SEOSpace_Henry

No problem at all @simon.stjohn! We actually launch today, in 2.5 hours! You'll get an announcement email - looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

My girlfriend and I actually run a travel blog (below), so no doubt we'll have lots to chat about!

https://www.acouplethingstodo.com/

This is a Squarespace issue that they should be addressing - I see it on most Squarespace websites, unfortunately.

As I mentioned on your other post @simon.stjohn - focus on high-quality backlinks, content and keyword research and these things won't really matter.

Hi @simon.stjohn,

First of all, if you're in Bali, it would be great to connect! I work from Nebula in Canggu.

I've addressed your points below. In general, these are limitations to Squarespace - I would make a few tweaks, but in general, just carry on doing what you're doing, as I can see your traffic is starting to grow pretty quickly (attached).

1. Unfortunately, you can't add metadata for these pages - quite frustrating and something SS needs to address

2. Try doing a 301 redirect for your about us page and rerun the Ahrefs audit - this might fix it, otherwise, we can explore a different solution

3. Again, this is a limitation with SS as you can't edit Tag and Category pages, but as you've pointed out, this isn't always necessarily an issue.

Technical issues can be frustrating, but if you focus on things like backlinks, high-quality content and keyword research, you can easily outweigh any negatives.

9 hours ago, a-rchive said:

Hey @SEOSpace_Henry,

Thank you for the help.

So I previously had the SEO Title set as %s yet it displayed the company name and some of the text that is displayed on the home page. I tried switching the format to "archive*" but the rest of the text is still showing up. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to get it to just display "archive*" without the extra text.

Hi @a-rchive - because SEO titles should be 50-60 characters, Google will unlikely just make it "archive*", so you need to give it more.

For example, I wouldn't be able to make my SEO title (attached) for my homepage "SEOSpace"; therefore, I made it "SEOSpace: Free Squarespace SEO Tools and Resources"

Hi @a-rchive,

You can edit this from within the SEO settings of your website.

Go through these steps:

• Click on the settings of your homepage
• Click on SEO, then "Edit website SEO settings"
• Edit your SEO title format to what you want - this is what will show up on Google for your homepage instead of the text currently showing

Be aware that even when you edit this, it may not display quickly on Google for one of a few reasons:

• Ideally, you want your title to be between 50 and 60 characters
• If the overall SEO on your website and homepage isn't good
• If your site is new - it takes a while for things to pull through sometimes!

To maximise your chances of it showing, optimise your SEO and then manually request indexing on your homepage

Hi @MaddyOwl - we launch next week. Check it out here: https://www.seospace.co.uk/squarespace-seo-plugin

WebP would really help the SEO on Squarespace; some of my blogs have a lot of images and need speeding up!

Hi @Nitya - this might be the problem: Go to your page settings, and check to see that "hide page from search results" isn't enabled, below.

Hi @Rachillustrates,

@qosmic has covered some excellent points here.

I looked at your site - authority is something I see missing on many sites, but you certainly have enough backlinks to get your site off the ground and get some significant traffic.

You can see on the attached screenshot your "domain authority", i.e. the score Google gives your site based upon how much "authority" it has, is 13, which is more than enough for lower competition keywords.

Based on this, I have some recommendations which I think will help:

• Assess your keyword strategy: You mentioned that your products don't appear on Google searches. What keywords do you want them to rank for? Often I see ecom sites suffer a lot of "keyword cannibalization" - i.e. where two or more pages compete for the same keyword. 
  Once you map out the keywords to the pages, this can help develop your strategy - each page should have at least one keyword, and each page shouldn't overlap but complement each other. For keyword research, I recommend https://keywordseverywhere.com/ or my SEO plugin.
• Address low hanging fruit: In the early days, you're going to naturally find it harder to rank for certain keywords. For example, on your greetings card page, the term "greetings card" gets over 301000 searches/month, but it's also super competitive (as my plugin shows). Do you have any more niche products which you could aim for first?
• Add content: Each page on your website should have >300 words. Now you know your keywords, how can you add content and value to your pages so that Google has text to crawl and rank you for? 
• Focus on your collection pages: Collection pages can be the best way to rank in ecom and drive significant traffic - have you optimized these pages? You should also "internally link" to your collection pages, i.e. add links from other site pages to your collection page. 
• Ensure your search console is connected correctly: Ensure you have submitted your sitemap and requested that important pages be indexed. Below you can see a video of how to do this and the most common pitfalls I see with Squarespace websites (most of these are covered above): 

Hi @Barlo, @RenataB999, @Hannah_BB,

This is a challenging area of SEO and search engines that can take a lot of time - on my new site, Google still isn't pulling through the data correctly too!

