Unlike some other website builders, such as WordPress, Squarespace is not free. However, it is still beginner friendly, offers good customer support, and has a lot of tools, options, and functions that are great both for bloggers and eCommerce merchants.
According to most estimates, there are more than 300,000 Squarespace websites on the internet, which number is considerably higher than it was just a few years ago. So the builder is doing something right.
But is Squarespace good for SEO? Let’s take a look at some of the features that make Squarespace SEO easier.
Is Squarespace Good for SEO?
Squarespace has several features and tools that make it “good” for SEO. Here are among the best of them.
- Squarespace automatically generates an XML sitemap that contains all the website’s page URLs and image metadata. Squarespace also automatically updates the sitemap periodically.
- Squarespace places a high emphasis on security and issues free SSL certificates to all users, resulting in a more secure website and a better user experience, which in turn translates to stronger SEO.
- Squarespace offers more than a hundred different themes, and all of them are responsive, which offers a boost to technical SEO. With that said, the fact that they offer a better mobile experience is better for eCommerce overall, too.
- Even though it only offers a small boost to SEO, you can edit Squarespace URLs easily, to shorten them, add keywords, or otherwise optimize.
- Like other quality website builders, Squarespace makes it easy to edit page titles, which is critical for search engine optimization, as page titles are among the most important ranking factors.
- Squarespace automatically creates a robots.txt file for every website, but you can still edit the file to customize which crawlers can and can’t crawl the website.
- Squarespace automatically creates redirects, which helps to prevent technical SEO issues for websites with a lot of pages and links.
In addition the Squarespace platform also offers an “SEO Checklist” that, while basic, makes it slightly easier for website users to keep track of optimizations they make, and which makes it a little easier for beginners who know nothing about SEO to start making optimizations that will benefit the website.
Squarespace also has some other built-in tools that make it easier for users to optimize the website, such as an “SEO Panel” and “SEO-Friendly Translations” that also help users make optimizations
However, it is important to note that there is no such thing as a website that has “SEO built-in,” not inherently at least. The best a platform can be is well-designed for technical SEO. For the purposes of optimizing on and off page ranking factors as well as content, you need to do the legwork.
This means that any website admin that wants to optimize a Squarespace website must first perform keyword research and do a website and industry audit. It also means that you’re still on your own with content optimizations, because no platform “comes” with optimized copy.
Working with Squarespace SEO Experts
The latter revelations covered above are among those that some eCommerce merchants choose to work with Squarespace SEO experts rather than trying to do everything on their own.
Let alone the fact that Squarespace SEO specialists have experience with the platform, they also understand how keyword research works, may be able to help with link building, and are familiar with on-page and content optimizations that move the needle.
If you have an eCommerce website built on Squarespace and are not sure how to optimize it so as to grow organic traffic and improve sales and conversions, you should at least give some thought to hiring an SEO expert.
