5 Squarespace Website Tweaks to Boost Your SEO and Get Found on Google
Guest Blog By Kavita Lythe - Squarespace Website Designer
When you’ve got an amazing website that truly reflects you and your business, you’d naturally want to share it with the world. One of the best ways to get more people onto your website is by ensuring it ranks high in Google search results.
This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes in.
SEO can often feel overwhelming and full of complicated jargon, but there are things that every business owner can do on their website to get found on search engines.
Some of the suggestions that I’m making in this blog post will be tailored specifically to Squarespace websites, but most of the advice will be applicable to anyone who has a website, regardless of what platform it’s built on.
What is SEO?
SEO is the process of improving your website so it can rank higher on search engine results – primarily Google. SEO is a long term game, so it’s unlikely that you will see results from anything that has been actioned this week. But, by consistently applying SEO best practices when you’re building, updating and maintaining your website, you’ll set a solid foundation.
Here are 5 Website Tweaks to Boost Your SEO and Get Found on Google:
1. Connect to Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free tool that monitors your website’s search performance. It essentially tells you how Google sees your website and it will give you information about any usability issues, track your top search keywords, monitor impressions and clicks, and give you your average position in search results. You can use this information to improve your website over time.
Once you’ve connected your website to Google Search Console, you can submit your sitemap (the pages on your website) for indexing. This just means Google will crawl your website by following the links and reading each page. Google will analyse the topic, relevance and quality of the content on each page before it decides whether to index that page in its database. Once indexed, Google decides where your page shows up for relevant search queries.
Your website will not appear on Google search results without indexing, so this is an essential step if you want to rank at all on Google.
If you’ve built your website on Squarespace, here is how to connect it to Google Search Console:
– Go to “Settings” and click “Third Party Tools”
– Click on “Connected Accounts”
– Click on “Connect Account”
– Select “Google Search Console”
– Log in to your Google Account in the pop up window.
Once you are connected to Google Search Console, submit your site map:
– Go to search.google.com
– Click “Sitemap” in the left hand menu
– Enter your sitemap URL and submit
2. Use keywords strategically
Keywords are the words or phrases that your target audience would type into Google in order to find you. For example, if you are a landscape gardener in Cheshire, the keywords that people may use to find you are:
– Landscape gardener Cheshire, UK
– Garden designer Cheshire
– Best landscapers in Cheshire
– Garden landscaping Cheshire
When you use these keywords on your website, search engines make the connection between what people are searching for and what to display in search results.
But, putting these keywords all over your website randomly isn’t going to work. The first thing you need to do is find out which keywords your target audience are actually searching for. Using a keyword research tool, like Ubersuggest (it allows you 3 free searches per day), will give you valuable insights into how many people search for a particular keyword every month and also how competitive it is to rank for. When you know this, you can choose your keywords strategically. Ideally you want keywords that are highly searched but low competition in rankings.
Here is my full guide on How to Research Keywords for SEO.
Once you’ve got a list of keywords you want to target, you need to place them strategically throughout your website. Here is a list of places to put your keywords:
– Site title – add a site title even if you are using a logo instead of a site title. Google will be able to read your site title
– Site description
– Page titles
– URL slugs – the words in your URL slugs should be separated by hyphens.
– Headings – anything that you format with H1, H2, H3 or H4
– Body text – but don’t overdo it here. The priority with your body text is that it makes sense so if it doesn’t feel natural to add your keyword in a certain section then don’t! Only add your keywords in the body text if it flows.
– Blog post titles
– Image and file names – the words in image and file names should also be separated by hyphens.
– Image and file alt text
– SEO title
– SEO description
3. Adding a Blog
Adding a blog and publishing content consistently is one of the most effective strategies for SEO. Adding blog posts that are relevant to your line of work raises your website’s authority because it signals to Google that your website is active, current and relevant. Blogging also gives you the opportunity to target a wider range of keywords than you could fit into your main website pages.
