Step-by-Step Squarespace SEO Guide For Health, Wellness, and Fitness brands
Step-by-Step Squarespace SEO Guide!
While booking web design clients we often get asked about SEO, especially on Squarespace. So, the other day I was on a call with a client and she asked me a brilliant question: “How can I keep working on my SEO after you finished the project?”
I was so glad she asked this question because she was right! SEO is a strategy that requires constant adjustment and one that only produces results in the long term. So, business owners should keep updating and run experiments with their SEO. That’s why we created this step-by-step guide for Squarespace websites!
Anyways, that’s where the idea for this post came from, and we just knew we couldn’t keep this to ourselves and needed to share it with all business owners out there.
Don’t worry, you got this!
Step-by-Step Squarespace SEO Guide For Health, Wellness, and Fitness brands
BUT WHAT IS SEO? SEEMS COMPLICATED…
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, it is a term introduced to define the improvements that people do to their websites to make them rank higher as possible on a search engine page.
IS SEO REALLY IMPORTANT?
Yes, it is! And let us explain why with some stats: With 53.3% of all the websites traffic coming from organic search (BrightEdge), and knowing that 91.5% of people will click on a website that is listed on the first page of search engine results (SEJ), you can already understand how relevant SEO is for the success of your website.
IS SQUARESPACE SEO FRIENDY?
Definitely yes! Squarespace not only is SEO-friendly but it also has already a few built-in features that will help you set up your website's SEO.
Among those features are:
SSL Security: All Squarespace websites have SSL certificates, so a secure connection between the website and the users is always guaranteed. This is one of the features that search engines like Google prioritize. With this benefit, you will always rank first than someone that doesn't have it.
Mobile-friendly: Every single one of the themes in Squarespace is responsive, which means that they will automatically resize to fit the display that you are using, so as you can imagine mobile screens are included. Google loves websites that are mobile-friendly.
Sitemaps: A sitemap includes all URLs and images metadata for SEO indexing, and Squarespace offers an automatic sitemap making it easy to update.
HTML and URLs: With Squarespace, the HTML markup and URLs are easy to index.
Ok so now we know that Squarespace is a great choice when it comes to SEO, but what can you do on your end for your site to stand out from the competition? What are the good practices to increase your SEO rank?
Up next you will find a step-by-step SEO Guide for your Squarespace website divided into 10 different steps. You will learn what to do to increase your SEO and therefore rank higher on the results page of the search engines.
So let's start, shall we?
Step-by-Step Squarespace SEO Guide
STEP 1: Keywords
Before you start creating content for your brand, you should research the keywords you are going to use within that said content, and the ones you want to rank for.
This practice will help you understand how competitive it will be to rank for that specific keyword. Naturally, more competition means the more difficult it will be for you to rank higher on the search engine results page. But don't be discouraged by that, you just need to find the perfect balance between competition and subject demand.
This type of research not only will help you choose the best keywords for SEO but, during the process, you will find many related topics and questions giving you material and ideas for future content.
STEP 2: Quality Content
When creating content you need to focus on the quality of what you are producing. A rule that you should always follow is quality over quantity! It’s better to create something short and sweet that will bring lots of value to your readers than create a giant pile of garbage that no one will spend time reading.
This is also applicable to the search engines, with their progressive development and sophistication that make more and more checks to your content. The goal of search engines is to try to give the right answers to the right people, so if your content has good quality, the probability for it to get in front of your target audience will increase accordingly.
Learn how to structure your content following these best practices to keep your readers engaged!
STEP 3: Title Tags
One of the most important things when it comes to SEO is the title tags as they are essential for search engines to know what is the topic of your content.
Squarespace gives you the possibility to customize this data. For this, you just need to go to the settings of the page that you what to change and click on the SEO tab. There you will find the “Page Title” field where you can make the changes in accordance with what you want to rank for.
Your title tags should have as many keywords as possible without looking like spam. The message should be clear and right to the subject, anyone that reads it should know what that page is about. Forget about fancy wordplay, be direct and concise especially because you are limited to 60 characters.
STEP 4: Simple URL SLUGS
A detail that you should always have into consideration is the URL slugs of your site pages. Let's take a simple example so you understand what exactly is a URL slug. You’re a yoga teacher, so you have a blog about yoga, and on your next blog post title is “Best Yoga Poses For Beginners“ your URL slug is: 'www.domain.com/blog/best-yoga-poses-beginners'.
URL slugs should be simple but at the same time related to the content of the page, the words in the URL slug should be separated with hyphens so it will be easy for the user to read. It also helps when you want to share your post on social media because of the simple fact that some of those platforms have a limit of characters.
STEP 5: Headings and Meta Descriptions
When it comes to headings, the keywords that you want to rank for should be in the heading of the page this tag is usually designated as <h1>. Then, if you need to organize your content with subtitles you can use the tags <h2> and <h3> and those tags don't need to have keywords.
