experience. Also called rich snippets, they are used for different purposes, such as telling the cooking time, date, time, or location of an event.

You can use these fundamental SEO practices on Squarespace to grab more traffic from organic searches. There is not much to deal with techy stuff typically for a Squarespace user. This can be bliss but sometimes pose as a headache too.

How does Squarespace SEO work?

Squarespace is a website-building platform that poses the need for search engine optimization (SEO), which involves optimizing the website and its content to meet search engine standards and boost the website’s visibility and traffic. The platform comes with in-built search engine optimization features that are manageable by anyone as it has little to do with the technical aspects. Squarespace does not avail of any SEO plugins or applications to boost SEO.

The sites on the platform are clean and structured, easing crawling and indexing for search engines. This feature not only makes the site search engine-friendly but user-friendly as well.

Organized and easily navigable sites are preferred by more than 94% of visitors, according to Clutch. These factors create a pleasing user experience and help build committed visitors and engagement on your site. The more the users spend time on your site, it is noticed by the search engines, which then push your site up through the SERP ranks. Squarespace SEO involves the following factors:

• Proper keyword research: A vital step to follow is performing appropriate keyword research. To do this, enlist the target search words, and look them up on Google for competition around them. The higher the contest for a keyword, the tougher it is to get a good rank in SERP for that phrase or word. While optimizing your content, avoid stuffing keywords; rather, place them strategically throughout the post. Too much cramming could lead to penalties from Google, so place some focus on meeting proper keyword density to avoid a website crack-down.
• Meta description optimization: Meta description is the summary text that appears below the SEO meta title. It should have keywords in it and should be scribed intelligently as this text becomes a reason for the search engine users to click on your content. Just by looking at the meta description, users make up their minds to click and enter the website or scroll up. You can edit and customize the meta description for different pages by following these steps:
  • Squarespace Home Page: Find Marketing> SEO> Site Meta Description
  • Squarespace individual pages: Find Pages> Go to Page Settings> SEO > then click SEO description
  • Products, events, or blogs: Choose your product or blog post you want to work on> Go to Edit> Then SEO > Click SEO description

This is how you can create SEO page descriptions for blogs, products, homepages, and more.

• Head & Title tags optimization: Seamlessly incorporate the main keyword in your post’s title and other keywords in the subheads. While curating these two elements, mind making a catchy title. A title works as a few characters’ pitch to woo the visitors. Keep your title precise, descriptive, and unique. Do not cram search terms into heads and titles as it would make it awkward and disappoint the search engine and users.
• Images optimization: Keep your images in the desired format, such as JPG and JPEG and avoid heavy or PNG format pictures as they significantly hamper page load speed. There are several image compression tools available out there. Further, image optimizations also involve adding alt text to them. Alt-text is concise, descriptive content that introduces the point of the image to the search engine. This is important because search engines cannot read the images but can grasp the alt text. So, when next time someone searches for a particular image, search engines pose up your image, thereby paving the way for increased site traffic.
• Using simple URLs: Squarespace automatically generates the URL for the post, which looks like a confused amalgam of symbols and numbers. Prefer creating a URL in a neat way so that your user and the search clearly understand what your content is all about. Keep URLs precise, simple, and neat.
• Withdrawing duplicate content: Duplicate content is not encouraged by any search engine and may even punish your site for the practice. Further, it is also malicious to the health of your site since the webpages with duplicate content would be competing amongst themselves to outrank each other. Therefore, consider sprucing up your site and removing the duplicate content. You can do this using Copy scape, Screaming Frog, SiteLiner, and other tools.
• Using Schema Markup: Schema Markup avails the feature of incorporating bits of extra information in search results such as cooking time, event location and date, ratings, and more. Rich snippets help in increasing the traffic by offering a unique experience to the users. It positively impacts the ranking in SERP, not by enhancing the SEO but by raising the click-through rate (CTR).
• Make a custom 404 page: A growing website suffers a greater occurrence of broken links, which are links that have been permanently shifted to the other URL. For this purpose, there is a 404 code that indicates a broken link. It can occur due to a mistake on your part that you forgot to modify the link while moving it, or it may be due to mistyping done by the user. Squarespace sites offer and generate automatic 404 pages, or you may even create a custom 404 page. Doing this promises a better user experience and, thus, helps drive more traffic to your site.

Squarespace SEO Optimization operates with its inbuilt features and functionalities to get prominent ranks on the search engine. With the help of an experienced SEO company, you can certainly leverage the features to secure a higher SERP for your website.