simon.stjohn

I have been trying to solve the problem of poor core web vitals for my SP sites for some time, looking at services that might help (that turned out not to be possible to implement (see this post) because of the structure of Squarespace - not having access to template code in 7.1).
Core Web Vitals to Become More Important in 2024
As this post describes (as do many others, On May 10, 2023, Google announced that INP will replace FID in the Core Web Vitals in March 2024. 
Whether we like it or not Google has put us on notice that CWV will matter in the future.
It's no longer good enough for SP support to reply with the suggestion we ''çheck our image sizes'' or imply that Googles CWV in Lighthouse are overly aggressive or sensitive or whatever. With 95% of search, it doesn't matter whether we like Google's method of assessing CWV.....what they say goes and platforms like SP need to get on top of their poor performance.
I think anyone on Squarespace with more than just a small hobby site needs to look very carefully at their site CWV and decide now whether to move to another platform, because moving takes time. I definitely want to have the matter resolved before March 2024.
For myself I am looking to move to Wordpress. Not only can I get high CWV but there are other bonuses, including many  tools that I can connect to a WP site (like writing/ content updating tools) that are just not possible with Squarespace.
It would be great to hear SP announce a commitment to improve the CWV metrics for their platform but I suspect we will hear nothing.
Interested to hear what others think - I realise we've all spent a lot of time and energy invested in SP so it's tempting to find excuses for them but I think it's time those of us who are thinking of moving speak up in the hope there might be some commitment to fix the significant problems in speed and performance that Squarespace has.

Hi Henry
Unfortunately Web Core Vitals are a big deal and no matter how good a job we do on-page, quality content etc, if the Core Web Vitals are poor Google is marking your site down right now - and will be even more so from next year.
I am totally understanding of those who have invested in the platform, either in terms of site content (as I have) or as developers of plugins, design services etc. It is indeed an awkward situation.
But the bottom line is that unless SP solves the terrible performance - particularly on mobile - customers are being placed at a significant disadvantage and their results in the SERPs is are being marked down.
To be very clear, Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor in the Google algo.
"Google's Core Web Vitals first became a ranking factor back in 2021. In February 2022, the change was fully rolled out to all mobile and desktop searches" according to Search Engine Land.
And here's what Google says: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals
And no, it's not an issue for the 'top 5%'.
It's an issue for anyone who needs their website to appear on page one of Google results. The only folks it does not matter to might someone who is not interested in generating traffic from search engines. That could I guess be someone using a SP site for an internal company website, for example. But ewven then, if speed and performance on mobile is an issue then it might still be a problem.
The time for sugar-coating has to stop. Squarespace needs to do something.

Hi @GlynMusica Thanks for your reply - and yes, its been going on for years and I can't understand why it has not been addressed. I have been with Squarespace for many years - I was one of the original clients in Australia, I suspect. With small projects it did not matter to me, but now I am building a travel website I just can't justify staying around when Core Web Vitals are so poor and are having an impact on my rankings.
Serious business websites can't justify investing staff, tools to research and produce content only to have the website itself penalised for poor performance. Squarespace can't even manage to integrate a simple process like image optimisation like https://shortpixel.com/, let alone address LCP and other core web vitals.
And I feel I am being more than fair just addressing the fundamental deficiency of CWV. I am not even mentioning the lack of other basic tools necessary to operate a content business link internal linking, SEO optimisation, etc.
I realise many will say I am wanting more from a tool that 'makes it so easy' for people to run a website. However, in today's competitive SEO landscape, unless you are a rare business that does not want to gain any traffic from search engines you are starting gagged, bound and jail-locked off the first page of the search results for competitive terms because its fairly certain your competitors will be outperforming you on CWV, even if you beat them on all the other metrics like content optimisation, content quality, etc.

I have been trying to solve the problem of poor core web vitals for my SP sites for some time, looking at services that might help (that turned out not to be possible to implement (see this post) because of the structure of Squarespace - not having access to template code in 7.1).
Core Web Vitals to Become More Important in 2024
As this post describes (as do many others, On May 10, 2023, Google announced that INP will replace FID in the Core Web Vitals in March 2024. 
Whether we like it or not Google has put us on notice that CWV will matter in the future.
It's no longer good enough for SP support to reply with the suggestion we ''çheck our image sizes'' or imply that Googles CWV in Lighthouse are overly aggressive or sensitive or whatever. With 95% of search, it doesn't matter whether we like Google's method of assessing CWV.....what they say goes and platforms like SP need to get on top of their poor performance.
I think anyone on Squarespace with more than just a small hobby site needs to look very carefully at their site CWV and decide now whether to move to another platform, because moving takes time. I definitely want to have the matter resolved before March 2024.
For myself I am looking to move to Wordpress. Not only can I get high CWV but there are other bonuses, including many  tools that I can connect to a WP site (like writing/ content updating tools) that are just not possible with Squarespace.
It would be great to hear SP announce a commitment to improve the CWV metrics for their platform but I suspect we will hear nothing.
Interested to hear what others think - I realise we've all spent a lot of time and energy invested in SP so it's tempting to find excuses for them but I think it's time those of us who are thinking of moving speak up in the hope there might be some commitment to fix the significant problems in speed and performance that Squarespace has.

