It can be hard to figure out how to get your website to show up on Google. If you use Squarespace, you probably have a lot of questions about how to get it to work. These are answers to some of the most common questions about Squarespace SEO, written in simple language to help you be found.

Is Squarespace really good for search engine optimization?

Yes, but there's a catch. Squarespace is a great choice for beginners because it takes care of a lot of the technical SEO basics for you right away. This ease of use does mean that you have less control over advanced settings than you would on a platform like WordPress.

You can definitely get a high ranking on Google with a Squarespace site. It's not the platform that matters, but how you use it. You need to master the basics that Squarespace lets you control and write great content that people will want to read.

What does Squarespace do for my SEO without me having to do anything?

You don't have to do anything to make sure that every Squarespace website has good SEO. Every site comes with the following:

Mobile Optimization: Every Squarespace site automatically looks great on phones and tablets, which is a big reason why Google ranks sites higher.
SSL Protection: Your site comes with a free SSL certificate, which gives you the "https" address and padlock icon in the browser. This is important for trust and search engine optimization (SEO).
Sitemaps that are made automatically: You don't have to worry about making or updating a sitemap.xml file. This is like a map that shows Google where all the pages on your site are and how to find them.
URLs that are clean: Your page addresses are automatically made to be easy for both people and search engines to read.
Organized Data: The platform adds some simple code (schema markup) to your content to help Google figure out what it is, like if it's a blog post or a product.

What is the new AI SEO tool, and how does it help?

This is one of the most exciting new things that Squarespace has added. Squarespace released an AI-powered SEO tool in March 2025 that was meant to make optimization easier for everyone.

This is what it does: The tool scans the pages and pictures on your website on its own. Then it uses AI to suggest SEO page titles, meta descriptions, and image alt text for you. You can improve your site's metadata with just one click.

This is a huge help because it makes it easier to write the short, important text snippets that Google uses to understand and rank your pages. The goal is to help your site rank higher and get more visitors. You can find this option in the Website section of your Squarespace dashboard.

What are the hardest things about SEO on Squarespace?

Squarespace is easy to use, but there are some well-known problems with it that you should know about:

Slower Page Speed: Squarespace sites can sometimes take longer to load than sites on other platforms because they have so much code in them. Google uses page speed as a ranking factor.

Solution: SEOSpace’s Automatic Image Compression tool finds oversized images and provides smaller versions to re-upload, giving you a quick performance boost. Watch this video tutorial:

2. Little Control: Some advanced technical parts are hard to change. For instance, you can't change the default schema markup without writing your own code, and you can't change the "canonical tags" that stop duplicate content problems.

Solution: Instead of wrestling with custom code, you can use widgets that have the correct technical SEO built-in. Elfsight offers a library of powerful apps that you can add to your site in minutes.

For example, if you want to display Google Reviews, their widget not only shows the reviews but also automatically includes the correct "schema markup" so that star ratings can appear in search results, solving a key part of this limitation without you ever touching a line of code. Feel free to explore Elfsight’s widgets.

3. Fewer SEO Plugins: Squarespace doesn't have as many advanced SEO plugins as WordPress does. For example, WordPress has Yoast and other plugins that help with SEO.

Solution: This is precisely the gap that SEOSpace was built to fill. It acts as the all-in-one SEO toolkit that Squarespace is missing, effectively becoming the "Yoast for Squarespace." It provides a suite of essential tools, including a site auditor, keyword and backlink tracking, competitor analysis, and content optimization checklists, all integrated directly with your Squarespace site to give you the advanced capabilities you need.

4. Can't Change the SEO of a Category Page: You can't give your main blog or shop category pages unique SEO titles or descriptions, which is a missed chance to improve them.

Solution: You can work around this limitation by creating dedicated pages that function as subcategories, which is a powerful strategy detailed in this guide on how to create subcategories in Squarespace.

I'm new to this. How do I begin with my Squarespace SEO?

It's not as hard as you think to get started. You can find these important tasks in Squarespace's SEO panels:

Do Basic Keyword Research: Think about the words and phrases that your ideal customers would use to search for you on Google. These are the words you need to use. Make a short list of the most important ones for your business.
Write a Title and Description for Your Site: In the SEO settings for your site, write a clear Site Title (your business name + main service) and an SEO Site Description that tells people what your site is about. This is what people see when they search for your homepage on Google.
SEO Titles and the Category Page Exception: The most important on-page SEO task is to give every page a unique, descriptive SEO Title and a compelling SEO Description. You should do this for your homepage, your regular pages (like 'About' and 'Contact'), every blog post, and every single product. This is a fundamental rule for helping Google understand your content.
However, there is a key limitation in Squarespace you must know about: You cannot directly change the SEO Title and Description for your main collection pages, such as a blog category page (e.g., /blog/category/recipes) or a shop category page. Squarespace generates these pages automatically, and they don't have their own dedicated SEO settings.
Include Alt Text for Every Image: An image's alt text is a short, descriptive sentence. It helps people who can't see well and tells Google what the picture is about. It's also a great place to naturally add a keyword. In Squarespace, activate the AI-powered SEO tool to automatically generate concise, descriptive alt text for every image. This enhances accessibility for visually impaired users, boosts SEO by informing Google about image content, and seamlessly incorporates relevant keywords.

Squarespace has a built-in SEO Checklist that will help you with these basic steps.

What is the best thing I can do for my SEO?

The most important thing you can do is to always make high-quality, useful content.

The main goal of Google is to give people the best answers to their questions. A site with great, in-depth content can often do better in search results than a site that is technically perfect but has little useful information. This is where you can really show off your skills on Squarespace. The platform's editor is very simple to use, so you can spend your time writing great blog posts, making detailed guides, and answering your customers' most important questions.

Do I need more tools to help with my Squarespace SEO?

You can do a lot with Squarespace's built-in tools, but a specialized plugin can give you a big advantage over your competitors. In your Squarespace editor, a tool like SEOSpace can help you with SEO.

It helps by:

Giving you a list of things to fix that is easy to understand and ranked in order of importance.
Giving you suggestions for your content based on AI.
Assisting you in researching keywords and competitors.
Keeping track of your progress over time so you can see what works.

For a lot of people, this kind of tool makes it easier to use Squarespace and still get the results of a real SEO strategy.

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Your Squarespace SEO Questions, Answered