The ultimate guide to Squarespace's built in marketing tools and features

Having a pretty website is great. We all want a site that looks good, has lovely photos and images, a seamless design and cohesive branding. This presents our business or brand professionally online and helps connect with an online audience and potential clients/customers.

But have you ever stopped to think about how your website works from a marketing perspective?

Marketing is essential if you want to grow your website, get more traffic, and build up your business online.

It’s not enough to get people onto your website and wow them with gorgeous aesthetics - instead, we need to think about how our website can do more : it needs to look good AND convert & drive business.

As a web designer/developer, I’m a HUGE fan of Squarespace for many reasons but I particularly appreciate how they have given so much thought into the marketing and digital strategy side of their platform. When I build custom Squarespace websites for my clients, I often step in and make sure that their design incorporates marketing and business strategies because I want their websites to actually convert and drive business. Web design is about so much more than just aesthetics and a good website things about form AND function. It helps establish and develop a brand but it also works to convert site visitors to clients/customers. Marketing is integral if you want to grow your website and reach your business goals, connect with a wider audience and set your brand apart in a competitive (and often saturated) online space.

There are so many marketing features and tools that are built in directly to the Squarespace platform and I want to talk about those in this blog post today. In most cases, all you have to do is enable a setting or activate a feature. It couldn’t be easier!

I hope that you use this list as a checklist or reference point of sorts, and apply these marketing features to your own Squarespace website. If you include these marketing tools and features on your own Squarespace website, you are leveraging opportunities to grow your website, increase traffic and drive more business - for free! Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

In no particular order of importance, let’s take a look.

9 Creative Ways to Use Squarespace's Announcement Bar

The announcement bar is one of my favourite marketing features that’s built into Squarespace’s platform.

It’s an easy and effective way to customize a website and make sure that visitors are presented with important information.

There are so many creative ways you can use Squarespace’s announcement bar but ultimately it comes down to promoting a specific call-to-action (CTA). It’s a wonderful way to get that information in front of your audience right off the bat, on every page of your website.

You can set it up in a few simple clicks but the real fun begins when you start customizing your message. Get creative and have fun with it!

Let’s take a look.

5 unusual ways I relax after a heavy work sprint

I very much enjoyed writing today’s post. It’s a step in a different direction from my regular blog posts, which normally focus on Squarespace, SEO, web design & development, and other tech tips. But sometimes change is good, even if it’s only temporary!

I recently published a blog post all about my tips for dealing with insomnia and in it, I shared how insomnia and difficulties sleeping play out in my business and life as a solopreneur. I never expected that post would pick up so much momentum online! It was particularly popular over on Pinterest and a quick look at my website’s Analytics tab shows that it was one of my top posts of the last month.

Clearly this post resonated with many of you, my readers and fellow online business owners. I received so many emails and private DMs about insomnia and lots of you asked for more “wellness” blog posts.

Well…

I have exactly zero interest in becoming a lifestyle blogger (no disrespect, just not my jam) but I’m happy to share my own experiences & thoughts on a handful of topics related to wellness, particularly how it plays into work/life of online business owners. I’m not an expert in this field but I am keen to talk about what’s worked for me and maybe it’ll resonate with you too!

In this post, I’m talking about the unusual ways I relax and unwind after a heavy work sprint. I know that not everyone works this way but it’s a tactic that helps me stay in flow and produce good work. It has also saved me from burnout so far, which is something I hugely appreciate.

I hope that after you read this post, you have a better insight into my approach to work sprints and what I do to unwind and relax after a particularly intense period.

Let’s jump right in!

BusinessCharlotte O'HaraMay 6, 2019wellness, relax, my business, business, health, lifeComment

Here's why every services based business needs an SEO strategy

Websites aren’t a “one size fits all” type of thing. Depending on what type of website you have, your needs and priorities are going to be totally different. Think about a lifestyle blog vs an e-commerce company vs a services based business… they all have websites but each one is going to look and feel unique.

Most of my clients are services-based business owners. I’d say about half of them run their businesses entirely online and rarely work with in-person clients, whereas the other half serve local clients and rely on their website to serve as their “online home”.

In both cases, these services-based business use their websites as a way to connect with their (potential, current and past) clients and customers, and promote their offerings online.

Services based businesses serve a whole variety of industries - we’re talking law firms, accountants, engineers, plumbers, florists, personal trainers, coaches, photographers, consultants, PR pros, social media managers, graphic designers, gardeners, dog walkers, psychics, bakeries, physiotherapists - you name it, the list goes on.

Some of these services must be performed in person (e.g., dog walkers, massage therapists, gardeners, etc.) but others can be done either in-person OR online/remotely (e.g., consultants, personal trainers, graphic designers, etc.).

Services based businesses can be one-off projects or ongoing, recurring services…. really, the sky’s the limit and there’s a huge amount of flexibility in services-based business models!

Almost all services based businesses, however, have a website. At this point, it’s pretty much a requirement because hardly anyone (except your granny) is going old school and looking up businesses in a physical phone book. Yes, we still rely on word of mouth and recommendations from our friends and family, but the trend is increasingly to connect with businesses online. More often than not, we check out a business’ website and then get in touch if we want to work with them.

But having a website doesn’t guarantee that potential clients and customers will find out about your business- far from it, in fact. All websites are not created equally!

That’s where SEO comes it - SEO can act as the perfect bridge between a website (think: business) and an online audience (think: future clients/customers).

I truly believe that every services based business needs an SEO strategy. Not only can SEO help grow your website, it also connects you to a much wider online audience who can potentially become paying clients and customers. Which, if you’re running a services based business, is the ultimate goal!

Today we’re going to cover the most important reasons why every services based business needs an SEO strategy, whether that website is on Squarespace or another platform.

squarespace seo checklist

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squarespace seo checklist

DOWNLOAD THE CHECKLIST TODAY!

Thank you!