Common client takeaways from Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting Sessions | Squarespace SEO Series

There must be something in the air or maybe it’s all the “spring refresh” going around, but things have been BUSY on the work front lately!

My Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting Sessions, in particular, have been extremely popular over the past few weeks and I’ve had so much fun meeting with different website and business owners. Our sessions last for 1.5 hours and it’s insane how time flies when we’re in the zone. During each consulting session, we dive in deep, cover so much, and come up with a practical and actionable SEO strategy that my clients can implement moving forward. I love seeing all the “aha!” moments that pop up during our sessions and I get such a kick every time someone says “Wow, I thought this would be dull but it’s not” - c’mon hunni, that’s not how I roll :)

Now before you think that this blog post is just a promotion for my Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting Sessions, stay with me!

I’m tooting my own horn, yes, but I’m also sharing this to set the scene and really drive home that I’ve been doing a lot of these sessions lately and have noticed several takeaways that keep coming up.

In fact, I realized that there were 9 questions, concerns, takeaways and general themes in particular that surfaced during basically every single client session I have ever had. That’s wild!

Whether the client is a solopreneur, a blogger, has a ecommerce shop or is a service provider with an online business, these takeaways are pretty much universal.

This is fascinating to me because all these clients have different backgrounds but still have common hangups, no matter what type of website they are working on.

I want to share these common client takeaways from our Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting Sessions here on the blog today for several reasons. First of all, I want to show anyone that is new to Squarespace SEO that their fears/concerns are nothing special - literally everyone starts at square one! Secondly, I hope that you can learn something new or that these pointers serve as a reminder to go back and tweak something on your own site that wasn’t on your radar before. Third, maybe you didn’t even know this service was available and now you want to meet with an expert (like me!) to get a fresh pair of eyes on your site < ——— shameless plug.

Alright, enough talk - let’s get right to the goods! Without further ado, here are the most common client takeaways that come up during my Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting Sessions.

1. Everyone begins with my Squarespace SEO Checklist

In case you’re new around here and didn’t know about this, I offer a totally free Squarespace SEO Checklist that anyone can download. This Squarespace SEO Checklist has literally helped thousands of people learn the basics of Squarespace SEO.

Without exception, every single one of my Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting clients began by downloading a copy of this freebie and used it as their starting point for their DIY SEO efforts.

Most of my clients are Squarespace SEO newbies and they all said that this Squarespace SEO Checklist was extremely helpful as a first resource. It’s a great overview that tells you all the different settings, features and formats to keep in mind on your Squarespace website and once you have that list, you can go ahead and implement it all.

If there’s just one thing you do or learn from this blog post, I hope you’ll download the Squarespace SEO Checklist! It’s free and I know it’ll help you out.

SQUARESPACE SEO CHECKLIST

Helping you grow and monetize your Squarespace website.

Want more eyes on your site?

Ready to grow your online business?

2. People are looking for confirmation & validation that they’re doing things right

In many cases, my clients are already on the right track when it comes to Squarespace SEO but they book these Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting session for peace of mind.

Up until now, they’ve taken the DIY route and basically they just want someone to let them know if they are doing it right. or wrong. I totally understand where they’re coming from!

Think about it: when you’re new to something like Squarespace SEO, you are learning so much and trying to do all these different things at once, crossing your fingers that you aren’t doing more harm than good. It doesn’t surprise me that my clients want someone to confirm that they have followed instructions correctly, haven’t forgotten any settings, and are generally headed in the right direction.

When an expert (like me) tells them they’re doing it right, it gives my clients a big sense of relief & validation and they can move forward with confidence. And if they need to course correct or fix any errors, at least they know sooner than later!

3. Everyone forgets about images

As a web designer/developer, this takeaway initially surprised a lot, which is why it deserves a spot on this list.

During our Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting session, we talk a lot about page structure, proper page/blog post/product item formatting, using different headers and body text styling, etc.

But one thing that MANY people forget about entirely is how important images are to Squarespace SEO.

Some of my clients aren’t using enough - or any - images on their site, which is a missed opportunity because images & other graphics have so much SEO value.