Another important setting that you should be aware of is the meta descriptions. Meta descriptions are the summaries that appear in the search results so, although they are not taken into consideration as a ranking factor for your website, they are extremely important to encourage click-throughs.
With Squarespace, you can easily customize the meta descriptions of your homepage, individual pages, blog posts, and even on products.
For your homepage, once you are on Squarespace website backend you can go to Marketing, then click SEO, and there you will have a field named “Site Meta Description” where you can add or change the meta description of your website.
For the individual pages, go to “Pages”, “Page Settings”, “SEO” and there you will find a field named “SEO Description”. Fill it with a quick description of the page content focusing on keywords and you are done!
Last but not least, for the blog posts and products go to “Edit”, and then “Options”. Once you’re there you’ll see a field with the name “Excerpt”, fill it with a description and it’s done.
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STEP 6: Images
Did you know that the images you use on your website take a big role when it comes to ranking in search engine results pages? But why is that?
It’s not about what the images actually show but their size can make the difference in terms of the loading speed of your site and that is what Google and other search engines take into consideration when it comes to ranking your site.
A fast-loading website will rank higher than a website that takes too much time to load. So, don't forget to optimize your images, and resize them when it is needed.
Another point that you should take into consideration is the caption text of the images. Most of the search engines have a function to search for images, and if your site images show on the results page that can lead to users visiting your site.
So don't overlook the caption text of your images, describe what they represent to increase the chances of them popping up on the results pages.
STEP 7: Internal Links
Every time it seems proper to add an internal link to your new piece of content don’t think about it twice and do it!
If you have been following our blog, you will always find internal links on our post that will redirect you to other pieces of content within our website. Sometimes is a hyperlink in the middle of the text and some other times are a reference to another blog post at the end of the one that you are reading.
This is a great strategy to keep your visitors engaged with your content, and when done correctly it will increase massively the average time that a person stays on your site (assuming that you’re writing content filled with valuable information!).
STEP 8: 404 Page
A 404 code means that the page that you are looking for is missing (meaning you have a broken link), and it can happen to anyone without you even noticing!
When this happens you should redirect the users to another page. The most common practice is to redirect people to the homepage, but I don't agree with this approach at all!
When you click on a link (without knowing that it is broken) and then you end up on a different page there is a brief moment where you ask yourself “What just happened?” This moment is sufficient to break the user engagement and reduce the time that they will be staying on your site.
That is why we recommend you customize your own 404 page. So, every time this happens your visitor knows exactly what is going on. They will notice that the link is broken and the probability for them to search for something similar within your website increases.
STEP 9: Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Enabling accelerated mobile pages or AMP on your site can be extremely beneficial for your business especially if you have a blog.
AMP makes your content load faster in mobile devices, so 60% of the Google searches are being made using a mobile device (Statista), and clearly, Google gives priority to AMP results. With this option enabled on your website, the possibility to rank higher in mobile searches increases.
Be aware that with AMP your website will not load with your typical website styling, it will only use the essential HTML to display the content. So we advise checking in advance how your content is going to look with AMP enabled.
To preview your pages with AMP-enabled you just need to add '?format=amp' to the end of the URL that you are testing. With Squarespace, you can turn on AMP by going to 'Settings', then 'Blogging', scroll down until you find the checkbox that says 'Use AMP', save your changes and you are good to go.
STEP 10: Submit Your Sitemap
It can take some time for search engines to see that you’ve added new content to your website. But there's one thing you can do to accelerate the indexing process of the new content.
Google and Bing offer free tools that you can use to submit your sitemap XML files, by doing this the search engines will instantly notice your changes and start to suggest your content in the results pages.
How to index the whole website by submitting a sitemap:
On the Google Search Console dashboard select your website
Click Sitemaps
Under Add a new sitemap, enter your sitemap URL
Click Submit
Final Thoughts
That’s it - Step-by-Step Squarespace SEO Guide!
If you follow the steps we’ve shared above to improve your Squarespace site SEO, you will for sure be many steps closer to finding your next client. The best part is that you don’t need to be a big expert because you’ll already be ahead of more than 90% of the already existing websites. When comes to SEO a big part of business owners don't even know what SEO stands for!
Keep in mind, that this is a long-term strategy and it might take a while until you rank on the first page of the search engine results. But if you don't neglect your SEO strategy and you do it regularly, you will for sure get the rewards soon enough.
Now it's your turn to tell us, do you already have any of the steps mentioned above implemented on your website? What are the steps you’re going to implement next? Have you missed anything on this list? Send us your answers, and any other questions you might have, and we’ll do our best to answer them.
If you want to start working on your online presence, and learn the 5 steps on how to do it, be sure to check out and sign-up for our free training!
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