Squarespace SEO Tips To Get On the First Page of Google
After getting an influx of consistent website enquiries, I thought I'd check our keywords to see if they had anything to do with this exciting business development, and I was thrilled to see that were number one for 'London Squarespace Support' and the first non-Squarespace.com result to come up for 'UK Squarespace Support.'
That's right - we're currently ranking number one on google for some of our keywords!
Whilst this may seem like quite a minor thing for most non-business people out there, this is a huge celebration for us in the Studio 77 office! After SEO-ing the sh*t out of our website around six months ago, it's been amazing to see the results of all of the hard work we've done paying off.
However, I'm not here to gloat about our Squarespace SEO, but I am here to share with you the things that we've done over the last six months to skyrocket our SEO from performing lower than average, all the way to the number one spot.
“But, you can't rank with Squarespace's SEO features? I've heard Squarespace SEO is rubbish”
Before we start, let's just briefly myth-bust this. There have been rumours that Squarespace's SEO isn't as good as it's website-builder rival WordPress - let me stop you there by saying this is absolutely not true. You can 100% rank on Google using Squarespace's built-in SEO options.
Squarespace gives you the option to SEO every single page (just likeWordPress) and allows you to perform all the important features that you can with the Yoast plugin that WordPress users typically install.
Squarespace websites are also a lot easier for people to use, and if you feel more comfortable using and editing your website, then you’ll be more inclined to work on your SEO, which is, well, good for your SEO!
Now we've covered that, we can move onto three ways that you can increase your Squarespace SEO for free!
How to choose your keywords correctly
The first SEO tips actually happens off your website…
One of the key things about ranking in Google is choosing your keywords correctly. We use Google's Keyword Planner when planning out what words we'd like to rank for. This is a great tool for discovering new keywords, by searching for words or phrases related to our offering as a web design business. Their tool helps you find keywords that your customers might actually be searching for instead of what you think they're searching for.
For example, we might think that our customers are searching for 'website studio in London', so when we put that into Google Keywords, it tells us that people are actually searching for 'web design London’ instead - this then allows us to use a relevant keyword in our Squarespace SEO rather than one that no-ones searching for.
There’s no point in ranking one for a keyword that no-one’s searching for!
Google Keywords also allows you to see the volume of people that are searching for specific keywords. So for example, you can see on the screen that at the bottom, 'freelance web design London' only has 10 - 100 monthly searches, so you'd probably think that SEO-ing your whole Squarespace website for that keyword, doesn't make much sense, as it's not searched for that often.
Whereas 'web design services London' has 100 - 1000 monthly searches, so if you're starting small you might want to pick that as one of your keywords so that you can rank for that.
Typically we recommend picking a mix of search volumes, so you can have some smaller wins, and some bigger SEO goals too. Another key point to mention is the higher the search (and the higher the 'top bid' range) the harder it will be to rank.
Your sweet spot with keywords is finding a keyword that is searched a lot (medium - high competition), but has a low top of range bid, as this means that people are searching for this keyword but not many people are ranking for it / running paid ads with that keyword.
If you're interested in learning more, you can find lots of information on the Google Keywords website which explains keywords in a lot more depth.
Now you've got your keywords, what do you do?
Let's start by telling you what not to do...
Don't cram your content full of your keywords
Google is very clever. She can tell when you're trying to play her by cramming your keywords (known as keyword cramming or keyword stuffing) all over your Squarespace website. Yes I am personifying Google as a woman...) She knows when your keywords are in places that don't make sense, or when you're using them to the point where reading the text on your website doesn't actually make sense as all you've done is throw the keyword in multiple times out of context.
Keyword cramming is bad for SEO. Once upon a time, it was a successful method of letting Google know that you're talking about your keyword, but the SEO algorithm is very savvy and you don't want to use those old practices with your Squarespace SEO because it will do more harm than good. Google now penalises those who use keyword stuffing as a strategy (if you can even call it that) these days.
So how do I use my keywords successfully?
Create content (blogs and pages on your Squarespace site) with your audience in mind, not your Squarespace SEO. I know this sounds a little backwards, but Google's guidance on using keywords is to "focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context." If you are delivering meaningful, helpful content, then Google recognises that, and she'll reward you!
Best practices for creating Squarespace SEO content
The typical rule of thumb is to have a keyword density of around 2%, this is a flexible guideline, but it should be able to give you a rough guide of whether you're keyword cramming or not.
Keyword density = the number of times the keywords appears in the copy, divided by the number of total words in the copy.*
So if you had a blog that was 1000 words long, you would want your keyword to appear around 20 times in that blog post.
What's the ideal blog post length for Squarespace SEO?
According to HubSpot, the ideal length for a blog post for SEO is between 2,100 and 2,400 words.**
This isn't to say that blog content written with less words won't help your SEO, we've had blog posts rank that are under 1,500 words before. But the meatier the content, the more useful information you’ll be providing to your audience, and to Google.
Lastly, be patient with your Squarespace SEO
Let me finish by saying that this didn't happen overnight. SEO is a long-game, not an instant quick fix. Whilst some of the tips above can be implemented pretty quickly and easily, it typically takes between three and six months for you to see substantial results from your Squarespace SEO, so you have to patient, and consistent with the way in which you approach your websites SEO.
In a world of instant validation, SEO plays it slow!
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