5 Things You Can Do On Your Squarespace Website To Rank Higher on Google and optimize your SEO

A very common question we get from many small business owners is how they can rank higher on search engines, and, rightfully so, this is such an important thing to consider when it comes to building out your website so you can be found online first amongst your competitors.

Google, as we know it, is such a powerful platform in our lives, yet we’ll be honest with you, ranking high isn’t always the easiest, and is definitely something that takes time and effort.

So why is that you may ask?

Simply put, Google rankings are very competitive with a very complex algorithm to get listed first. So in this blog post, we’re going to provide 5 things you can do on your Squarespace website to help you rank higher on Google search.

Whether you’ve built your own Squarespace website, or are using one of our Coast Kit website templates, it’s important that you optimize your SEO to increase your exposure online!

1: Ensure you’ve got strong targetable keywords on your website

To give your website the best chance of standing out from your competition, it is essential to conduct thorough, high-quality keyword research.

We like to refer to keywords as the types of words clients would type into the search engine bar, or the most commonly used or trending words potential clients would use to find you online!

By researching the impactful, high-quality keywords for your business, you can then use these keywords throughout your website. Although it’s great to use these keywords throughout multiple pages, in blog posts and sections of your website, one of the the most impactful places would be in your Page Descriptions (which we’ll elaborate on in Tip #2) and your page headings. These locations on your website are ranking signals for Google to know what’s more important.

a few great keyword search tools:

There are many amazing keyword search tools online, both free and paid versions. Ahrefs, Semrush, Wordtracker, and Ubersuggest are some of the most popular.

2: Optimize each page for SEO through Meta Descriptions

Site Meta Descriptions make it easier for users to find your website when they are browsing online!

Your site and page meta descriptions in Squarespace are an amazing way to give search engines what they need to rank your page or post on your website higher on online searches, and the great thing is that Squarespace makes it really easy for us to update these ourselves!

We suggest using the keywords researched in Tip 1 up above within your page titles and meta descriptions. Below, you’ll find exactly where you can add in your page specific Titles and Meta Descriptions!

To update your page Meta Descriptions, for each page of your website, if you click on the gear icon next to the page, you’ll find the Page Settings. Within the page settings, you’'ll find the SEO tab which is where you can add your page titles and descriptions and control how they show up on search engines. Here is more information on title formatting tips from Squarespace!

3: Optimize your long form content with keyword usage

Aside from your titles and meta descriptions, long form content on your website also works hard for your business online too.

Long form content refers to content written on your site that is more than just a few words. So for example, Blog posts or blurbs of text on your ABOUT page.

It’s so important that long form content is optimized for SEO, and we always say LESS IS MORE! In fact, the average attention span is about 8.25 seconds, so it’s so important that your long-form content on your website is engaging, simplified and organized into bite-sized pieces to entice visitors to read on and stay on each page.

So how does this help with SEO you may ask?

Long form content has a large amount of SEO opportunities within it such as adding backlinks, anchor links to other pages on your website, keywords, social sharing opportunities and image / video opportunities to keep users engaged, all of which the Google algorithm loves!

4: Create a Google My Business profile & link to the Google Search Console

Simply put, linking your website to Google will help you gain more traffic!

Adding a Google My Business Profile helps ensure that people can find your business when looking for products and services like yours in their local area.

We find that many who set up a Google My Business listing do find an increase in targeted search traffic coming your way over time, so we highly suggest setting this up as its completely free and easy to set up too!

Looking for even more of a boost? Once you have your profile setup, why not share it with past clients to write a Google Review for your business too, this will really help boost your visibility online and also help potential clients get a sense of what it’s like to work with you!

In addition, linking up the Google Search Console is another great step to take on your website prior to launch. If you jump into your website dashboard under ANALYTICS > TRAFFIC, you’ll see you have the ability here to CONNECT TO GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE.

By connecting, this will allow you to verify your site with the Google Search Console to learn which search keywords are driving traffic to your site and how to optimize your site's performance in search results!

5: Ensure your website can easily be crawled

If search engines can’t find, crawl or index your website, this can seriously effect your visibility and exposure online.

Below are just a few ways you can ensure your website can be crawled easily by search engines:

Ensure your website is secure by enabling SSL on your domain host (More about SSL and it’s importance here)
Is your website optimized for mobile devices?
Ensure your pages load quickly, this can be done by making sure all images on each page are ideally under 500 KB or less than 1 MB for larger banner images.
If you have videos on your website, consider uploading those via Vimeo or Youtube so they are not massive MP4 file sizes which can slow down your website. If you have to upload an MP4, ensure it’s compressed.
Test your links, do they all work?
Optimize your User Experience (UX) - Is your website easy to navigate and can it be skimmed through for clients to get what they need?

Overall, there are so many things you can do, as you can see, to boost your SEO and visibility online! We always let clients know that SEO and Google Search Rankings are progressive and take time, but with these measures in place and constant traction, backlinks, social shares, Pinterest shares of your website, you’ll be climbing that ladder in no time!