I have been trying to solve the problem of poor core web vitals for my SP sites for some time, looking at services that might help (that turned out not to be possible to implement (see this post) because of the structure of Squarespace - not having access to template code in 7.1).
Core Web Vitals to Become More Important in 2024
As this post describes (as do many others, On May 10, 2023, Google announced that INP will replace FID in the Core Web Vitals in March 2024. 
Whether we like it or not Google has put us on notice that CWV will matter in the future.
It's no longer good enough for SP support to reply with the suggestion we ''çheck our image sizes'' or imply that Googles CWV in Lighthouse are overly aggressive or sensitive or whatever. With 95% of search, it doesn't matter whether we like Google's method of assessing CWV.....what they say goes and platforms like SP need to get on top of their poor performance.
I think anyone on Squarespace with more than just a small hobby site needs to look very carefully at their site CWV and decide now whether to move to another platform, because moving takes time. I definitely want to have the matter resolved before March 2024.
For myself I am looking to move to Wordpress. Not only can I get high CWV but there are other bonuses, including many  tools that I can connect to a WP site (like writing/ content updating tools) that are just not possible with Squarespace.
It would be great to hear SP announce a commitment to improve the CWV metrics for their platform but I suspect we will hear nothing.
Interested to hear what others think - I realise we've all spent a lot of time and energy invested in SP so it's tempting to find excuses for them but I think it's time those of us who are thinking of moving speak up in the hope there might be some commitment to fix the significant problems in speed and performance that Squarespace has.

Hi @GlynMusica Thanks for your reply - and yes, its been going on for years and I can't understand why it has not been addressed. I have been with Squarespace for many years - I was one of the original clients in Australia, I suspect. With small projects it did not matter to me, but now I am building a travel website I just can't justify staying around when Core Web Vitals are so poor and are having an impact on my rankings.
Serious business websites can't justify investing staff, tools to research and produce content only to have the website itself penalised for poor performance. Squarespace can't even manage to integrate a simple process like image optimisation like https://shortpixel.com/, let alone address LCP and other core web vitals.
And I feel I am being more than fair just addressing the fundamental deficiency of CWV. I am not even mentioning the lack of other basic tools necessary to operate a content business link internal linking, SEO optimisation, etc.
I realise many will say I am wanting more from a tool that 'makes it so easy' for people to run a website. However, in today's competitive SEO landscape, unless you are a rare business that does not want to gain any traffic from search engines you are starting gagged, bound and jail-locked off the first page of the search results for competitive terms because its fairly certain your competitors will be outperforming you on CWV, even if you beat them on all the other metrics like content optimisation, content quality, etc.

Hi Henry
Unfortunately Web Core Vitals are a big deal and no matter how good a job we do on-page, quality content etc, if the Core Web Vitals are poor Google is marking your site down right now - and will be even more so from next year.
I am totally understanding of those who have invested in the platform, either in terms of site content (as I have) or as developers of plugins, design services etc. It is indeed an awkward situation.
But the bottom line is that unless SP solves the terrible performance - particularly on mobile - customers are being placed at a significant disadvantage and their results in the SERPs is are being marked down.
To be very clear, Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor in the Google algo.
"Google's Core Web Vitals first became a ranking factor back in 2021. In February 2022, the change was fully rolled out to all mobile and desktop searches" according to Search Engine Land.
And here's what Google says: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals
And no, it's not an issue for the 'top 5%'.
It's an issue for anyone who needs their website to appear on page one of Google results. The only folks it does not matter to might someone who is not interested in generating traffic from search engines. That could I guess be someone using a SP site for an internal company website, for example. But ewven then, if speed and performance on mobile is an issue then it might still be a problem.
The time for sugar-coating has to stop. Squarespace needs to do something.

I want to add my voice to this appalling situation. After so many years and given the financial success of Squarespace, the fact they have not found a solution to the obvious flaws in their backend that cause most of these problems is unconscionable.

The most (un)helpful advice they give is to reduce image sizes, which I already do - but most of the problem, as highlighted by many more knowledgeable than myself in the comments above, has to do with issues like loading unnecessary libraries etc.

I will not be building my next site on SS. I know going to Wordpress will have its issues, but I can't stay in the same boat and continue financially rewarding a company that spends large amounts on marketing to expand its client base instead of investing in improving their system.

In the end, like it or not, the pressure we face as customers of Squarespace is that Google is marking down our sites for poor performance and it is hard to justify continuing to support a platform that devalues my efforts and sees my penalised by Google.
Anyone from Squarespace care to comment - in particular not to argue with the hundreds of comments here, but to tell us what you are doing to fix these deficiencies - or if you intend to keep doing nothing?

