GenJones1964 Posted October 8 Posted October 8 (edited) Site URL: http://www.jonesingforprosperity.com 😵💫Please help! I've spent two days on this and I'm running out of time and patience lol. My website's under construction, but the address (jonesingforprosperity.com) is on social media so I made a lockscreen. (I am the only person involved.) On search engines, my URL is visible👍🏻, but so is the unrelated text from SquareSpace's style page in the built-in domain 👎🏻. The "sustainability" text is just random; my site has nothing to do with that topic. (I do want "Jonesing for Prosperity" in search engines, but not "Sustainability starts with you, we conserve land...") I tried different things (deleting, disconnecting, moving, enabling, unenabling etc) and now I'm just totally confused and worried I've messed everything up. Also, when I search for my site (the topic and/or the url) in various browsers, I sometimes see my lockscreen (yay☺️) but other times I see an error message ("We couldn't find the page you were looking for...")😖. I'm not sure why/when each thing happens. THANK YOU. 🙏 Edited October 8 by GenJones1964
GenJones1964 Posted October 8 Author Posted October 8 PS. I'm new to this. I've built websites, but many years ago.
CassAggett Posted October 8 Posted October 8 @GenJones1964 It's possible that Google indexed the demo page before you added the lockscreen. Had you already made the site public with a paid plan? To change the SEO description for your home page (which is currently the demo 'conservation' content, but will apply to any page set as home page in future), head to Settings > Marketing > SEO Appearance. Scroll down and then update or add the SEO Site Description. In most cases, this will override what Google has chosen from the home page. If you haven't yet connected Google Search Console, it may take a while for this change to update in search results. If you have GSC connected, request the home page be indexed again to speed it up. Re: the 404 showing when there's no lockscreen - can you share which URL you visited to get that to come up? If the site is password protected it shouldn't show any pages (even 404) unless you enter the password. Again though it's likely this is because Google has indexed an older version of your site and perhaps that page doesn't exist anymore. Beyondspace 1 Instruction: How to set a site-wide password If this helped you, please like or mark my solution as answer so others can scroll to it quickly 👆 Cass Aggett is a Squarespace website designer for go-getting women – no matter what stage of business. WEBSITE • INSTAGRAM
GenJones1964 Posted November 4 Author Posted November 4 On 10/8/2024 at 1:17 AM, CassAggett said: @GenJones1964 It's possible that Google indexed the demo page before you added the lockscreen. Had you already made the site public with a paid plan? To change the SEO description for your home page (which is currently the demo 'conservation' content, but will apply to any page set as home page in future), head to Settings > Marketing > SEO Appearance. Scroll down and then update or add the SEO Site Description. In most cases, this will override what Google has chosen from the home page. If you haven't yet connected Google Search Console, it may take a while for this change to update in search results. If you have GSC connected, request the home page be indexed again to speed it up. Re: the 404 showing when there's no lockscreen - can you share which URL you visited to get that to come up? If the site is password protected it shouldn't show any pages (even 404) unless you enter the password. Again though it's likely this is because Google has indexed an older version of your site and perhaps that page doesn't exist anymore. Thank you for responding! 🌹So, the wrong (demo) text still appears as of today, Nov. 3: It's possible that I accidentally made the site public; I've had a paid plan for 3 years but I'm only just now building the site. But since around Oct 7 (almost a month) I've had the correct text in marketing/SEO appearance: ...and the correct text on the HOME page. But Google still shows the Demo text about conservation. You mentioned Google Search Console (the first I'd heard of it). Spent a day trying to figure that out. Kept copying the .txt and adding it to the DNS configuration, but kept getting "OWNERSHIP VERIFICATION FAILED." Then, I got an email that my site was verified — but it came to another of my email accounts, NOT the Gmail address I use for SS: I don't even understand how it came to that email address. Meanwhile, when I log into Google Search Console with the correct email, my site still appears to be unverified even though the txt file appears in my SS account settings: I don't know if or how to request that my home page be indexed again. Then, with all that said and done, I was super confused to see this: I have to remove my password? The whole point of my lockscreen is to keep my site secret as I build it. (It even seems that my threads in this forum can be read by the public... if so, that's really not great.) I also wasted a few days and some money believing I had to have a paid Google Workspace account to solve this problem. Re the 404 error: That's moot now, as my lockscreen does come up. But my text on the lockscreen sometimes disappears though the logo remains; I'm hoping for a fix for that too. To be clear, all I really want at this moment is: 1) For people NOT to see the conservation-related demo text if they type or click on my URL, because my brand has nothing to do with conservation and it's confusing. That's why I made the lockscreen, and 2) For people not to see my site as I'm in the process of building it. At this point, I know I'm missing something huge. There must be some sort of step-by-step guide on how to build a Squarespace site for beginners, right? If so, where can I find that? I've built websites with Adobe PageMill (1996, OMG😭 ), Wix and WordPress so I think my design process will go okay, but I'm confused and overwhelmed with these just-to-get-started kinds of details. 🤪😢 Help?
Collaborada Posted November 5 Posted November 5 Hi @GenJones1964 Now that you've added a password, Google can't crawl the page to see the new content. Google has a tool for temporary removals and to clear snippets: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9689846 If needed we offer short Zooms. CassAggett 1 Building high-performance websites with expert SEO for local and national reach. Have an SEO question? Google to find our advice or book a Zoom session for tailored help. ★ Squarespace since 2013 ★
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