What Squarespace Does For SEOs
With SEO or search engine optimization, a website's ranking is substantially improved. Even though search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing frequently change the ranking of sites, and they keep the algorithm behind this constant change hidden, Squarespace creates best practices and efficient SEO tools to improve the ranking of your site.
Squarespace is hosting millions of websites for more than a decade, and it has devised numerous strategies to optimize sites in search engines. Squarespace provides all the technical tools that are needed for a site. Some SEO-friendly built-in features offered by Squarespace are:
Site map. With a site map, Squarespace automatically links proper sitemap.xml, which provides perfect priority and indexing to every URL and metadata of images on your site.
SSL certificate. Squarespace provides free SSL certificates to all the Squarespace domains and third-party domains as well. Because of SSL certificates, SEO ranking substantially improves because when a site is not SSL-secured its search engine ranking drops.
Clean HTML markup. Clean HTML markup is another tool provided by Squarespace that is indexable with search engines. With Squarespace you do not need to put HTML tags like <h1>, <h2>, you only need to choose heading styles, the rest is done by Squarespace.
Automatic tagging. Squarespace automatically does all the tagging that is needed to wrap RSS feeds. This meta-tagging is important to improve search engine indexing.
Clean URLs. Squarespace provided clean static URLs to all the items on your site that are read and indexed by search engines.
Automatic redirects. Squarespace is effective when you have multiple domains. It will redirect search engines and users to the main domain. It uses rel=“canonical” to restore the references.
Search engine and page description. Squarespace offers editing of search engine and page descriptions on your site. This helps the search results to go up.
AMP. Squarespace helps with AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages. These AMP are lightweight versions of web pages and load at a comparatively fast speed on the mobile device. AMPs are helpful to improve search engine results.
Built-in mobile optimization. Mobile-optimized sites are given priority in search engines by Google. Squarespace is great for creating mobile-friendly sites as these sites also search engine-friendly.
Search keyword analytics. Squarespace offers a Search keyword panel, where you can find terms and keywords to drive traffic to your site from different search engines like google or Bing. With keywords analytics search, keyword results can dramatically improve.
Pros and Cons of Squarespace SEO
Pros of Squarespace SEO:
With Squarespace, traffic on your site grows immensely. Above we have discussed several features offered by Squarespace that provide improvement in the search engine ranking of your site. The main strengths of Squarespace SEO are:
Built-in features
Easy to use
User-friendly design
Support
1. Built-in features
Squarespace offers the finest practices and tools to have a strong SEO base for any site. We have already discussed many built-in features in the above section, such as site maps, SSL certificates, mobile-friendly design, automatic redirect, and many others. For non-technical users, these features are especially useful. Squarespace is improving its services concerning SEO features every day.
2. Easy to use
The second strength of Squarespace is its ease of use. It has simplified the concept of SEO and how to use SEO strategies. The things and tools needed to optimize and improve your site's ranking on a search engine are clicks away with Squarespace.
You only need to click to activate these features as activating the SSL certificate, enabling AMP, making it mobile responsive, and searching proper keywords with analytics. Additionally, there is no need for coding or plugins for your site to make it SEO-friendly unless you are using advanced SEO techniques. The no need for plugins gives Squarespace an edge over WordPress. With Squarespace, it has become easier to create SEO content.
3. User-friendly design
The attention span of users has been reduced to seconds. They only spend milliseconds deciding whether they want to visit the site/page or not. Outdated, non-professional designs have no space on the internet. The high bounce rate sends negative signals to search engines that are bad for a site's ranking.
With Squarespace, you can have sleek, minimal, and modern designs that are effective in engaging the users on the site. User-friendly and attractive website design is crucial to generating traffic, which is possible with Squarespace.
4. Support page
The Squarespace support page has all the information that you need to know about SEO, Squarespace SEO, and how to use the strategies to improve the optimization of your site. They offer a checklist for starters to know all about SEO features. This is one of the best strengths of Squarespace SEO features.
Cons of Squarespace SEO:
Up till now, we have only talked about plus points of Squarespace SEOs, now let’s talk a bit about the limitations of this platform. You should be aware of all the pros and cons of Squarespace. The main weaknesses of Squarespace SEO are:
Speed
Schema Markup
Templates & Versions Inconsistency
No Plugins
1. Speed
After Google’s core web vital update of 2021, users have piled their complaints about the loading speed of Squarespace. Like all the website-building platforms, Squarespace has the issue of speed, the coding behind these platforms makes them slower than custom-built websites.
Though it is not very terrible as the average loading speed of the Squarespace site is 3-5 seconds. With the use of graphics, it is not possible to load a Squarespace site in ideal 1-2 seconds. But some solutions are also offered by Squarespace with page speed or mobile-friendly tests you can improve the speed of your site.
2. Schema Markup
Squarespace generates structured data to help Google categorize your site and its content. It sounds helpful, but it causes a few issues; for example, when text is used instead of the image logo, the image field for the local business schema is left empty. The products in search results are also displayed without basic info like description, price, or rating. This is only possible to fix by manually applying schema markup.
3. Templates and versions inconsistency
The feature inconsistency in Squarespace version 7.0 and 7.1 is causing trouble for users. The coding in these two versions is different. This inconsistency is causing template-specific issues in sites. Squarespace 7.1 came out in 2019 but it doesn’t share all the features offered by 7.0.
In the Squarespace version, the 7.0 social sharing button was provided on blog posts and is easy to use, but in version 7.1, the sharing button is not available. But these inconsistencies are not here to stay as Squarespace 7.1 is evolving. Presently, Brine family templates are working best on Squarespace 7.0 for SEO.
4. No plugins
The main weakness of Squarespace in the absence of any plugin. With WordPress sites, users can check their content before posting with the help of plugins like Yoast, but on Squarespace, there is no such option. You also can not add additional features as the plugin has no library. If you need anything that requires a plugin, you will have to post your problem on the Squarespace forum or google it.
How to use Squarespace SEO
Index Your Website
Before your website starts ranking you must index it. You can check if your site is indexed or not by entering the URL of your domain with “site” before it in any search engine like google, for example; site:urlofyoursite.com . To further improve the indexing process, you must verify your site with a google search console and after that submit your sitemap. It will work great for the ranking and visibility of your site.
Page Length
Your site will have thin content if it is mainly focused on visuals and there is little written content. Thin content is one of the main reasons behind the lower performance of Squarespace websites in search engines. To avoid the issue your page should not have less than 300 words. To improve the optimization with search engines you must have longer pages, 500-700 words would be ideal. Inserting blog pages on your site improves the length of the page and consequently improves the ranking.
Keyword Research
Solid keyword research is the foundation to improve the ranking of your site in a search engine. Understand your clients, focus, and target the keywords that could generate traffic on your site. Selection of the right keywords is most important even before checking the Squarespace checklist you must find the right keywords. You should follow these three things while selecting SEO keywords:
Keep in mind your ideal client. Keywords should target the ideal client
Must have a decent length and number of words.
Do not go for overly competitive keywords.
The verdict
We have discussed the pros and cons of Squarespace, yes it has a few problems, but it has its many strengths and advantages. Squarespace is a strong and reliable platform when it comes to SEO. It is great for personal websites, blogs, individual artists, and small businesses. The issues can be easily resolved by some professional help, and you can continue your smooth experience and generate traffic on your site with all the available tools.
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