What’s True About The Myth About Squarespace SEO: A Review
The Problem(s) With Squarespace SEO
This is not a guide, though it does contain advice. It's a review of SEO problems in Squarespace and a balanced consideration of the "Squarespace SEO myth." For more guidance on how to optimize your Squarespace website for search engines, check out our page of Squarespace SEO Resources and Tips, or check out my article on how you can do keyword research for Squarespace sites. As always, you can turn to us for SEO services if you want professional help.
Is Squarespace really good for SEO?
Is Squarespace Good or Bad for SEO?
Squarespace has suffered for a long time now from a reputation that it's not SEO friendly. The truth is that although there are real issues with how Squarespace implements SEO, you can get great results if you follow best practices and watch out for specific issues.
Marking The Territory
You’ve heard the rumors. You may have taken a look at the slew of Wordpress vs. Squarespace articles, or seen the negative comments on various forums. There are a lot of folks saying Squarespace is bad for SEO.
Then again, you can also find a lot of articles online defending Squarespace against this so-called "myth."
What's the truth? Can you just go ahead and use Squarespace and rest easy in the knowledge that they have everything covered, as some of its proponents claim? Or can you never really rank a Squarespace site as well as a properly set up Wordpress site, so you should just go with Wordpress and save yourself the grief?
The truth, in my view, lies more on the side of Squarespace's defenders. But this article isn't another one of those pieces defending Squarespace—which I'm obviously a proponent of as I specialize in working with it professionally.
No, I'm going to review the most important areas where Squarespace has real SEO problems. I'm also going to put these problems in perspective so you can get as clear-eyed a view as possible.
First—Why Is There No Squarespace SEO Plugin?
SSL is built in, no SEO plugin necessary.
Squarespace does not use plugins. All native features are built in. The so-called plugins for Squarespace by third parties are really just CSS or other code you add manually to the site yourself—not a real plugin like Yoast for Wordpress.
So this is a feature, not a bug. But what is an SEO plugin anyway? It's really just a checklist that helps you do what you need to do for search engine optimization purposes. That Squarespace doesn't have its own Yoast points up both its strengths and its weaknesses.
With Squarespace, there is no such checklist built-in partly because a lot of the work has already been done for you.
Here are some SEO tasks you don't have to worry about with Squarespace:
Getting an SSL certificate
Generating a sitemap
Creating a robots.txt file
Setting up appropriate hosting
Editing the .htaccess file
Implementing a CDN
Squarespace has this stuff taken care of. You also don’t have to worry about breaking your site accidentally or harming its performance by messing up one of these tasks—a great advantage over Wordpress.
Social media integration is easy and intuitive. Sites are mobile responsive out of the box, though sometimes CSS (code) is needed to get them to really look right on mobile or tablets.
It's in taking away the need to worry about these things that Squarespace really shines, including for SEO. It's Squarespace's main virtue.
What About The Myth?
All that sounds pretty good, and it is. But Squarespace is a wee bit misleading when they remark, in their article on what Squarespace does for SEO, "Squarespace has the technical side covered for you—there's no need to search for plugins or get under the hood." In fact, you'll need to make sure you get any number of things right and avoid a variety of pitfalls, some of which are indeed "under the hood." And without a plugin like Yoast to guide you, doing SEO for Squarespace really does require attention to detail.
It makes sense to utilize a guide, such as this checklist from Squarespace. The most important elements will be site and page titles, meta descriptions, URLs, appropriate H1-H3 headings, body copy, and alt text. Headings can be a problem (as we will see) but these are the most important elements of on-page SEO and there's no reason why a competent Squarepace user can't implement them fairly well with a sufficient amount of patience and attention to detail.
Of course, there is also the broader problem of information architecture (the page structure of the site). And there are off-page elements like setting up Google Search Console properly and registering your sitemap, not to mention getting backlinks. Of course, you won't be able to do any of this without decent keyword research. Content strategy is a whole other ballgame that has little to do with Squarespace itself as a platform.
Now let's move on to areas where Squarespace does have some problems.
