Squarespace SEO: Explained

Squarespace is a holistic solution for individuals who are looking forward to curating a beautiful and clickable website. As a notable website builder, Squarespace SEO aids makers, dreamers, and doers to bring ideas to life. In Squarespace, the preset templates are vivid and gorgeous, equipped with a robust Content Management System. Squarespace is easy to use; it provides a holistic set of features alongside e-commerce functionality.

However, there are times when the SEO part of Squarespace SEO does face a little bit of backlash. The criticism is not due to the shortcomings of the Squarespace website creating a platform but due to people’s lack of intuitiveness to use SEO in the website at curation. It is important to optimize the website, given that an individual is creating it via Squarespace.

What makes Squarespace SEO a great medium for Search Engine Rankings?

Today, many people across the world are tempted to utilize Squarespace as it offers optimum compatibility. As we’ve covered the general loopholes that website builders go through while utilizing SEO ranking. SEO building generally depends on the website builder which you’re using. Among all the website builders in the world, Squarescape ranks at the peak. In addition to this, the potential of Squarespace’s SEO is very much underrated.

Many users recognize Squarespace as one of the best website builders with great design and templates. Moreover, Squarespace is also popular due to its wide array of SEO tools that could boost any website concerning search engine rankings.

Squarespace SEO is quite a versatile option, according to people familiar with best SEO practices. After testing the platform’s SEO features, we give Squarespace 4.5 out of 5 stars.

What makes Squarespace SEO different from other website creating platforms?

  • As a robust CMS platform, Squarespace SEO doesn’t rely on industry-standard practices and terms. There are always certain elements in the designated pages that need to be optimized to gain visibility on search engines.
  • If an individual even locates these underlying elements that are the reason for the shortcoming, then fiddling with them can be a little painstaking; but completely rewarding.
  • Squarespace doesn’t come with third-party plugins like other platforms, and neither does it come like built-it tools. So, curating the pages from scratch by manual optimizing could yield better results in the long run.

Squarespace SEO is also the answer to the issues concerning SEO optimization. The comprehensive approach to SEO allows developers and individuals to change the interface entirely. Taking care of SEO will enable the website to get a high ranking in search engines. In late 2020, Squarespace has made several changes to its existing approach to Search Engine Optimization. Several changes are immediately visible on the interface of Squarespace. Further, making Squarespace easy for users from different professional backgrounds to configure SEO on the website.

Several changes are visible in the depths of development. The article contains the updated checklist of Squarespace SEO that outlines all of the critical steps that individuals need to comprehend to make the Squarespace site get higher ranks in the search results.

With these tasks mentioned below, optimizing the checklist is seamless. Let’s get into the basics of Squarespace SEO and how it can change the game in search engine visibility.

Squarespace SEO: Pros and Cons at a Glance

Indeed, Squarespace SEO is still growing when it comes to Search Engine visibility. However, the platform doesn’t lack any tools. The only hiccup with Squarespace is when users have to invest in getting acquainted with the dashboard’s interface. Squarespace SEO can enhance your website’s visibility and reachability, but it has some pros and some cons.

Pros:

Social Media Integration:

In Squarespace, Social Media Integration is straightforward, seamless, and stylish. The platform aids search engines take note of engagement and shares that could boost any website’s legitimacy. Additionally, it is a great tool to unify the brand.

Clean, Compartmentalized, and Structure UI:

Each post, each page has its option for configuration. You can use them to enter descriptions and meta titles. Even if the feature is very simple, it is the platform’s simplicity that compels users to use Squarespace SEO’s basic functionalities. Moreover, users do not need entry or advanced level coding knowledge to use the platform.

User Control:

In case you’re a coder or you’re aware of coding, the platform allows you to add code all by yourself. There are always certain moments where you’d like to apply the advanced techniques to make the website look beautiful and have a clean UI. By its looks, this feature is not meant for everyone, but one thing is for sure the realm of SEO is becoming quite competitive. A single increase and decrease in the spot can make a lot of difference on Google search engine.

Cons:

The platform isn’t for beginners of SEO:

People who are very comfortable with coding and advanced SEO can utilize the platform to the fullest. Technically, these skills can allow users to do anything they want. However, if you’re one of the individuals who are not pro in these spheres, then they aren’t quite cut out to use the platform.

The behavior of the Template:

There is no denying that a few Squarespace templates have a habit of displaying Search Engine Optimization on the website. There are many loopholes in this feature; however, it is extremely quick to manage.

The inability for adding SEO plugins:

Unlike other platforms, you cannot install the apps such as Yoast SEO to acquire a helping hand for managing the SEO tools. The reason why Squarespace and WordPress are in direct competition is the nature of the users. In Squarespace, the users are advanced, whereas, in WordPress, all users can use the platform from novice to expert.

Let’s get into the SEO checklist of Squarescape:

  • Always create an SSL version of the website:

The entirety of the internet and websites changed when Google announced that all the websites have to integrate HTTPS. Here, HTTPS ensures that the website is completely secure. The website whose address begins with HTTPS is only secured with Secure Socket Layer or SSL. Only the websites with SSL integration are preferred over the non-secure ones.

