How to do SEO on blog posts in Squarespace to get more bookings for your creative business
Is it time to get more eyes on your offerings and more booking for your creative or wellness business? Blogging is a fabulous way to do this, but to get the full benefits you need to use Squarespace SEO settings and functions. And of course, make sure you create high value blog posts on topics that your ideal client may be searching for (in relation to what you offer). So, are you ready to start seeing results? Let’s dive in.
But first, what is SEO anyway?
Good question!
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. After you type into Google, Bing or Duck Duck Go (or whatever search browser you use) posts will come up that are hopefully a good match for your query.
E.g. here “Ballarat artist” is the search phrase or search term.
The suggestions below (without “Ad” written next to it) are called the organic search engine results. The results on the first page are considered to have good SEO ranking.
Why this is so desirable for a business, is that it generally guarantees free, regular website traffic, which then usually results in ongoing sales or inquiries.
The practice of trying to improve your websites blog posts and page’s ranking is called SEO.
Are you a health & wellness business? We have a free Facebook marketing group for you over here where you can ask more questions and collaborate with others.
Are you a visual artist? We have a free Squarespace marketing Facebook group.
Squarespace Tips To Improve The SEO Of Your Blog Posts
I get asked a lot by worried business owners, “Is Squarespace OK for SEO"?” The answer for small business owners is that Squarespace is absolutely fine, and in some ways better for SEO than Wordpress. This is because things like SSL secure certificates, errors and malware are all taken care of in Squarespace, while in Wordpress, many small business owners aren’t able to manage this, which comes at to great cost to their SEO search results.
So now that’s out of the way, let’s get stuck into how to get better search results in Google. Keep in mind, SEO results can take a while to work - but don’t get discouraged. Once you start getting results, the effects are often long-lasting and it’s almost like passive marketing.
1. Select A Keyword Phrase And Clear Topic For Each Blog Post
When creating a new blog post or a new page, you need to choose a well-defined topic and a keyword phrase. A keyword phrase means the phrase or words people would type into Google to try and find what they’re looking for.
Think about what your ideal clients or customers would search for, in relation to your offerings.
Keyword Phrase Example:
For example, if you are an artist in regional Victoria and paint landscapes, and your clients are 30-60 year olds living in Victoria, you could choose the topic/keyword phrase of “10 Landscape Artists From Regional Victoria You Should Know.” Then you could write about 10 regional landscape artists, including yourself, and have links and images to showcase yours and others work. Make sure you include a call to action for people to get in touch with you, or buy one of your prints online (or whatever your main marketing goal is.)
You could also do some keyword research to go into more depth on finding phrases that may resonate with your target market.
Pro Tip: Stay on topic and be specific!
Choose a phrase that is specific and detailed. General keywords such as “breathing techniques” would be hard to rank for, and are also not specific enough. A good specific phrase could be ““breathing techniques to feel energized.” Plus, if you’re going to write about “breathing techniques to feel energized” in your blog post, stay on topic, don’t go into other things.
2. Avoid “Duplicate” Posts On Your Squarespace Website
If two blog posts use the same or very similar keyword phrase, e.g.- 10 tips to reduce stress, and 6 tips to be less stressed, and are about almost the same thing, they could end up competing against each other in search engine results.
This can result in a lower ranking for both blog posts. So, if you have two very similar pages or posts, try merging them into one big mega post that will be of amazing value to your ideal client! This will more rank more easily in organic search results as well - it’s definitely a win-win.
In other words, don’t add unnecessary or low value blog posts or pages to your website that don’t give value to your readers.
3. Write Your Blog Post In Squarespace & Add Subheadings
Now, it’s time to write your blog post! Write in short, simple sentences that are easy to understand.
Break up the text with paragraphs. Use “Heading 2” to create different sections within your blog post. (Our numbered section headings are Heading 2).
If needed, use “Heading 3” for sub headings and “Heading 4” if you need to go into further detail.
Make sure you include some Calls to Action, which will inspire readers to get in touch or take a certain action such as subscribe to your email list or buy from your shop.
4. Make Your Images Quick To Load
After writing your content you should add relevant and interesting images. But large images mean a slow website, and a slow website is very bad news for SEO. Squarespace does minimal compressing of your images, so unfortunately it’s up to you to sort that part out.
To make your images ‘SEO optimized’ you’ll need to use images that are as small as possible, but still clear.
Our favourite tool we use at The Ginkgo Tree is Tinypng.com. Tiny png will take your images and compress them to a much smaller size, without losing quality.
Simply upload the images you want to compress, (you can select multiple images as well). Image sizes are compressed and you can download the web optimized image! Just make sure your images are under 5MB, otherwise they won’t compress.
5. Change The Filename Of The Images
After you upload your images for your blog post, you need to change the filename to reflect what your blog post is about. The filename may be something like 0933-pic.jpg but this doesn’t help Google, Bing or Brave browsers know what your blog post or image is about.
In Squarespace, you can do this after you upload the image, which is so handy.
Simply click edit after you add the image, and scroll down to find the filename(optional).
Write something that web browsers can make sense of, related to your blog post. If your post (and keyword phrase) is about “Starting with post natal pilates exercises” then a good filename would be something like: post-natal-pilates-exercises.jpg
You can also add a description in the Image caption to improve Squarespace SEO. If you don’t want people to see it, just click on edit, Caption and selection “Off.”
6. Add Alt Text To SEO Your Images in Squarespace
Before the images are done, we need to add alt text. To do this is also really easy in Squarespace.
Click on edit, then scroll down to Alt Text. Add a phrase related to the blog post and image, it could be something like “Post natal pilates exercises.”
7. Input your blog SEO title and description
Lastly, go to the blog post Settings and input the SEO title, and you can just use the same title you used for the blog post itself. In the blog post description, in a few short sentences summarize what will be covered in your blog post, making it sound enticing, interesting and informative. Use some of the keywords again in this area.
How did you go? Let me know in the comments.
Need more help, or going around in circles for hours for your marketing? Book in a Squarespace marketing strategy session here.
