How to Do SEO on Squarespace in 2024 [15+ Strategies]
Is your Squarespace website having difficulty ranking on Google, attracting your target audience, and generating revenue? Well, grab your laptop and a cup of coffee because you’re about to learn how to give that old site a rockin’ SEO makeover.
It’s 2024, and search engine optimization has changed A LOT since you first launched your site. Don’t worry, though; I’ll walk through all the latest tips and tricks for SEO on Squarespace so you can get your site ranking at the top of Google in no time.
Whether you’re a total newbie or an experienced webmaster, this guide has everything you need to start driving more organic traffic to your site. I’ll also discuss how the SEO plugin for Squarespace, SEOSpace, can help finetune your optimization strategy. So plug in your laptop, crank up the tunes, and let’s dive into the basics of SEO on Squarespace for search engine success in 2024!
The Basics: Optimizing Site Architecture and Navigation
Squarespace is designed for simplicity. However, if you don’t follow the default simple styles, you may not experience its full SEO capability. To do SEO for Squarespace, you must start by ensuring your design styles and structure follow the basic principles of a Squarespace website.
Here are some SEO tips for Squarespace site structure:
Clearly define your site’s structure.
Focus your navigation on high-value pages.
Use page titles and headers to reinforce your site’s architecture.
Include internal links between related pages.
1. Clearly Define Your Site’s Structure
As a Squarespace designer, you control how your site’s pages are organized and connected. For SEO, establish a logical flow between pages and use Squarespace’s navigation features, such as menus, page links, and categories, to guide visitors through your content. The easier users can understand your page, the higher their chance of taking action.
2. Focus Your Navigation on High-Value Pages
While it may seem tempting to include links to every page on your site in the main navigation, this can overwhelm visitors and dilute the page authority of your most important content. Identify pages like your home page, service pages, and blog that you want to rank highly in search engines and feature prominently in your navigation.
3. Use Page Titles and Headers to Reinforce Your Site’s Architecture
The page titles, H1 tags, and H2–H6 tags you use should align with how you’ve structured your site’s navigation. For example, if you have a “Services” menu item linking to pages for each service you offer, naturally include the service name in the page title, H1 tag, and H2 tags on each page. This helps search engines understand how your content is organized and what each page is about.
4. Include Internal Links Between Related Pages
As you build out your Squarespace site, look for opportunities to include links between pages on related or complementary topics. For example, link to relevant blog posts from your service pages or include links to product pages from your blog posts discussing those products. Internal linking helps search engines discover all your relevant content and understand the relationships between pages.
Ensuring seamless navigation and building clearly outlined page structures are essential Squarespace SEO tips for easy maneuverability and access. If you’re a little rusty in web design, I advise working with a professional designer. I am a professional Squarespace designer and can help you structure your pages for SEO. Besides getting your website structure right, you’ll also want to focus on keyword research and content creation for sustained ranking on SERPs.
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Creating SEO-Optimized Content for Squarespace
Squarespace makes it easy to create visually stunning websites but to rank well in search engines, you need optimized content. The good news is with some keyword research and strategic writing, you can rock SEO on Squarespace.
Here are some guidelines:
Do your keyword homework.
Create a money page.
Develop supporting content.
Write for people and search engines.
Keep on creating content.
5. Do Your Keyword Homework
Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to find long-tail keywords (3–5 words) that your target audience searches for. Look for phrases with relatively high monthly searches and low competition. These long-tail KWs will form the foundation of your content.
6. Create a Money Page
Choose one major keyword to focus on and build a page around it. For example, if you sell sports supplements, your money page can be about “Nourishing Sports supplements.”
Optimize this page for your target phrase by naturally incorporating it into the page title, URL, headers, and content. Provide value by sharing actionable tips, insights, and examples. Don’t forget to link to this page from your site navigation and internal links.
7. Develop Supporting Content
Creating blog posts, product pages, and service pages that relate to your major keyword is essential for SEO and Squarespace website success. For example, if you own a sports supplement brand, you can write posts on “5 Ways to Improve Your Running Performance” or “Preparing for Marathon: A 3-Days Plan.” Be sure to link back to your money page from these supporting posts.
