If you are looking to improve your website visibility on search engines and help customers find your business on Google, then you need to be tracking and tweaking your website for SEO. SEO (search engine optimization) can be an amazing way to increase traffic and grow your small business. If you have your website set up on Squarespace, then optimising it for SEO is easier than ever! Today, we're providing a valuable guide that covers the basics of how to get more eyes on your Squarespace website, using both Squarespace’s built-in SEO capabilities and our favourite SEO tools. Keep reading to become your very own SEO expert — no matter where in the process of building a thriving online presence you may currently be. Spoiler alert: Make sure you stick around and grab our Squarespace SEO checklist at the end of the blog too!

Is Squarespace Good for SEO?

This is one big question we get asked over and over again! In our almost 10 years of using Squarespace, we’ve heard it all – from ‘Squarespace is bad for SEO’ to ‘You can’t rank with a website unless it’s on Wordpress’. There is a myth amongst some web designers and developers that you won’t be able to get your website to show on page one with a DIY website platform such as Squarespace.

If your website is already on Squarespace, don’t panic – we’re here to tell you that this is a total myth, and it’s 100% possible to rank high in search results with a Squarespace website. If you’re thinking about making the move from another platform, such as Wordpress or Wix, there are some things you’ll need to consider before the move – you may even be able to rank higher in Google than your previous site if you do it right.

These days, there are sooo many factors that contribute to where your site ranks in the search results. If you’re following our top tips for improving your Squarespace website’s SEO (which we’ll get to in just a minute), then you’re going to see results.

Is there a Squarespace SEO Plugin?

The term ‘plugin’ doesn’t really apply to Squarespace sites, as Squarespace builds many features directly into the platform itself. The term ‘plugin’ just means a set of code files that are uploaded to your site that enables certain things to happen.

The great news for all you Squarespace users, is that most of the functionality you’ll need to edit and update SEO settings is right at your fingertips within the Squarespace platform.

For anything else, there are some third-party tools you can use which will help you research keywords, track your SEO successes, make suggestions on how to improve your SEO and analyse your website’s current SEO status.

Best SEO Tools for Squarespace Websites

As any good tradesperson knows – the success of your results comes down to choosing the right tool for the job. When it comes to using SEO to help potential clients find you on Google, it all comes down to understanding what your objective is, and then you can determine the best tool to help you achieve your SEO goals. Whilst there are plenty of tools out there that will cost you big bucks every month, we’ve chosen to focus on those that are both simple to understand and implement, as well as relatively low-cost on a monthly basis.

Keyword Research & Optimisation

There are plenty of SEO Keyword Research tools on the market that will help you brainstorm and analyse what keywords you should target on your website. However, many of them are quite costly and have so many features that as a small business owner looking to DIY their SEO can be overwhelming. That’s why we love Ubersuggest. It’s nimble enough to give you access to the information you need, without being overwhelming sending you on a rabbit hole down an SEO escapade.

With Ubersuggest, you can analyse competitors' websites to see what keywords they are ranking for, track your websites ranking on keywords you’re targeting, get suggestions for content to rank higher on keywords and you can even use their AI writing tool to kick start your content creation process. Run a free site audit on your website here.

On-Page Analyser - SEO Space

If you’ve come from Wordpress, you might be familiar with an SEO plugin called ‘YOAST’. Yoast uses a traffic light system to tell you whether your SEO is good (green), needs a little improvement (yellow) or needs some serious attention (red). This is a great way for even the total beginner.

Whilst there isn’t a plugin for Squarespace, there is a Google Chrome extension that will give you much the same functionality. Enter – SEO Space. The great news is the plugin will give you a similar traffic-light (red, yellow, green) rating on the absolute essentials of SEO, with easy-to-follow, jargon-free tips to help you improve your SEO. Try it out for yourself today.