Using our landscape gardener example, they could focus on keywords that might not naturally fit on their main website pages:
– Keyword: Garden design mistakes | Blog title: 5 Common Garden Design Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
– Keyword: Low maintenance plants | Blog title: The Best Low Maintenance Plants for Gardens
– Keyword: Landscaping trends in 2026 | Blog title: Top Landscaping Trends in 2026 That Homeowners Are Loving
By creating blog posts around these topics, the gardener increases their chances of being discovered on Google—since people planning a garden makeover are likely to search for them. While these keywords are valuable, they aren’t suited for primary website pages, making blogging the perfect place to target them.
When it comes to blogging, quality matters far more than quantity. Publishing one in-depth, 2,000-word post every two weeks is more effective than publishing several shorter 500-word posts each week. Longer, more detailed content not only allows you to naturally include your keywords more often, but it also provides real value to readers. People will be more likely to invest in your services if you’ve shown them that you know what you’re talking about through your content.
Here is my guide on 10 Benefits of Blogging for Long Term Business Growth.
4. Optimise Your Images
The images you use on your website will have a big impact on SEO. Image files that are large or in the wrong format, will slow down your website loading speed which will negatively impact SEO, so it’s important to get it right.
Firstly, ensure that your images are in the correct format. As a general rule of thumb, any photographs on your website should be in .jpeg format, and any graphics or illustrations should be in .png format. You can read my Guide to Image File Formats here and ensure that you’re using the correct format for the images that you’ve got.
Secondly, your images should be no larger than 500KB. Resize your images to bring down the file size and you can also use free image compression tools, like TinyPNG, to reduce your image sizes further before you upload them to your website.
Lastly, you want to give all your images names. This is an opportunity to work in your keywords where it is relevant. All the words in your image names should be separated by hyphens, e.g. “shady-border-plants”.
Squarespace gives the option to add Alt Text. for every image you upload too. Alt Text is what is read by screen readers and other technologies that describe images to the visually impaired. You can use Alt Text as an additional opportunity to use your keywords, but don’t ‘keyword stuff’. If your image is of an oak tree then name it ‘oak-tree’ and leave it there. Google recognises keyword stuffing and views it as spammy, so it could negatively affect your rankings, so keep the names of images relevant to what the image is.
Here is my full guide on How to Optimise Website Images.
5. Ensure Your Website is Mobile Responsive
Around 60% of all website traffic comes from a mobile device, so ensuring your website is mobile responsive (looks good and functions well on a mobile) is essential if you want your site users to have a good experience. Search engines give preference to websites that are optimised for mobile as well as desktop viewing.
If your website is built on Squarespace, you can check the styling of your website on a mobile device by clicking on the mobile icon at the top right of the screen while you are editing your website. You’ll be able to use the drag and drop editor here to move things around if you need to, without affecting desktop view.
Website SEO is a huge topic that can often feel overwhelming, especially if you’re not working with an expert. This blog post covers a lot – but you don’t have to do it all right away in order to start improving your rankings on search engine results. Remember that SEO is a long term game – the results come with applying best practices consistently over a period of time. Keep the points in this blog post in mind whenever you update your website with new images or add a page, and by applying SEO best practices whenever you make changes to your website you will be improving your chances of ranking higher on Google.
If you’ve been toying with the idea of building a website for your business but haven’t quite made the leap yet – I highly recommend Squarespace as a platform. It’s secure, easy to use and has great features for helping you boost SEO on your website. I have a free Squarespace template that you can have installed directly on your Squarespace account. It has been designed with service providers in mind and will give you a solid base from which to build your own website, with copywriting prompts and placeholders for images. You can download the free template here.
Kavita Lythe is a UK based website designer specialising in building websites for service providers and small businesses on Squarespace. She creates strategic and beautiful websites that help business owners all over the UK attract clients and grow with confidence.
You can find out more about Kavita here: www.kavitalythe.com
Want to get started on your own website? Download The Essential Template – a free Squarespace website template designed for service providers.