8. Write for People and Search Engines
While optimizing for keywords, write naturally for human readers. Use your major keyword naturally within the content, in headings, and in image alt text. However, vary your KW usage; don’t repeat the phrase in every sentence — use synonyms instead. Provide helpful advice and anecdotes to keep readers engaged — the more people interact with your content, the more Google will see you as an authority on the topic.
9. Keep on Creating Content
Continue publishing new blog posts, product pages, and service pages on a consistent schedule. Link to older content when relevant to build authority and give search engines fresh pages to crawl and rank. Over time, all of these SEO-optimized content will drive more organic search traffic to your Squarespace site.
In summary, content is King and will always be a key component of SEO. By conducting proper keyword research, writing relevant content, and publishing regularly, you build authority in your niche and make your website the go-to resource for queries potential customers may have. That way, they’re more likely to reach out to you when they need related products or services or refer you to friends and family. Still, there are some other behind-the-scenes aspects you need to get right to perfect your SEO strategy.
Technical SEO Considerations and Best Practices for Squarespace
Technical SEO means optimizing the technical aspects of your website to improve your chance of ranking higher.
Here is a Squarespace SEO checklist focusing on the technical aspect:
Optimize SEO titles and meta descriptions.
Use SEO-friendly URLs.
Optimize page load speed.
Submit your site to Google Search Console.
10. Optimize SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions
Each page on your site has an SEO title and meta description that provides search engines with details about that page’s content. This information is shown to search engine users, and you can make them compelling enough to improve the chance of being clicked.
To optimize your meta descriptions, SEO page titles, etc., click on a blog page or content settings (the gear icon or the ellipses, and then “Settings”) and go to the “SEO” tab. From here, you can edit your SEO descriptions and title for that page or content.
Make your page titles compelling and include important keywords, but keep it around 55 to 60 characters. The meta description should be between 150 and 160 characters, describe the content, and include keywords. These elements contribute to your search visibility, so spending time crafting them is worth the effort.
11. Use SEO-Friendly URLs
With Squarespace, you can create custom URLs for all pages on your site. When adding or editing pages and content, navigate to the page/content settings as described above and go to the “General” tab to edit. Here, you’ll see a “URL SLUG” option.
Remove stopwords like “a” or “the” and use hyphens instead of spaces. For example, change “About the Team” to “about-the-team.” Shorten URLs as much as possible while still being readable.
12. Optimize Page Load Speed
Page load speed is an important search engine ranking factor. Fast, optimized pages provide a better user experience, so search engines reward them. To optimize for speed, compress images, link to videos externally instead of uploading them directly, and remove unused code and plugins. You can test your site’s speed using Google Pagespeed Insights and make improvements to boost your rankings.
13. Submit Your Site to Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool for monitoring your site’s SEO performance and search rankings. Connect your Squarespace site to gain valuable insights into how Google indexes your content. You’ll see stats on page indexing, search analytics, site errors, and more. These metrics enable you to tweak your SEO strategy for better results.
Getting these tiny details right is key to ensuring your SEO efforts pay off in the long run. Whether it’s ensuring page titles and descriptions are optimized for SEO or taking steps to boost your page load speed, they all contribute to boosting your site’s ranking on search engines. So far, all of the tips discussed have been focused on on-page SEO (i.e., what you do on your website). It’s equally important to take off-page SEO (i.e., what you do outside your website) seriously, and a key component of that is link-building.
3 Link-Building Strategies to Consider for Your Squarespace Site
Link building is one of the most effective Squarespace SEO strategies. As an award-winning Squarespace website designer, I’ve found the following link-building strategies to be particularly useful for ranking Squarespace sites higher in search engines like Google:
Guest blogging
Broken link building
Relationship building
1. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging on industry-relevant websites is a great way to build high-quality backlinks to your Squarespace site. Look for websites in your niche that accept guest posts and pitch them article ideas that would benefit their readers. When they publish your post, ask for a backlink to your site in your bio. Over time, multiple guest posts on authoritative sites can significantly boost your domain authority and search rankings.
2. Broken Link Building
This clever link-building tactic involves finding broken links on other websites and offering to replace them with a link to your relevant content. Search for phrases related to your industry while prefixing “inurl:” and test the links on that page to locate broken links. Then, politely reach out to the webmaster, explain that you noticed some broken links on their site, and offer to replace one with a link to your Squarespace site. Many webmasters will appreciate you bringing the broken links to their attention and take you up on your offer.
