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Whether you just launched a website or are refreshing an existing one, SEO is an important tool for making yourself discoverable online. But search engine optimization can feel confusing or overwhelming if you’re newer to it.
We reached out to a Senior Product Manager at Squarespace, Edmund Armstrong, to answer top user questions about Squarespace SEO, from website optimization with Squarespace AI to the importance of Google Search Console. Read on for his advice, plus additional tactics to take control of your website’s presence in search engines.
How do I verify my Squarespace website appears in Google search results?
The quickest way to get your site to appear on Google is to connect with Google Search Console. This allows you to manage your site’s presence in search results, including making a request to Google to index your site. To connect with Google Search Console, you need to verify your site with their services once it’s live. To complete the process, follow this step-by-step guide.
Once you’ve connected your site with Google Search Console, you can use Analytics to learn which keywords visitors are searching to find your website. You can also gain more control over edits and updates to your presence in search engine results pages (SERPs) by requesting that Google index your site immediately after you’ve made updates.
Is my Squarespace website automatically optimized for Google and other search engines?
Squarespace templates already leverage key aspects of design and user experience that will benefit your site’s overall SEO. Our sites also include technical SEO features like a built-in sitemap, structured data, and automatic redirects that are key to search result ranking.
All websites are mobile-friendly, so they’ll load quickly and appear accurately on screens of any size. That’s key to creating a good user experience on mobile devices, which impacts your SEO too.
Learn more about Squarespace SEO features
How does Squarespace help me improve my SEO?
Good SEO performance comes in part from good content on your website. As you’re setting up your site, we recommend focusing on keywords that make sense for your business. Match the content on your website to how you would expect your potential customers to be searching for you online.
For example, a florist might target “seasonal bouquets NYC.” They’d then want their website copy to include the phrases “New York City” and “seasonal bouquets” in natural places and for their website to fulfill the needs of the person searching that term. In this case, that means offering bouquets to browse and order for customers in New York City.
After adding content to your site, you should update the page metadata and image alt text for each of your site pages and images. Page metadata, specifically the title tag and meta description, provide search engines with a high-level summary of your page, and image alt text provides additional context to Google about your site’s content and helps with accessibility. Ensuring that your site meets accessibility standards can also improve search rankings.
With Squarespace, you’re able to do this in minutes using the AI SEO Tool, even if you don’t have any SEO expertise.
Navigate to the SEO settings panel. You’ll see an SEO report that highlights which pages and images on your site are missing SEO details.
Click Improve with AI to receive update suggestions that have been tailored for SEO.
Review, edit, or regenerate the recommended suggestions for updated page metadata.
Click Save and Continue to proceed to updating your image alt text.
Click Save and these changes will now be saved to your site and appear in search results.
How do I ensure Squarespace AI content is SEO-friendly?
Page metadata and image alt text generated by Squarespace’s SEO tool is already SEO-friendly, but you should review these details for accuracy and fine tuning. As the site owner, you know best what should be highlighted to potential customers.
Once you start getting traffic and have connected to Google Search Console, you’ll be able to see which keywords people are using to find your site and you can further update your content based on these keywords. You may want to add or update target keywords or regenerate copy if what you have isn’t currently driving results. Continuously creating and refining both your website content and SEO metadata is an SEO best practice.
Remember, SEO results take time—often three to six months or more—so give your updates time to take effect before making major changes.
Learn how to write website copy using the AI writer
How can I increase organic traffic to my Squarespace ecommerce website?
While Squarespace takes care of a lot of the SEO for you, you can improve your store’s SEO by adding copy that targets specific product keywords. For example, if you sell handmade sweaters, you might try to include “handknit wool sweater vest” in your product title, description, image ALT text, and product page URL. The AI SEO Tool can help you draft each of these.
Like all Squarespace templates, Squarespace ecommerce websites are designed to maximize your store’s reach and help customers find your products. Every time you add a product category to your online store, your Squarespace website automatically generates SEO-friendly product pages with static URLs and links the product category page to other relevant category pages. This helps build page authority, which signals the trustworthiness of your website to search engines.
Squarespace online stores also have category navigation links and breadcrumb links to help Google, Bing, and other search engines index your store. From there, you can make those on-page SEO customizations to optimize your website for local searches, voice search, and target keywords.
Learn more about optimizing your ecommerce website
How else can I improve the SEO of my Squarespace website?
Learning how to improve SEO on Squarespace ultimately comes down to understanding the full range of factors that influence your site’s ranking. For example, search engines value and prioritize websites that are regularly updated with new content, so launching and consistently contributing content to a blog on your website is one key way to improve or maintain your ranking. When content is newly published, it signals to search engines that your site is active and should be indexed often for updates.
For more ways to optimize your Squarespace website for search engines, consult these SEO tips. You can also hire an independent Squarespace Expert through Marketplace to enhance your site’s SEO or get an evaluation of your website with the SEOSpace extension.
It’s important to note that it can take search engines two weeks or more to crawl a website—if you make improvements to your site’s SEO today, you should wait to see the full return of your efforts weeks and months down the line before making updates again.
Looking for more information on using Squarespace? Browse SQSP FAQs to learn more.
This article was updated on March 12, 2025.