The Main Squarespace SEO Problems
1. Problematic Templates And Cover Pages
Some Squarespace templates are better than others. It's fair to say that template-specific issues present the most impactful challenges to doing SEO in Squarespace.
Generally speaking, the older, more rigid, and more image-centric templates do worse, and the newer and more versatile templates do better with SEO.
The reason for this is inherent to how Google works. Google reads text, not images. And It likes to see a logical hierarchy of pages and headings (Squarespace offers you H1-H3 headings in the text editor, though H1-H6 are part of HTML). It considers this to provide the best experience for users.
So not having headings, or having minimal body text, as occurs with some older templates, definitely hurts you. So does a site architecture that doesn’t organize pages well.
Cover pages are problem for SEO
Here’s an example of both. One of my first Squarespace sites was for an artist. Since I wanted to showcase his fantastic work, I chose the portfolio template Forte. It features great-looking full bleed index pages which act like a slideshow. Each page has a full bleed background image, with the index name and individual page title in the lower left corner.
The site still looks pretty good several years later. However, from an SEO perspective, it isn't very good at all. On the individual index pages the single headline you see doesn't actually get coded as an H1-H3 heading but as body text. Making matters worse, this is one of those templates that sets the site title itself as an H1. So each of the pages within the index has a single H1 headline which is identical to the other pages. Google likes differentiation, not duplication. Not good.
The lesson here is that when you set up your website, you need to be very careful about what template you choose. It's the most important decision you will make for your site, and the deeper you get developing a site in that template, the more firmly you will be tethered there, because switching templates is a pain. If you have added CSS styling, much of it will need to be redone, and you will have pages that will need recasting. The Marksmen Studio website used to be on the Pacific template. Switching it to Brine was a multi-day task. (SEO wasn't the only reason I switched to Brine—the design flexibility is far greater.)
For that old artist's site I naively created a nice cover page for the homepage with two buttons. It does look pretty good. But what isn't good is adding a needless navigation level and burying the main navigation structure on an inner page. Google has made clear that it considers too many levels of navigation to get to content to be a negative experience for the user. It also makes it harder to crawl your site. Note that it has been observed for a long time that Squarespace cover pages don't do very well with SEO. You want your homepage to have your main navigation and be as close as possible to your content. So my advice is to avoid using cover pages as your homepage. They can be good as landing pages or for other purposes, however.
2. Page Descriptions As Meta Descriptions: SOLVED!
What Squarespace calls the Page Description used to be what it drew on for meta descriptions (the usual source of Google's search snippets). But in some templates, not only did they act as the source of meta descriptions, they also got surfaced on the page.
The new Squarespace SEO tab. Click to expand.
That was a major problem. It meant that some templates were practically unusable if you were serious about SEO. Folks developed workarounds for the problem in some templates. In Bedford, for example, there was a way to use galleries to try to get around the problem. But after hearing of this issue many SEO’s simply wrote off the platform, since SEO is by its nature competitive and this was a major drawback.
With the introduction in 2019 of the Squarespace SEO tab, the problem is effectively solved. The SEO tab allows you to enter a meta description and “SEO title” (title tag) which are entirely independent of the Page Title and Page Description fields.
With this change, Squarespace users have the same control of the relevant tags as users of Wordpress do.
3. Heading Problems
Sometimes in Squarespace, headings and an effective, hierarchical heading structure are difficult to set up or doing so wastes the attractive features of the template.
The symbiosis of headings and body text is crucial to SEO. You generally want to have a single H1 heading on the page and most likely include a primary keyword, and additional, possibly multiple H2 and/or H3 headings as further elaboration of your page's theme in a logical hierarchy. Your body text supports and elaborates on the page's theme. Google can understand your page better that way, and it thinks humans will understand your page better that way, too.
Is this absolutely necessary? No. Some pages will just have a heading or two and relatively little text. These are an example of thin pages. While that's not ideal, it's not a major problem if other pages take up the slack. It isn't even absolutely necessary to avoid multiple H1 headings, as folks used to think. The hierarchy just needs to make sense. That has been confirmed by Matt Cutts, formerly of Google. On the other hand, it's a great way to go, and it should be your default heading structure. I try to limit pages to a single H1 if it isn't too much trouble and it doesn't deform the page to do so.