3. Relationship Building
Building mutually beneficial relationships with other industry influencers and websites is one of the most powerful link-building strategies. Look for opportunities to connect and collaborate with influential people and brands in your niche. Pitch them ideas for co-creating content, cross-promoting to each other’s audiences, and exchanging links. When you build win-win relationships, high-quality links, and exposure tend to follow.
Overall, link-building remains an integral aspect of SEO. By securing links to your webpages from high-authority websites, you signal to Google that your content is helpful and reliable, increasing your chances of ranking high on SERPs. While doing SEO on Squarespace, I’ve found some great tools that augment the platform’s SEO capabilities, and I will share them with you below!
Must-Have SEO Plugins and Extensions for Squarespace
Manually optimizing your website content is nearly impossible. The good news is that there are some powerful tools available as extensions and plugins for Squarespace that can automate and streamline much of the work for you.
Here are my top picks:
1. SEOSpace
This is hands-down the most popular SEO plugin for Squarespace, trusted by thousands of users, Squarespace web designers inclusive. It gives you insights into how search engines see your site and provides actionable tips to improve your rankings and increase traffic.
With SEOSpace, you can:
Check your page titles, meta descriptions, image alt text, and more for SEO best practices.
See how well your content is optimized for important keywords.
Get guidance on internal linking, page load speed, mobile-friendliness, and other key ranking factors.
Track your rankings and traffic over time to see the impact of changes you make.
For any Squarespace user serious about SEO, SEOSpace is an essential plugin. It’s free for starters. However, the time it will save you and the results you’ll achieve make the premium version well worth the cost.
2. Weglot
If you want to rank in international search engines and reach audiences around the world, you need to optimize for multilingual SEO. Weglot is a leading website translation solution that also handles the technical aspects of multilingual SEO.
With Weglot, you can:
Translate your entire Squarespace site into over 110 languages with the click of a button.
Customize translations and add human translators for the highest quality.
Have your page titles, meta descriptions, image alt text, and page URLs translated automatically.
Submit your translated pages to international search engines like Baidu, Yandex, and Naver.
Track how well your translated content ranks in different countries and languages.
For global businesses and agencies with international clients, Weglot is a game-changer. The time and money it saves on manual translation and SEO makes it worth considering.
With the right tools and some effort, you can achieve amazing SEO results on Squarespace. I also recommend monitoring your site performance with Google Analytics to help you continually improve your SEO strategy for the best results. However, everything starts with your site’s design. With a well-structured design, implementing every other SEO tactic becomes a breeze.
If you need a professional Squarespace designer to optimize your website for SEO, contact by Crawford today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Squarespace Good for SEO?
Yes, Squarespace is equipped for good SEO performance. By fully leveraging its built-in SEO features to craft SEO-friendly URLs, achieve content optimization with the right keywords, etc., your Squarespace site can achieve notable visibility in search results.
Is Squarespace 7.1 Better for SEO?
Squarespace 7.1 doesn’t inherently boost SEO over 7.0, but it’s equipped with all the tools needed to create a high-impact website. Ultimately, it’s your content and SEO practices that determine your site’s success, not the version.
Is Squarespace SEO Worth it?
Yes, Squarespace’s SEO is worth it. By taking advantage of its built-in SEO tools, like SEO-friendly URLs and responsive design, and optimizing your content with the right keywords, your Squarespace site can achieve prominent visibility on Google search results on other search engines.
Conclusion
So there you have it! A rock-solid plan for doing Squarespace SEO. Start with the basics — clean design, optimized pages, and images. Then, move up to keyword research and quality content. Sprinkle in some sweet external and internal links then wrap it all up with a user experience that delights. Now you’re ready to rock SEO on Squarespace!
If you need help with your site design and structure, reach out to me at by Crawford.
Your designer
I'm Sam, an award-winning Squarespace web designer. I have worked with every type of business, building platforms for solo entrepreneurs through to multi-million dollar corporations. If you want to discuss a potential project, you can email on sam@bycrawford.com or get in touch with me here. Alternatively, you can book in a free 15-minute consultation call here.
