The importance of Squarespace SEO as you go!
If you have a website, practising good SEO is essential if you want search engines like Google to display your website to a relevant and suitable audience.
But more important than SEO is how you apply SEO to your website and, even more essentially, when you apply it!
The how…
The how is technical, but not really! 🤓 And I have outlined some SEO steps later on in this post. 👇
However, you can be assured that Squarespace has excellent SEO tools built right into the platform, so they have your back when it comes to SEO and your website’s performance in search engines.
The when…
The when is right away! Don't delay. If you have created a new page or post for your website, don't wait until after your page is live to start looking at the page's SEO. And let's be honest, you're busy, so it might be a few weeks or more before you get around to it. By then, you might have created several more pages and posts. Can you see where I am going with this? You keep leaving it, and soon enough, you will have a massive backlog of work on your hands. So, it is much better to conduct SEO on your pages and posts as you create and publish them.
Onsite SEO
Okay, so here are the things you want to do each time you create a new blog post or website page as far as your SEO is concerned. Now, you can achieve some of these things in a few ways: headline creation tools and what knot, but I will give you the outline in a few steps.
1. Heading (<h1> in HTML)
This is the main heading at the start of your blog article or page. You only want one of these for SEO purposes on your page, and it should contain your primary keywords. The heading should be 5 to 12 words long and have between 50 to 60 characters.
2. SEO title (<title> in HTML)
The title of your page that appears between the <title> tags in HTML. To add one, navigate to SEO settings under the main settings for your page or blog post (see screenshot below). Write a tile between 50 and 60 characters and include your primary keyword. Also, ensure your title is attention-grabbing and stands out from the competition to increase clicks by making sure it’s “click-worthy”.
Page settings dialog box in Squarespace showing the SEO title options.
3. Meta Description (<meta> in HTML)
The description for your page will appear in the search engine results, making it engaging to improve click-through rates. To add one, navigate to SEO settings under the main settings for your page or blog post (see screenshot below). You want to write a paragraph between 150 and 160 characters containing your primary keyword.
Page settings dialog box in Squarespace showing the SEO description options.
4. Website page URL (browser address bar)
You want to make this 4 to 6 words long and ensure it contains your primary keyword. Also, make it readable so that people understand the page content.
5. Page links (<a> in HTML)
Ensure all links are working and set to “open in a new browser tab”.
6. Images (<img> in HTML)
You want to ensure that you optimise all the images that you use within your page and make sure their file sizes are below 250KB. You also need to make sure they all have ALT tags. You can use a website like TinyPNG to optimise and compress your images.
SEOSpace. A Squarespace SEO plugin.
I am not a fan of using third-party software with Squarespace if I can avoid it, but there are exceptions, and this plugin is one of them.
‘SEOSpace’ scans your website pages and tells you where and how to improve your page’s SEO. The steps above are included in the SEOSpace scan. There is a free and paid version. I have used it a little and plan to use it more as, just like everyone else, I need to keep on top of my website SEO. Visit the SEOSpace website to sign up and install the plugin
Summary
Well, that's it! A simple piece of advice for keeping on top of your website onsite SEO.
Contact me if you have a Squarespace website that you need some SEO help with. I look forward to hearing from you.