So it's a significant problem that on some Squarespace templates, there's no way to have an H1 heading on certain pages.
This headline on Bedford isn’t an H1, H2, or H3 headline. That’s not good for SEO.
On other templates, there's an issue with the site title showing up as an H1 if you have no logo. On some, like the York family, there's something called an "upper logo" and "lower logo" in the source code, which shows the site title as two identical H1's.
Furthermore, on some templates such as Bedford where the Page Description is surfaced prominently on the page, what ought to be an H1 due to its importance, or at least a heading of some kind, isn't one.
Then there are image blocks. Squarespace introduced a bunch of versatile image blocks ("card", "poster," etc.) with integrated text some time ago. They're a great addition to Squarespace's design flexibility. I do have some quibbles with how responsive they are, as they can get rendered pretty weirdly on different devices, forcing the use of CSS with media queries. But I'm glad to have them.
These blocks (the ones that integrate text) have a problem, though, for SEO: they provide no headings. The apparent heading you're offered just gets put in between <p> tags. It's seen as body text by Google.
This is not a catastrophe, but it's worth keeping in mind as a notable limitation. In particular, you should be wary about using one of these blocks alone on a page since the page will then have no heading at all. Index page sections are not as bad a case as standalone pages for such use (and it's more likely you'll want to use them that way there). But the lack of a heading is not ideal.
Not ideal doesn't mean big deal, though. If you're strategic about how you use these image blocks they can be great tools for Squarespace websites. Certainly they won't "harm" your SEO, you just won't get the benefit of using a "real" heading.
So the verdict on headings is: not ideal, but mostly dependent on template. Choose the Brine template family and you'll avoid most of these issues.
4. Poor Schema Markup (Structured Data)
Schema markup (code that tells search engines directly about the content in your website) is a subject I've already covered elsewhere, so for that I'll direct you to my articles on three SEO problems with Squarespace's implementation of Schema markup and two fixes for issues with Squarespace Schema markup.
This is what Event schema markup should actually look like, but your Squarespace site doesn’t implement it fully.
The upshot is that Squarespace does a less than ideal implementation of Schema markup, which is becoming more and more important to SEO as Google emphasizes its usefulness.
To summarize the issues, the Author field does not get marked up in Schema in a way Google recognizes, so you'll need to use Google's Data Highlighter or add Schema yourself to get complete Schema for your blog posts. Also, you need to avoid entering anything into Business Information in Settings in the Home Editor if you are not a business, as that will get you unwanted Local Business Schema markup, even if you delete it later.
An additional issue I became aware of more recently is that Event schema is inexplicably missing start date and location, which are obviously crucial to any event markup.
Squarespace will hopefully rectify these problems in the future. Until then, adding additional Schema markup to your Squarespace sites may be a good idea.
5. Captions As Alt Text
There are two ways to add alt text to images in Squarespace. You can add it to the Filename box in the Image Block and it will become alt text if there is no caption. Or you can add it as a caption to an image. If you add it as a caption and then choose “Do Not Display Caption” in the Design section of the Image Block, the hidden caption will become the alt text.
So far, so good, though from a user experience point of view it’s not exactly great, since users need to puzzle over documentation to figure this out rather than just have an obvious field to enter the alt text, which would be more straightforward.
But the real problem arises when you really want to add a caption for an image. Occasionally, a caption makes for pretty good alt text, but not usually. That’s because of the actual function of a caption.
In the section above on Schema markup, there is an image displaying Event schema, with an appropriate caption that ties the image to the discussion it is associated with. The problem is, the caption doesn’t really provide a brief description of the image, which is what alt text is supposed to be. And that will often be the case, because the purpose of captions is to provide context for images. They are not descriptors. But that’s what alt text should be. In this example, more appropriate alt text would be “Event schema markup”.
This doubling up of the caption function with alt text doesn’t serve Squarespace SEO well.
