Why is SEO Crucial for Your Website?
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SEO can seem confusing and intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be. Learn how to use SEO to help get potential customers to your website.
An essential part of the website design process is implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy. Why? Because once you go through all the work of creating your website's strategy, content, and design, you want your potential customers to find it on the very crowded, very noisy internet. It is not quite as easy as "build it and they will come." You need SEO to do that.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of actions you can take to make your website more visible to search engines so your potential customers can find you. This means more traffic to your website, which gives you more opportunities to engage with qualified leads and convert them into happy customers.
In summary, you want to incorporate SEO in your website process to get higher rankings on search engines, like Google. As a result, when people search for your product or service, they find you – the faster, the better.
Squarespace and SEO
Squarespace has implemented various strategies to help your site appear in search engine results. The good news is that they have the technical side covered for you—there's no need to search for plugins or get under the hood. However, you still need to take several crucial steps to make sure your site is search engine optimized.
Your Squarespace SEO checklist
❒ Add your meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are site descriptions – short text that describes your site's content. This is the copy you see under the page title in search results.
After you are done with designing your site, you will want to add a site-wide description that will be used for your home page. you will also add page-specific descriptions for each web page.
To add your site description:
Go to Settings
Click on SEO Appearance
Click on Home
Update your description
For your individual page descriptions:
Go to the Pages menu and hover over the page name; the gear icon will appear
Click the Gear icon
SEO description
Tip: Remember our keywords. When writing your descriptions, make sure you include your keywords in both site-wide and page descriptions. This does not mean keyword stuffing which could hurt your ranking. You want to talk to a person and be authentic, accurate, and straightforward.
❒ Change your default social sharing image
When you share a URL from your website on social media or through a messaging app, social sharing images are pulled from your site. You can add a custom social sharing image to have more control over what image shows up. You can add an image even if the page you share doesn't include images.
How to add an Alternate Sharing Image for a specific page:
Open the Pages panel
Hover over the page title, then click the Gear icon on the right to open Page settings
Click the Social tab
Drag your image into the image uploader. Or you can click Upload an Image to open a file menu, then choose a file from your computer
Click Save
Tip: Pay attention to image sizing. To ensure your photo looks its best, make sure to size it for the social media platforms you will be posting in.
❒ Create a custom 404 page
The 404 page appears when the page was either moved to another URL or it was removed from the website. By creating a custom 404 page, you turn a potentially frustrating and negative experience into a positive one. Your 404 pages should include links back to your site; important links might be your homepage and service page. A custom 404 page also allows you to showcase your unique style and personality.
You want to show your visitor you care about their experience and to help them get the information they want. I like to incorporate humor and playfulness.
To create a custom 404 page:
Create a new page in the Not Linked section, name it "404 page"
Design it to fit your brand; explain why they are there and options for getting back to your website
Save
Go to the Design menu
Select 404 Page
Use the dropdown menu to select your new 404 page
Lego’s custom 404 page.
❒ Turn on SSL and HSTS
An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates the identity of a website and encrypts information sent to the server using SSL technology. It ensures that this data travels securely from a user's browser to your website server without being intercepted by hackers.
Search engines favor secure websites, so make sure you enable SSL and HSTS. This tells Google your site is secure. If you don't enable these settings, when someone goes to your site, they will get a scary-looking warning that says your website is not secure.
Not a very welcoming precursor to your website! Squarespace makes SSL certification easy.
In addition, using SSL means your site will be delivered through the faster HTTP/2 protocol. The HSTS option can also improve site speed and SEO.
To turn on SSL and HSTS:
Go to Settings
Developer Tools
SSL - enable
❒ Connect your social media accounts
Squarespace allows you to connect to several social media accounts.
To set up and authorize a social media account:
Open the Connected Accounts panel
Click Connect Account
In the Connected Accounts menu, select the account you'd like to add
Log in with your account name and password, and then click Authorize (this step varies by service)
For more information on social sharing with Squarespace, check their help center.
❒ Check all URL slugs for pages and blogs
Check your page URLs to make sure they reflect the content on the page. This is especially important for your blog posts.
Squarespace’s default URL slug names are usually fine for most web pages, but you want to go to every page and check.
To do this: you go to Pages Menu:
Go to Pages
Hover over the page you want and click the Gear icon
Go to General and view the URL slug
Make changes if needed
For your individual blog posts, you will need to go to each blog and update the URL with the name of your blog.
To make changes to your blog post URL:
Go to the individual blog page
Click the three dots on the right and go to settings
Go to Content, and you will see the Post URL
Update with the name of your post, putting dashes between words
An example: Squarespace default blog name: blog/soul-y3549.
Change to: blog/pet-tips-for-large-breeds
❒ Structure copy with H1, H2, H3, and H4
Make sure you have incorporated your keywords in headings and body copy. Be careful not to do any keyword stuffing.
❒ Resize all images
Large images can slow down the loading time of your website. Use images under 500 KB. If images are too large, use a compression tool like Compresspng or Tinypng to get them down to size.
❒ Rename all images to include keywords
Search bots cannot see your image, so your description is the only way they know what the image is and if it is relevant to the search question. It is important to be descriptive and accurate. Add in keywords but do not simply string together keywords that do not make sense. Keep image descriptions short, 4-5 words.
❒ Register your site with Google Search Console
Submit a Sitemap
❒ Register with Bing Webmaster Tools
Submit a Sitemap
❒ Create a Google My Business Page (if you are a local service)
❒ Create redirects if you ever change a URL
You can create URL redirects to forward visitors away from pages that don't exist to active pages. This can be for permanent changes (301 redirects) or temporary changes (302 redirects).
Redirects are important because they let search engines know that a page has moved, and search engines will transfer the old page's rank to the new page.
To use a 301 redirect, the original URL can no longer exist, and the new one must exist. Delete the old page by disabling it or changing its URL.
To set up URL redirects:
Open the Developer tools panel.
Click URL mappings.
Click into the text field and add your redirects using the format below.
Click Save
The four elements you need when formatting your redirect:
The old URL for the page that does not exist.
The "arrow," which is a dash immediately followed by a greater than sign (->).
The new URL for the page you want to redirect to.
The redirect type (301 or 302).
The URL mapping looks like this:
/old-url -> /new-url 301
And there you have it!
I hope you found this blog helpful for understanding how to set up best practices SEO on your Squarespace website. If you would like a website SEO audit or any other help, book a call to begin.