I want to add my voice to this appalling situation. After so many years and given the financial success of Squarespace, the fact they have not found a solution to the obvious flaws in their backend that cause most of these problems is unconscionable.

The most (un)helpful advice they give is to reduce image sizes, which I already do - but most of the problem, as highlighted by many more knowledgeable than myself in the comments above, has to do with issues like loading unnecessary libraries etc.

I will not be building my next site on SS. I know going to Wordpress will have its issues, but I can't stay in the same boat and continue financially rewarding a company that spends large amounts on marketing to expand its client base instead of investing in improving their system.

In the end, like it or not, the pressure we face as customers of Squarespace is that Google is marking down our sites for poor performance and it is hard to justify continuing to support a platform that devalues my efforts and sees my penalised by Google.
Anyone from Squarespace care to comment - in particular not to argue with the hundreds of comments here, but to tell us what you are doing to fix these deficiencies - or if you intend to keep doing nothing?

It keeps getting ignored. How much longer?
I guess until enough old timers move.
But with the influx of new users I guess SS would accept that price.

I want to add my voice to this appalling situation. After so many years and given the financial success of Squarespace, the fact they have not found a solution to the obvious flaws in their backend that cause most of these problems is unconscionable.

The most (un)helpful advice they give is to reduce image sizes, which I already do - but most of the problem, as highlighted by many more knowledgeable than myself in the comments above, has to do with issues like loading unnecessary libraries etc.

I will not be building my next site on SS. I know going to Wordpress will have its issues, but I can't stay in the same boat and continue financially rewarding a company that spends large amounts on marketing to expand its client base instead of investing in improving their system.

In the end, like it or not, the pressure we face as customers of Squarespace is that Google is marking down our sites for poor performance and it is hard to justify continuing to support a platform that devalues my efforts and sees my penalised by Google.
Anyone from Squarespace care to comment - in particular not to argue with the hundreds of comments here, but to tell us what you are doing to fix these deficiencies - or if you intend to keep doing nothing?

In addition to the two sets of CSS supplied by @Beyondspace above I added the following:
/*Reduce Bottom Margin of Blog Item Top Wrapper */ .blog-item-wrapper .blog-item-top-wrapper { margin-bottom: -18px !important; /* SQS default set at 70px */ } In my case there was a large space above where the Tags were displaying. I massaged it to -18px so it looked good in my case. Others' experience may differ, adjust accordingly.
Note that I do realize that the space between a Blog Post Title and the top of the Blog Post Content is controlled by the Edit Section "Header Spacing" slider, that slider has a bottom limit of 10px. So, even accounting for that there was still too large a gap for what I wanted. I decided to keep the CSS I used above and not have to adjust that Header Spacing slider for each blog post, one less thing to remember.
Thanks to @Beyondspace for the code. I appreciate it.

I haven't @simon.stjohn, but I am curious to hear whether people have and if it helped their rankings.
From what I've seen, it looks like a quick fix/too good to be true, so curious.

@derricksrandomviews Thank you so much - I am very grateful to you for your help....Really appreciated! Simon

@simon.stjohn happy to help. Hope that works. One other thing I've discovered is the Links page on the Google Console: https://search.google.com/search-console/links where you can see which webpages link to your site from across the internet. It will help if they're linking it under the name you want. 
I think my problems are being caused by a lot of old blog pages linking to my site under its old name.

Hi Kevin, How interesting - great news for you! I wonder if it has something to do with the Google Core Algorithm update that started on 18th and 19th August and is rolling out?
What I have since found is I am not the only one in my niche with this issue - including a massive news site....so that is interesting.
Would be great to hear back if you notice all your other pages 'catch up' in the next while.....

@Gunthorian Thanks so much for your replies! I have actioned your suggestion (thank you!) and requested re-indexing of the home page.
Will be interesting to see how it goes....
Thanks again for a great possible solution - I understand there's no guarantee Google will follow this but at least its a way to try and make a change!

Hi @creedon Oh My goodness - what a dumb moment that was! Thanks so much for the heads up mate.....!

Hi @creedon Great to know - thank you!
I guess it comes down to there being something in the chatbot code that does not play nicely with some other code, I only wish I had the knowledge to work out what!
Hopefully @tuanphan will come to the rescue again!

I'd just like to add a thanks to @tuanphan for this solution which works perfectly for me! Another awesome help for the community....

hI @creedon No worries at all - thanks for helping out! Hopefully @tuanphan has an insight...as you say, could be a bit risky removing older versions but let's see if that is the issue and what they might think is best.
Appreciate you stepping in though...
Cheers Simon

Do you have a second blog page to move the blog post to?
If not I can see that SS would not present the option to move.

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.

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.

In search results my blogs' name looks like the attached sample.
The Blog name on the first line is:
baligram.me
And I would just like to change this (to capitalise the first letter so it reads: 'Baligram.me'.
I can't quite figure out where that can be changed in settings, if anyone mioght be kind enough to help me?
Thanks!