6. Folders Use Temporary Redirects (302's)
When you add a folder in Squarespace it creates a URL for that folder with a 302 (temporary) redirect to the included first page in many templates, including Brine. But this is a case where you would want a permanent redirect. Many SEO scans will produce alarming numbers of alerts because of this issue, though it isn’t of great importance. Ideally, you would also want the option not to have a URL for the folder itself at all, since it’s really just a conceptual placeholder in the navigation.
Other Squarespace Issues
Here are a few issues that have raised eyebrows about Squarespace. Their impact on SEO performance ranges from fairly minor to nonexistent.
Site Speed
The speed of Squarespace sites is ... okay. Not great, okay. Sites are not as fast as they could be if unnecessary scripts weren't loaded. If you put some effort into it, and you have significant experience building Wordpress sites, you will likely be able to get a similar Wordpress site to run faster.
The commerce script in particular is pretty large, so if you don’t need to sell items, it’s best not to play around with commerce functions at all. In fact, it’s best not to play around with any functions, like donations, that you won’t really use. Once you add a donations block, for example, the related script will be loaded from then on, even if you delete the block.
On the other hand, site speed is not a catastrophe with Squarespace. It's unlikely you'll get seriously penalized unless you've bloated your site with too many large images. And what if you are not so familiar with implementing a CDN and trimming JavaScript files? You might be better off with Squarespace than a speedier site elsewhere.
To make up for speeds that are not lightning fast on Squarespace, you can make sure your image sizes are as small as they can be and avoid loading excessive numbers of fonts, among other actions. For a few additional steps you can take, see the relevant tip on our Squarespace SEO Resources and Tips page.
Built-In Domains
When you sign up for a Squarespace website you automatically get what's called a built-in domain. Then, when you get a custom domain (either directly from Squarespace or by pointing an existing domain to your Squarespace site), Squarespace makes the custom domain canonical. The built-in domain doesn't just disappear, though. Depending on how long you've had it live, it can have quite a bit of persistence in search results, even outranking your custom domain in some instances and for periods of time that can be surprisingly lengthy. I've seen it go on for many months.
Since you definitely don't want a duplicate site, this would seem to be a significant problem. Yet over and over again I've seen it just work out by itself. Yes, if you search specifically for the site using Google's "site:" function the built-in domain will come up. But highly specific searches will only return the canonical site's page. What this means is that Google understands what's going on and is making allowances for it. If you're really concerned, you can simply rename your built-in domain's name and those results should slowly disappear, as Colin Irwin described in an article from 2015. I won't do that, because why mess with something that doesn't seem to be a problem? It's the same reason why I won't update my motherboard's BIOS unless there is a definite need to do so.
Deleted Pages
I've also noticed an incredible afterlife for deleted pages, even after I've emptied Squarespace's page "trash." (You do need to empty your page trash. I've seen pages last months beyond 30 days there.) At one point I even engaged in a rather lengthy back-and-forth with customer service because pages that had been deleted over a year prior kept showing up in Google Search Console. Even after removing the URLs from Search Console using the removal tool, they would reappear weeks later, meaning that somehow Google was crawling the site and finding them. Yet they were not in the sitemap or anywhere else I could identify them. What does it mean? I don't know.
I have experienced a page that I deleted nearly three years prior, with no backlinks, popping up again in URL Errors in Search Console.
Trailing Slash
A Squarespace page with and without a trailing slash getting flagged by Google Search Console.
Update February 2019. SOLVED! Squarespace has announced that it has fixed the trailing slash issue which vexed folks for years.
The issue was one of duplication. In the source code, a page's canonical URL ended with a trailing slash, though you could go to either page without a redirect. In the sitemap, there was no trailing slash at the end of URLs. Links in the navigation had a trailing slash, but links in the body didn’t. The result was that scans like Screaming Frog or SEMrush sometimes told you you had a serious problem. I've seen both URLs get flagged as duplicates in Google Search Console in the (no longer existing) HTML Improvements section, which is more concerning.
Your site may see a drop in Google Search Console and Google Analytics in pages indexed and in traffic around the time this issue was fixed. That’s not cause for concern if you can definitely trace it to this issue getting fixed and those pages being de-indexed.