Why? Because it has billions of websites to crawl through and show on its search engines - for new sites or sites that don't have much traffic or backlinks, what's Google's incentive to ensure all your info shows on Google correctly?

As long as your site's info is filled out right, it will show up eventually. In the meantime, continue to optimise your site, add more content, build backlinks and follow best practices to speed the process up.

I understand it might not be the answer you want to hear, but time is often the answer.

Hi @RenataB999, you need to change your site description and title. 

From the settings of your homepage, go to "edit website SEO settings" - from here, edit your SEO title format and SEO site description.

@Eidronis this video might help: 

Hi @AssertiveBirth - the below video should help:

Hi @NinaHoff - unfortunately, this is an annoying thing that Google can sometimes do.

It will pick up one of the many images on your page and feature it on your search results like this.

Following general SEO best practices when it comes to images (compressing them, adding alt tags and adding a featured image) can help here, but the best thing to do is apply trial and error to find out what works.

For example, you may have a photo from your business that you'd instead get featured - in this case, you can prioritise this on your page by making it higher than the one shown.

I have an optimising images video (below), which doesn't cover your problem specifically, but may help with following best practices:
 

Hi @Zenocavallari,

I wouldn't recommend this - having blog. is called a "wild card domain" and essentially just gives your website a complicated URL structure that isn't easy for Google or users to follow.

In terms of backlinks, while there is some evidence that backlinks to wildcard domains help, over time, as you gain them, having them towards cantinalepietre.com/blog would be much more beneficial.

On top of this, when it comes to the blogs you write, writing about daily life and other news can help, but I'd recommend doing keyword research to find out what people are actually searching for that could lead to website sales.

No problem @walevitt, happy to help!

Hey @annaneedhamdesign,

To confirm, did you type and submit "sitemap.xml" into the sitemap section of your Google Search Console? (below)

If so, I'd need more info on your site to see why it's not working.

Hi @walevitt,

Yes, there's no differentiation between the pages. There are just a few things you need to do to improve the likelihood of ranking - "Hamlet" is a very competitive keyword, so you need to follow all best practices to rank.

I've used my Squarespace SEO plugin on your page (launching 18th April), and it's identified some things to fix below (also attached):

• Your page doesn't have a H1 - "Hamlet" at the top of your page is a H2 - your H1 is one of the main things that tell Google what you want to rank for, so no H1 isn't good
• Your meta description is 70 characters - make it between 150-160 characters long
• You have a "Hamlet test" page which could be causing keyword cannibalization (i.e. when two or more pages compete for the same keyword)
• You have a couple of images which need compressing or alt tags adding
• Your SEO title is "Hamlet — The Full Text Free Online by William Shakespeare — The Complete Works of Shakespeare: Free, Online, Full Texts by William Shakespeare" - this is 142 characters, but should be between 50 and 60 characters.

After fixing these, monitor how the ranking changes. If things don't improve, you may want to look at adding more internal links, backlinks or content around the topic.

I hope this helps!

Hi @rosieblue1969 - first of all, I'm sorry to hear about your experience. 

If you send me your site, I can look at it and give my opinion.

I'll soon be launching a Squarespace SEO plugin which will give you a free way for you to check your website's SEO, but it's such a subjective thing in some cases, unfortunately.

@ChristineDarby has listed the way to remove access - doing this may not improve your situation, as if anything needs to be changed, the expert can't do so.

Hi @SP123 - as long as the blogs are up-to-date, have no broken links and provide value to readers, then there's no reason why you shouldn't really!

Plenty of exciting stuff coming out! The business plus plan is a great addition 👌

Looking forward to this one! GA4 switch is just around the corner ✅

Hi @msantoyo - feel free to check out the video below to help out!

Don't let images hold your SEO back - check out the below video to follow image best practices on Squarespace:

Hi @reddribbon1 - I recorded a YouTube video on this topic and common pitfalls. Feel free to check it out below: