Can Squarespace do SEO?
Someone decided to start a rumor that Squarespace wasn't good for SEO and, much to my regret, this myth has been circulating the internet ever since.
The fact is - SEO ranking algorithms are constantly changing and evolving. However, for several years now there have been fairly consistent basics that are strongly related to a better ranking position and Squarespace is just as good for SEO as other platforms.
Let's start with the basics:
How much Google likes your website depends primarily on these things:
Optimize your website settings for search
Valuable content that relates to your keywords
Backlinks from relevant websites with high authority
Optimizing your website for search and user-friendliness
Once users find your website, it should be user-friendly. Pages should load quickly, look good on different devices and be designed to be accessible to all so that it can be enjoyable and helpful to a wide audience. By carefully structuring your website, you can help browsers and search engines to load and process pages quickly.
By carefully targeting keywords, structuring content properly and adding descriptive meta tags, you can help search engines and potential customers understand what they will find on your website.
Conclusion: So can Squarespace do all these things? You bet it can!
Valuable content that matches your keywords
You are the expert in your field, so talk about it on your website, every day on your blog if you can. Why? Because you'll show Google that you're an authority in your field by writing lots of detailed, valuable posts.
The content of your website should be informative. It should answer questions, solve problems and demonstrate expertise in a language that most people understand.
Google's entire goal is to help people find the content that solves their problem and answers their question. It's not Google's job to show your website in search results just because Google likes you. Google's job is to provide relevant and useful information. So if you provide the appropriate content, Google will reward you for it.
Bottom line: the more relevant and valuable the content you create, the better. Can you create long, valuable content on a Squarespace website? You can bet on that too! The platform doesn't matter for this all-important ranking signal.
Backlinks from relevant websites with high authority
If a website with an established high authority, i.e. a high ranking, links to your website, Google assumes that this site is saying "this website is reputable", "this website has something valuable to say", "this website knows what's going on". The more people talk about your website and link to it, especially if the "endorsement" comes from a website that is already considered highly reputable, the more reputable your website must be, Google concludes.
In recent years, relevance has also come into play with links. If Google recognizes that your website is a wedding venue, for example, any links to wedding related websites will be very helpful to you. But do you have a link back from Ludwig's plumbing website? This link would then not be considered relevant as these two websites do not have much in common and the link is therefore not given much importance.
Does the creation of your website on Squarespace have an influence on whether relevant websites link to you? Of course not! For one of the most important ranking signals, the platform on which your website is built is absolutely irrelevant!
Conclusion: Work on attracting the attention of the most relevant websites for your website.
Summary:
Squarespace makes it easy for users to keep up with the times and offers a range of SEO features that make it a robust choice for building a search engine friendly website:
User-friendly SEO settings: Squarespace offers an intuitive SEO settings panel where you can customize key elements such as page titles, meta descriptions and URLs.
Mobile responsiveness: Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites and Squarespace templates are responsively designed to ensure a seamless user experience on all devices.
Page speed and performance: Squarespace websites usually load quickly, a crucial factor for SEO rankings.
SSL security: Squarespace offers SSL security, which is not only essential for user trust, but is also recognized by search engines as a ranking factor.
Sitemaps: Squarespace generates and manages XML sitemaps so that search engines can crawl and index your website more easily.
301 redirects: You can easily set up 301 redirects to maintain SEO integrity when changing page URLs.
Blog and content management: Squarespace's blogging features are robust and designed with SEO in mind. You can easily create content-rich blogs.
I'll also leave you with the following statement from Anthony Caselena, founder and CEO of Squarespace:
"Squarespace is designed to work properly without a sea of plugins, and the lack of a plugin shouldn't mean we didn't build it from the ground up. We actually regularly scan the most commonly installed WordPress plugins and make sure we're doing all of that in our core."
There we have it. Squarespace is not bad for SEO and it's time for the rumor to go away!
