Make your website more visible to search engines and help clients find you

Increasing your website’s visibility requires that you use SEO-targeting tools. Squarespace and other website building sites include some features but you will also need to use other tools to optimize your SEO strategy. Bear in mind that search engines do frequently change their technology and you will also need to keep abreast with these for maximum SEO efficiency. 

If you are a small business owner, health practitioner, offer healing or other advice on our website or blog you can continue to increase the visibility of your website to search engines by using the following SEO strategies: 

Maintain updates with search tools

Any changes that you make to your site will not be noticed immediately by search engines. However, Google and Bing offer search tools that you can request a re-index of your content through. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools help you to manage your site’s search presence. 

Make your titles SEO-friendly

All titles are prioritized by search engines and they appear in browser tabs requiring that you make the site, page, blog titles and all headings easy to find by people and search bots. Keywords need to be added to titles and headings making it easier for search engines to offer you visibility. 

Keep all formatting consistent on the homepage, collections (Album, Blog, Events, Gallery, Products, etc.) and collection items (e.g. blog posts) by setting default title formats. Using default variables is far easier than manually entering them each time. 

SEO titles and navigation titles are different

All titles can be edited in page settings and each page must have an SEO title, navigation title, and page title. 

The differences between these are: 

• An SEO title is what appears in search engine results and browser tabs. Search engines index these and each page needs to have an SEO title with keywords in them. SEO titles can also be added to collection items like blog posts, events, and products. 

• Navigation titles create links in the navigation menu of your website and need to be short and precise, e.g. “About”, “Shop” or “Contact”. 

• Page titles can be much longer than those on the navigation menu since they appear in some templates on your website and there’s more room for creating it. That means that “About” can now become “About our company” and even if there is no SEO title, the page title will display in search results. 

Headings help structure the content

Clear headings that describe the content are the best way to organize pages. Headings are given higher priority by search engines as they can pick up on the main themes of your site. Headings have another important advantage; they give visitors the ability to quickly glean the necessary information. 

Starting with the broadest information, move the headings down in descending order to more specific details. 

Important heading tips

• Keep to consistent heading sizes across your website and within every page. 

• Formatting effects, e.g. pull quotes should be avoided in headings. 

• Multiple headings should never have the same text.

• Keywords must be used in headings to optimize them. Ie) Naturopathic Website Designer or Nutrition for Breastfeeding Mothers

• Structure your headings cleverly if you are using the same type of heading more than once within a page. The content will indicate how these can be structured. 

Alt text on images and search engines

When you add images to content add alt text so that search engines can identify the content and include the image in the relevant searches. This is because search engine bots can only read the text and will not be able to identify the relevance of the image. Remember: When adding alt text use a short description that relates to the content in understandable terms. 

Tags and categories are important to search results

By adding accurate descriptions in tags and categories to images, products, and blog posts search engines will be able to scan and identify them helping them to appear in results. With Squarespace, you can add categories and tags, link to categories and tags by using blocks, rename categories and tags, merge them, and delete them. You can do this with Wordpress too!

Blogging keeps you visible

Blogging helps with SEO and helps every type of business and service to build its brand. Therefore, blogging with relevant content helps all websites. Your site allows for easy blogging if you remember to: 

• add blog posts with relevant tags and categories, 

• structure them with headings in H1 and H2 format

• your content must appeal to your audience, there is no point writing about something you are not passionate about

• your blog posts must be keyword optimized

Page loading speed is crucial

Your page’s ranking in search results is directly linked to how long it takes it to load. If your page is slow, then consider reducing its size and its loading speed will improve. 

Help visitors by listing the physical location

If you want potential clients to find you in location-based services then you must list your physical location if you have one. You can add to your location to the following areas of your site:

1. Create a Map Block and embed Google Maps with a location pin

2. Add your business location and contact information on Business Information Settings. 

3. Create a contact page and add a text block.

4. If your template design has a footer add a text block there. 

Add SEO site and page descriptions 

By adding short SEO descriptions for collection items, individual pages and your site will allow visitors to decide if they want to click on the result. It’s important that these are kept short, relevant, readable and must contain SEO descriptions for each section. 

Enable SSL to avoid being penalized

When SSL is enabled visitors can access every page of your website securely. Visitors to your site will be able to tell that it is secure because the custom URL starts with https. If you aren’t sure that SSL is enabled. 

SEO may be complex but with these easy steps, you can also ensure that you reap the benefits for your small business or practice. 

SSL is a must for e-commerce. If you are selling anything with a shopping cart and do not have SSL it may show an error and lose customers. 

If you are stuck with SEO, want an SEO audit please contact me, if you have a question, please comment below so others can learn from your question too.

Ps. Facebook and Instagram also play a part in your SEO. Make sure you put your links to blogs on there and type it out on the post. You never know what people are searching for!