Broken Link Checker

When links on your website lead nowhere, we call this a ‘broken-link’. Although Squarespace has a built in 404 page, this is often not enough to keep someone on your website. Broken links affect your SEO by both affecting your bounce-rate (the time it takes someone to ‘bounce’ off your website) and lowers the time spent on your website – both known factors which contribute to your SEO ranking. Not to mention, it also affects your potential customers’ user experience on your site – meaning they're less likely to engage with your brand further, due to the frustration of not being able to find the information they were seeking.

Never fear – you don’t need to trawl through every page of your website, clicking on link after link to see if it takes you to the right page. Nobody's got time for that. You can check your entire website in just a few clicks of a button thanks to brokenlinkcheck.com.

Page Title & Meta Description Preview

Now, we don’t want to overwhelm you with too much technical talk – but we do want to equip you with the knowledge to either start improving your Google search rankings yourself, or to be able to talk-the-talk with an SEO service provider (so you know you’re not getting ripped off!).

Two of the key things every page on your website needs to be keyword optimised for is your Page Title (what your page is called), and the pages Meta Description. The Meta Description is often what you’ll see in search results under each Page Title

Although Google will automatically generate a description for you, if you didn’t specifically create one, this is often taken from the first paragraph of content on your page – which in most cases may not have all the juicy keywords you’re wanting to target included.

Once you’ve done your keyword research, you can brainstorm different Page Titles and Meta Descriptions and see what they’ll look like in search results using this helpful online tool. If either one is too long, or too short (according to Google’s preferred length for desktop and mobile devices). You can also see what your existing pages Titles and Meta Descriptions look like, to see if they need improving. Try it out for yourself.

Speed Checker

Having a fast-loading website is crucial in this day and age of having everything we could possibly want to know at our fingertips. So when someone is searching for information, they want that information now. They don’t want to have to wait for the rainbow wheel of death to disappear and your website to finally load.

According to a Unbounce 82% of consumers say slow page loading speeds contribute to whether or not they purchase. And if you’re focused on boosting your eMail subscriber numbers, you’ll want to know that according to Portent, sites that load in 1 second or less have a whopping 39%. That number drops by almost half when a page takes just 4 seconds more to load. So be sure to check your opt-in landing pages loading time.

Adding cool effects such as audio, video and animation may seem like a great idea in terms of design, but these (along with large image files) can significantly slow down your page’s loading time. Check out your website’s loading speed with Google’s free tool here.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an absolute must-have for every website. It not only gives you access to important information about your website, to see how your traffic is growing, it can give you insights as to how people find you (what keywords they’re typing in to land on your site), what pages they then navigate to, where your traffic is coming from (e.g organic search results vs Facebook vs Pinterest vs backlinks from other websites). With Google’s upgrade to GA4 coming in July 2023, you’ll also be able to see more easily what buttons your website visitors are clicking on, in order to track conversions.

If you haven’t yet got Google Analytics installed on your website, be sure to set up a free Google Analytics account here.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console gives you more in-depth information about how your site is performing in search results. It’s absolutely free and easy to set up (you can get started here). Our favourite part is that Google Search Console will send you updates on how your website is performing, so you can track month-to-month how your website traffic is growing.

In-Built Squarespace SEO

Last, but most certainly not least, is Squarespaces’ own built-in analytics tools. Although in our opinion, these provide quite basic analytics, they can be great for those just starting out and wanting to get a feel for how their website is performing, without diving into some of the more complex tools we’ve mentioned above.

Firstly, you can check out where your traffic is coming from in the ‘Traffic Sources’ section. Then, once you’ve linked your Google Search Console to your Squarespace website you can also view what keywords people are finding on your site from search results.

Whether your goal is to get more eMail subscribers, more sales through your e-commerce store or more clients working with you, improving your website's SEO is key. Improving your SEO is a great low-cost way to get more eyes on your website. The great news is, with these tools at your fingertips, improving your Squarespace sites SEO is easy!

Ready to take your SEO to the next-level? Download our FREE Squarespace SEO Checklist of 20 things you can do today to improve your SEO on Squarespace.