Squarespace Vs. Wordpress And The Zero Sum Competition
So What's The Verdict?
Squarespace does have real challenges with SEO. There’s no question you need to put some careful thought into how you implement your site. But if you keep the main problems in mind and act to work around them, you can do well.
Choose the right template, develop a good keyword strategy, pay attention to headings and titles and meta descriptions, and take a look at a good guide to get the details right. If you also follow an effective content strategy, your efforts will likely trump most issues and render them pretty insignificant.
Squarespace vs. Wordpress For SEO
Is Squarespace as good as Wordpress for SEO? If you use the right template and follow best practices, you can definitely rank your Squarespace website as well as a Wordpress site. Quite possibly you'll do better, since you'll be sure to avoid a number of back end issues you need to make sure to take care of with a Wordpress site, and you'll never get hacked or have a problem with plugins, updates or hosting.
On the other hand, if you're currently using a problematic template, consider what you can do to mitigate its issues. It might be worth it to switch, but in many cases you're better off just putting out excellent content that follows a good content strategy.
If you're not using Squarespace yet, consider it. You can definitely do well, and you shouldn't listen to the naysayers. By being aware of the issues that do exist, you can create a site that will perform superbly and save yourself the headaches that sometimes come with other platforms.
The Best Squarespace Template For SEO
The best Squarespace template for SEO is Brine. Brine avoids the quirks of older templates that do not allow full use of headings, and even allows you an intro section on your blog page so you can get an H1 in on that page, too.
The Brine template also provides the greatest design flexibility, as you will immediately see in the large number of tweaks available in the Site Styles section of the Home Editor. That means you won’t have to resort to using CSS as often as with more rigid templates.
Now that Squarespace has introduced a new SEO tab enabling direct specification of the meta description, Brine’s advantage is less compelling than previously. But it is still my go-to choice to design a new site in Squarespace, as it is for most professional Squarespace designers. Remember, Brine refers to any template in the entire Brine family of templates.
The Zero Sum Competition
It's important to keep in mind what SEO is: a zero-sum competition. You're struggling with other people trying to achieve the same thing you are. Those efforts are what get them their rankings. No platform is going to spare you the hard work you need to put into your website's search engine optimization: analyzing your competitors, thoughtfully setting up your information architecture, implementing your keyword research and content strategy, and getting backlinks. This essential work is mainly what is going to matter. And all of these areas are there for you if you have a Squarespace site. You just have to do the work.
Frequently Asked Questions
+ Is Squarespace good for SEO?
Although there are real issues with how Squarespace implements SEO, you can get great results if you follow best practices and watch out for specific issues.
+ Why is there no Squarespace SEO plugin?
Squarespace does not use plugins at all. All native features are built in. So the so-called plugins for Squarespace by third parties are really just CSS or other code you add manually to the site.
+ What is the best Squarespace template for SEO?
The best Squarespace template for SEO is Brine.
+ Is Squarespace as good as Wordpress for SEO?
If you use the right template and follow best practices, you can definitely rank your Squarespace website as well as a Wordpress site. Quite possibly you'll do better, since you'll be sure to avoid a number of back end issues you need to make sure to take care of with a Wordpress site, and you'll never get hacked or have a problem with plugins, updates or hosting.
+ How fast is Squarespace?
The speed of Squarespace sites is okay. Not great, okay. Sites are not as fast as they could be if unnecessary scripts weren't loaded. If you put some effort into it, and you have significant experience building Wordpress sites, you will likely be able to get a similar Wordpress site to run faster.
+ How can I improve page speed in Squarespace?
To make up for speeds that are not lightning fast on Squarespace, you can make sure your image sizes are as small as they can be and avoid loading excessive numbers of fonts, among other actions.
Need Help With Squarespace SEO?
Marksmen Studio SEO Services for Squarespace websites can root out fundamental SEO problems on your site, target the areas where you want to be seen, and get you ranking better on Google.
Squarespace does have some SEO problems, but how serious are they? A Squarespace SEO review with balanced conclusions.