5 Simple Squarespace SEO Tips to Boost Your Website
As business owners we all want visitors to come to our websites.
But how do we get Google or Bing or Duck Duck Go (or whatever other search engine you can think of) to send visitors our way?
Sure, we could pay for ads, but what we really want is organic or unpaid traffic to our site. And we want the right visitors and lots of them.
For this we need SEO or Search Engine Optimization, which just means that we’re improving our website in order to bring more organic traffic to it.
How?
There are a ton of ways to improve your SEO. So many that it can sometimes be overwhelming. So I wanted to give you 5 simple Squarespace SEO tips so that you can start improving your site with ease.
Table of Contents
Make It Secure with SSL
Does your website address start with HTTP instead of HTTPS? If so, your site will be penalized by Google for not being secure (which is what the “S” stands for).
If you have a Squarespace website this is an easy fix. All Squarespace plans include an SSL (secure socket layer certificate). You just have to enable it!
From your Home Menu click Settings
Click Developer Tools > SSL
Select Secure and HSTS Secure
Save
Your certificate status will now say active.
Get Your Website Indexed
Getting your website indexed means that Google (or other search engines) know your web pages exist and have added them to a list of pages that are available to be shown in search results.
So how do you get indexed?
Google is constantly sending out bots to search the internet for content. It will eventually find your website. Links from other websites will make your site easier to find.
Rather than wait to be found, I prefer to tell Google about my content through Google Search Console. Using this free tool, you can submit a sitemap of your whole website or individual pages for indexing.
Related Post: How to Connect Google Search Console to Your Squarespace Website
Add Alt tags
Alt text or alternative text is a description of your image. It is used by search engines to tell them what your image and the page around it is all about. It also makes your images more accessible (great for user experience and something search engines want).
Adding alt text to your images is one of the easiest ways to help boost your SEO.
To add alt text to your image:
Click Edit in the top left corner of your page
Click on the image
Click on the pencil icon to bring up the image editor
In the Content tab add your text in the Image Alt Text field
Click Save in the top left corner of your page
Related Post: Optimize Your Images for SEO
*It’s also a good idea to rename your images to make them more descriptive. Search engines will use the file name if your alt text is missing. Give them short description (no more than 5 words) and separate each word with a hyphen.
For example, I’ve given this picture the name cute-dog-in-glasses-reading.jpg
Create Descriptive URL slugs
This is an SEO tip that I absolutely didn’t know when I started my SEO journey, so I wanted to make sure to include it.
What Is a URL Slug?
Sounds weird right? But it’s actually something that you see in the browser every time you’re on a website. The URL slug is the part of your web address or URL that identifies your unique page or blog post.
So if we take the example of my appointment scheduling page:
URL= https://mdc-designs.com/book-a-consultation
URL Slug= /book-a-consultation
Google uses your URL slug to help it understand what your page is about. It also helps with your click through rate in search. People are much more likely to click on a descriptive URL slug than one that doesn’t give them any info about the page.
How to Create or Change Your URL Slug
Squarespace creates a default URL slug for each new page called “new-page”. You definitely do not want to leave the default in place.
When creating a new page you can create your URL slug by replacing the words “New Page” (in the white box that appears in the Pages menu) with your text.
To change your URL slug:
Hover over your page name in the Pages menu
Click on the cog icon
Add your new slug under URL SLUG
Save
URL slugs should be lowercase and use hyphens to separate the words. They should be no more than six words.
You can change the URL slugs for both new pages and older pages, but older pages may already be indexed (you can check this in Google Search Console) or linked to by other sites. To make sure visitors don’t end up on a 404 error page (and bounce from your website) you’ll want to set up a page redirect.
Related Post: How to Redirect Your Squarespace Pages
Structure Your Headings
Headings aren’t just there to make your web design look pretty, they play an important part in your SEO. They tell search engines what your page is about, which content is the most important and makes your content easier to read (important for user experience).
H1 or Heading 1 is the most important heading on the page and is usually used for the title. It should only be used once on the page.
Heading 2 is the first subheading, followed by 3 and 4. You can use these heading multiple times on each page.
*The sizes of the headings don’t have to follow the hierarchy. You can have an H3 that’s bigger than the H2, but Heading 2 will still be more important than Heading 3.
Bonus SEO Tips
Here are a few more tips to help boost your SEO
Check for broken links: 404 errors can impact your search ranking. Use a site like https://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/ to find your broken links, then fix.
Optimize SEO page titles: Title tags are used to help search engines understand your page and can be shown in search results.
Add internal links: This makes it easier for visitors to find relevant content.
Keep your website updated: Google loves new content, so make sure your site stays updated.