It makes complete sense that websites made with Squarespace are completely secure, and making it happen is extremely straightforward.

How to make a website have an SSL version?

Click on Settings, then Advanced, and then SSL. The process is very much straightforward. If you’re moving from a different platform to Squarespace, then there are certain instructions that you need to follow.

  • Always register your website with Bing Webmaster and Google Search Console:


Websites need to be registered either on Bing Webmaster Tools or Google Search Console or both if you’re focusing on two search engines. The website owners must know this, irrespective of the solution they are using to build their website.

If you register your website using these couple of services, then the significant search engines will be notified that the website exists. Further, this will also ensure that the website will be crawled. It is easy to register a Squarespace website to Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console. However, if the domains are connected recently to Squarespace, it might take around 72 hours to connect, which would further lead to getting SSL certification.

  • Submitting the website map to Google and Bing will enhance your website significantly:

After the website is registered with Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console, you’ll be prompted to submit the XML sitemap to the leading services. These services would aid you to index the website accurately and instruct them about the site’s importance.

The platform seamlessly and automatically generates a sitemap for the users. Note that the URL for the website could be written as www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. All you need to do is provide Google and Bing tools the link. Note that you have to add the link as sitemaps twice for both services separately.

  • Register the website with Google My Business:


Any website needs to create a page with Google My Business might be one of the easiest things you can do. This step will ensure that businesses will get visibility in local or close proximity search results by the looks of it.

While setting up the profile, you’ll have to supply the business address directly to Google properly. Then Google will send the card directly to the business, which comprises the PIN to verify the said address. Once this process is completely done, Google will send you the business card in a few days and mention the business on Google Search.

Google also highlights three businesses in top results. However, if your business will show up entirely depends on the area and niche.

  • The Squarespace site should load faster:

Why do most people prefer not to visit certain websites? The reason is page speed. Page speed might indeed be the most underrated factor, and some websites seem you miss out on it. However, it is one of the crucial aspects of making a website readable and scrollable. Squarespace indeed has a limited page speed option as it is a hosted solution. Further implying that individuals have to buy their hosting. Also, users have to use Squarespace, which is directly responsible for the website’s loading time.

There are certain steps that you need to take into consideration to make your website load faster:

  1. Keep the image’s width lower:

As per the recommendations suggested by Squarespace, the uploaded images on the platform should be placed between 1500×2000. However, the dimensions entirely depend on the images and templates. You could also try to balance the image using low-quality images.

  1. Try some compression tools:

You could use the Tiny Png to reduce the size of images before uploading them to the platform.

  1. Use modestly compressed JPGs:

PNG format images take a lot of space, hence using compressed JPGs will make loading times slightly faster.

  1. Avoid using external scripts:

Using custom code or over-use the external scripts can affect the speed of your website.

  1. Avoid web fonts, wherever you can:

The point is quite self-explanatory. In addition to this, Squarespace also suggests users either keep one or two or web-safe fonts as it loads the page faster. Even if you consider using web fonts, make sure you use Google Fonts other than the Typekit ones.

  • Research keywords:

After covering the technical tweaks, let us move to the point where the website needs to be SEO friendly. Squarespace does provide its users a favorable chase to perform well in terms of search results. Technical improvements could indeed aid you and your website content to rank in search results. But keywords make the website content organic, hence much clickable than the competition.

The best moment to improve the Squarespace website’s performance is to ensure that individuals will be publishing content. And this is the content which people will already be searching on the internet.

Keywords technically involve three important information:

People use 1. Keywords to search for content and products like yours.

  1. Overall volume searches for all of the keywords.
  2. There is an absolute difficulty in ranking the keywords based on existing authoritative pages or websites.

There are several research tools that you can opt for to make your website rank organically.

Increase the dwell time:

SEO professionals generally use Dwell Time to determine the length of time users end up spending on the website. They spend the content before returning to the search result. The more dwell time a website has, the more likely the content will perform well. Further, this ensures the search engines that users find them useful.

Dwell time can be made better by:

  • Creating quality content.
  • Using internal linking to encourage people to check out the content.
  • Simple navigation structure to ensure users will get travel from one point to the other.
  • Always encourage people to leave a comment on blog posts.
  • Always embed videos on the pages.

There are several other definitive checklists that you must cover to understand the robust working of Squarespace SEO:

  • Mobile Friendly
  • Using very simple URLs
  • Make sure to create 301 redirects in case you change any page’s URL
  • Always ensure that the title tags are perfectly formatted
  • Make proper use of headings at the time of formatting the content on the website
  • Make sure that the meta descriptions on the pages are added
  • Adding alt text which is optimized with file names and images would be the icing on the cake
  • Adding rich snippets to the Squarespace website could benefit both your searchers alongside the search engine.
  • Always make sure that the content you create is great and also build some backlinks to them
  • Internal links could determine the value of your website
  • Assess on-page SEO with better quality

More advice to using Squarespace SEO

These tips will most likely aid an individual in making a difference to increase the Squarespace platform’s performance. At times, you’ll feel that you’re only scratching the surface of Search Engine Optimization.

We hope that the guide would have provided you with the tips to using Squarespace SEO compelling.

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