In most cases, however, my clients are including images on their site but they haven’t set them up correctly. When you include images on your website, you MUST name and describe them properly so that search engines have all that valuable information and can “see” what the image is about and being used for.

Here are two blog posts about images that you can check out and reference:

Images have a huge impact on user experience AND SEO and since those two things are closely related, it’s extremely important that the images on your website are set up correctly.

4. There’s a huge fear and misunderstanding around keywords

For some reason unbeknownst to me, every SEO newbie has an irrational fear of keywords. Seriously, all I have to do is mention that word and I see people’s faces freeze up and their eyes glaze over. They’re like “Jesus take the wheel, keywords are whack” LOL!

My friend, I’m here to reassure you that keywords are not scary or hard to understand. Keywords are one of the biggest pillars of SEO and when you break it down, it’s actually a pretty straightforward concept.

Keywords are basically just words and phrases, used on their own or grouped together. They are fundamental to the search process and you can think of them as the building blocks for SEO. Keywords are part of website content (think: web pages, blog posts, image descriptions, etc.) and they are a big factor in connecting the content on a website to what shows up in Google’s search results.

If keywords are confusing or unfamiliar to you, please read this blog post:

What are keywords and how do they relate to Squarespace SEO?

Without fail, the topic of keywords comes up in every single one of my Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting sessions. By the end of these meetings, I’m proud to say that I’ve convinced my clients that they can learn about keywords and that they actually start using keywords strategically on their websites. You can too!

5. Blogging is underrated and undervalued

Blogging is one of the foundations of any content marketing strategy and it’s a huge part of effective SEO. I truly believe that every website should have a blog, no matter what type of niche or industry it serves. Blogging is the perfect way to create fresh, new, valuable content for your audience AND it helps your website get in front of your ideal audience.

We talked about keywords in the point above but did you know that blogging is one of the best ways to build up content around the keywords you’re targeting on your website? Heck yeah it is!

Blogging also gives you an opportunity to create long-form, multimedia content that serves your ideal audience and target clients/customers in some way. Blog post can be filled with amazing content that teaches something, explains or describes a product or service, entertains, promotes an affiliate offer, whatever. From here, you can include images, videos, etc. into the blog post for extra SEO goodness!

Another reason why blogging is so important is that it helps signal to search engines (like Google) that you are an authority on the subject. Blogging also means that you’re publishing both new AND evergreen content that can get indexed by search engines. This helps your website to secure a prominent position in the keyword databases and therefore your content gets returned in search results, ideally with a high ranking/position. #winning

Blogging also builds back links (aka inbound links) whenever someone shares your post or links back to it on their website (more on this below).

Here are a few blog posts about blogging that you will find helpful:

In case there was ever any doubt, blogging is NOT dead. Blogging is still extremely valuable and will help you to grow your website, reach more clients & customers, make more money, establish you & your brand as experts/authority figures in your niche, and generally take things to the next level.

Blogging plays a huge role in any SEO strategy and content marketing should not be undervalued. The more you know, eh?

6. Link building is key

I’m not surprised that the concept of link building is entirely new or totally confusing to Squarespace SEO newbies, because if we’re being honest, it’s more of an advanced strategy.

Link building is all about getting other high-quality and relevant websites to link back to your website. These “backlinks” are super good for SEO which is why you want to get as many strong backlinks as possible!

Backlinks have a direct relationship with search engines like Google and when you have lots of high-quality backlinks to your website, it can improve how your website ranks and shows up in search results.

If you are totally new to backlinks, please check out this post:

The benefits of backlinks for Squarespace SEO.

As I mentioned above, link building is more of an advanced Squarespace SEO strategy. It usually happens after my clients have all their Squarespace settings set up correctly, all the pages and posts on their site are properly formatted and structured, and they have a basic content marketing plan in place. From here, the next stage for SEO strategy is to start link building and securing backlinks to your website for SEO goodness.

7. Index pages are confusing as heck

Almost all of my clients use Index pages on their Squarespace websites but most of them have zero clue how Index pages relate to Squarespace SEO.

