I am very excited to have Britt Hyatt from Home Sweet Hyatt Studios on the blog this week talking about Squarespace SEO myths and how to optimize your website for SEO so that you are getting as much attention for your website as possible!
I will let Britt dive in, but just in case you don't know what SEO is, it stands for Search Engine Optimization and this essentially measures how easily your website or blog will be found on search engines like Google and Pinterest.
Many of you would know that I am a big fan of Squarespace, well so is Britt and she really helps us in this post to dispel the myths surrounding Squarespace when it comes to SEO. Some say that Squarespace puts you at a disadvantage with SEO but as you're about to see, that's simply not the case!
So I'll hand over to Britt and don't forget to download the freebie for this post: Squarespace SEO Keywords - it will make all the words and phrases we use make sense!
MYTH 1
I don’t know a thing about SEO. Does this mean I can’t do anything with it in Squarespace unless I hire someone?
This is one of the BEST parts about Squarespace. Even if you don’t know a ton about SEO, you can still implement best practices within the platform on your own. Yes, even without crazy tech knowledge! Squarespace makes it super easy to add key SEO features, like: header tags, image file names, and even your business name, address, and phone number for local SEO rankings.
Quick Tip: To update your Name, Address, and Phone Number for your business, go to Settings > General Information
“Squarespace makes it super easy to add key SEO features!”
MYTH 2
Squarespace offers so many single page/scrolling templates and I’ve heard this is really bad for my SEO ranking. Should I switch templates?
The short answer? No! Squarespace offers a wide-variety of template types, but just because you have a longer page that scrolls down (or as it’s referred to with it’s official name - an ‘Index’ page!) doesn’t necessarily mean that your site will rank higher or lower as a result of this setup. One key thing to make sure is that you have SEO setup on your main Index page. What does this mean, exactly? Add in keywords to your Page Title and Description. Also make sure that your URL slug doesn’t have a ‘name-number’ like ‘home-1’. Always make sure you have keywords within your content that you would like your ideal customer to search to find you.
Quick Tip: Make sure to use your H1, H2, H3 tags in your content! No matter which template or platform you use for your website, without the use of these tags, Google won’t understand which of your content is most important.
MYTH 3
If I move over to Squarespace, I’ll lose my Google ranking for my website, right?
There is ALWAYS a risk when moving from one platform to another (ex: Wix to Wordpress, Wordpress to Squarespace, etc.) because Google needs to read your website in a different way. That being said, this doesn’t mean moving from another platform to Squarespace will cause your rankings to dip. With best practices like re-routing old page links, tagging your images with keywords, consistent, relevant, updated content with keywords, you’ll be golden!
Quick Tip: Take advantage of 301 redirects. This means if you have an old page that no longer exists as a result of your website move (or for any reason, really!), your user will be forwarded to a new active page. Set this up by going to Settings > Advanced > URL Mappings
MYTH 4
I’ve heard that I shouldn’t use Blogstomp with Squarespace because it’ll kill my Google ranking. Is this true?
We LOVE Blogstomp. If you haven’t heard of it, and especially if you’re a photographer or someone who puts tons of images on your blog, go check it out. Basically what Blogstomp does is puts tons of your images into a big collage for posting, to save you time on uploading every single image. Pretty cool, right? What we would recommend is having at least a few of these collages, instead of one giant one. From an SEO perspective, Google likes to find more than one image on your blog post, and loves when those images are tagged with your keywords. If you have only one, Google may not think it’s worth it. However, if you put a handful in there, with the proper image file names, you’re good to go AND you’ve saved time!
Quick Tip: When you add your Blogstomp images to your blog, name the images with specific keywords that pertain to your image and what your ideal client would search in Google to find it. For example, if you’re blogging about a newborn photoshoot in Columbus, Ohio, name your image something along the lines of: newborn-photography-columbus-ohio.
MYTH 5
I’ve seen so many Squarespace blogs that take FOREVER to load because of how many blogs show at once and all the images they contain. This HAS to kill SEO and that’s what’s holding me back from switching to Squarespace.
You’re totally right... Kind of! By default, Squarespace has blogs set up where all the blog posts (or a decent amount) and all their information are on a single page. We actually recommend against this - but it’s VERY easy to change! If you actually make your blog a regular page, and use the “summary” blocks to feed in a summary of your blog posts (title, excerpt, date, image) this will totally speed things up and allow for a better user experience for your customer. Super simple to do!
Quick Tip: We have this set up on our blog at www.homesweethyatt.com/blog-page. Our summary is in the “Grid” format. However, you’ll notice at the end of each of our posts, there are summaries there, as well. Those are in “Carousel” format to provide our clients with a simple 3 blog snapshot and an option for them to scroll for more. It’s a really unique way to add interaction to your blog and makes sure everything still loads super fast for your customer, too!
Confused by some of the terminology we use surrounding Squarespace SEO? That's ok, Britt has you covered with this comprehensive Squarespace SEO definitions free download!
BRITT HYATT
Britt Hyatt has been a website designer for 10+ years and is the owner of Home Sweet Hyatt Studios. She designs visually stunning and user-friendly websites for creative businesses to set them apart from their competition and show off their beautiful portfolio. Britt lives and loves life as wife and mama in Cleveland, Ohio.