This confusion is mostly because they don’t understand how to fill out the page title and description fields on the top-level index page vs. the sub-pages that make up an index page.

If you are also confused about Index pages and how they relate to Squarespace SEO, please read this post

How does SEO work for Squarespace Index pages?

During the Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting sessions, we go over the correct way to structure Index pages for SEO and I teach my clients how to hide index sub-pages from search engines using a “noindex” tag. It’s not as scary or technical as it sounds, I promise!

8. People haven’t verified their Squarespace website with Google Search Console

I would say that most of my Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting clients started off with Squarespace SEO by taking a DIY approach, which meant that they are winging it and learning as they go. They’d find a blog post or video tutorial online that taught them about something related to SEO and they’d try to implement it on their own website, but there wasn’t much structure to follow.

Add to this that most of my clients are NOT techies and are not familiar or comfortable with websites to begin with, it’s not surprising that they forgot important steps along the way!

One of the biggest takeaways that came up over and over during these sessions is that lots of these Squarespace SEO DIY’ers hadn’t verified their Squarespace websites with Google Search Console.

Maybe you’re in the same boat and this is totally new to you too - don’t panic! Better late than never :) Here’s what you need to know:

How to connect your Squarespace website with Google Search Console

Basically what you’re doing here is connect your Squarespace website with Google Search Console so that they can verify your domain and start indexing the content on your website to add to their database. Once that’s done, your content can start showing up better in search results. This is key!!

9. Your website is probably due for a re-index

Once you get your Squarespace website verified with Google Search Console, you’re laying a solid foundation for your Squarespace SEO strategy. If you haven’t already done that, go ahead and do it now and then come back to this post to catch up :)

But let’s say that you already connected your Squarespace website to Google Search Console but that was a long time ago (e.g., when you first set up your site) OR you’ve made lots of changes since then.

My friend, it’s probably time for a re-index!

This is key if you’ve recently added new pages to your website, updated the copy or content of your website, finally filled out the SEO fields, correctly named the images on your website, and a whole lot more. These are all major changes but search engines don’t automatically know that you’ve done this. That’s why we request that search engines like Google re-index the content on our websites, so that all this amazing new website content can show up in search results and reach a wider audience.

Here’s how to ask Google to recrawl your URLs.

For anyone that’s getting serious about their Squarespace SEO efforts and wants to grow their website, I strongly encourage them to request a re-index anytime they’ve done any major changes to their website.

Again, I don’t expect Squarespace SEO newbies or anyone taking the DIY route to know about this, but I still wanted to share this takeaway here on the blog because it comes up all the time during our Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting sessions.

Final Thoughts

Well there you have it, those are the 9 most common client takeaways that come up during my Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting sessions. I hope you’ve learned a lot and have a few pointers that you can apply on your own Squarespace website!

Remember that Remember that SEO is an art, not a science. Your SEO won’t change drastically overnight but by tinkering away a little bit every day, you’ll see improvements in no time. You’ve got this!

You can learn more about my Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting Sessions here.

Book a session >>

During these sessions, you can hit me up with any specific questions you have about Squarespace SEO and your website because I’m your girl. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you’re interested in working together on your website and we can talk about whether or not you would be a good fit for my Squarespace SEO Audit & Consulting sessions, and other ongoing services. I can’t take on every request to do SEO consulting but I do pick a few websites and businesses to work with every month and I’d love for you to be one of them!

Now it's your turn to tell me, what Squarespace SEO questions do you have? Are any of these takeaways surprising to you? Did you already know about these pointers or did you learn anything new?

Leave me a question or note down in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them. No matter what type of website you have, it will benefit from SEO so I encourage you to start where you are and work on improving your SEO a little bit every week.

If you want more SEO goodness, be sure to check out my Squarespace SEO page for all resources on the topic.

You can also sign up for my newsletter (right here or below), where I often share Squarespace SEO tips, tricks and high-quality exclusive content. I send out emails to my list every week and while I don’t talk about SEO every time, I can guarantee that you’ll still find the newsletter topics interesting, entertaining and worth your time.