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Google Workspace for Small Business
The setup guide: domain email, MX records, moving your old mail across without losing it, and which plan to pick.
The Marketing Department · By Willis Aybar
Squarespace SEO: The Honest Version, from Someone Who Doesn't Sell It
Is Squarespace good for SEO? Yes, for most local businesses, and I say that as someone with no reason to flatter it.
I built more than 25 websites on Squarespace over the years, I'm a Squarespace Circle Gold member, which is their partner program, and I don't build on it anymore, my own builds are custom-coded now. So I'm not selling you a Squarespace site.
What I can do is tell you honestly when it's the right call, help you skip its real traps, and if you decide it's your platform, get you a discount on your subscription through my Circle membership.
Squarespace SEO comes down to six things.
- Squarespace handles the technical SEO basics for you: clean sitemaps, SSL, mobile rendering, editable titles and descriptions
- Its real limits are page speed and flexibility, not some SEO penalty; nobody at Google cares what platform you use
- Between Squarespace and Wix, I'd pick Squarespace, cleaner output, better templates, saner editing
- WordPress out-flexes it but demands maintenance most owners won't do
- Rankings come from content, structure, and consistency, the platform just sets the ceiling
- Circle Gold members can pass a subscription discount to you; details at the bottom
Is Squarespace Good for SEO?
Squarespace is good enough for SEO that the platform will almost never be the reason you don't rank. I've ranked Squarespace sites for competitive local searches, my own event venue ran on Squarespace while search drove it to 380+ bookings, so the "Squarespace can't rank" line you'll read in forums is outdated.
What's actually true is narrower: Squarespace gives you fewer levers than a custom build, and on the margins, page speed, structured data, fine control, those levers matter. For a local business competing against other local businesses, the margins rarely decide the fight, the content does.
Search engines don't rank platforms, they rank pages. Nothing in how Google assembles its search results asks what software published the page, so a Squarespace site and a custom build start from the same place and the work you put in after that is what separates them.
What Squarespace Gives You Out of the Box
Every Squarespace site ships with the technical groundwork that used to be its own SEO checklist: an automatic sitemap, SSL, mobile-responsive templates, clean URLs, editable page titles and meta descriptions, image alt text fields, and automatic 301s when you change a URL inside the platform. Those defaults follow the best practices search engines reward without you touching anything. The sitemap is the piece owners underrate, since it's how search engines find every page and every one of your blog posts without you asking. Google Search Console connects in a few clicks, and that connection is the first thing I'd set up on any new site, because it's where Google tells you what it sees.
That baseline matters more than it sounds.
Most do-it-yourself platforms fail owners on the boring plumbing, and Squarespace mostly doesn't. What it can't do is write your titles for you, and the defaults, page names like "Home" and empty descriptions, are where most Squarespace SEO problems actually live. The settings exist; owners just never open them.
The platform sets the ceiling. The content decides the ranking.
What Is the Downside to Squarespace?
The honest downsides are speed, flexibility, and lock-in, and none of them is fatal for the right business. None of them is a penalty either, which is what owners usually expect to find when they go looking for Squarespace SEO problems.
Page speed has a ceiling
Squarespace loads its whole framework on every page, so scores sit in the middle of the pack no matter how much you optimize images, which is fine for local competition and a real handicap in brutal national niches.
You optimize inside their menu
No server access, limited structured data control, and some SEO refinements simply have no setting, and while most owners never hit those walls, specialists do.
Templates converge
The polish that makes Squarespace attractive also makes thousands of sites look related, and standing out takes real photography and real copy, which you'd need anyway.
Leaving takes work
Content exports are partial, and a migration to another platform means rebuilding, redirect mapping, and a careful handoff of your search equity. Plan for it as a real project, not an afternoon.
The blog tooling is adequate, not great
Publishing blog posts works fine and a steady local blog sits well within it, though categories, tagging and bulk editing stay basic enough that a serious content operation outgrows them.
Not sure which of those actually matter for your business? Let's talk it through.
Grab 30 minutes with WillisSquarespace or Wix?
I'd take Squarespace, and it isn't close for the businesses I work with. Both platforms cover the same technical basics now, Wix fixed its old SEO problems years ago, so the difference isn't a penalty, it's the output quality.
Squarespace's templates are cleaner, its editor pushes you toward restraint instead of clutter, and the sites owners build on it unsupervised tend to load lighter and read clearer than what the same owner produces in Wix's anything-goes editor. Design discipline is an SEO feature when the person publishing is busy running a business.
| What matters | Squarespace | Wix |
|---|---|---|
| Templates | Cleaner, more restrained by default | Wider range, easier to over-design |
| Editor discipline | Pushes toward restraint | Anything-goes, no guardrails |
| Output in unsupervised hands | Loads lighter, reads clearer | Varies more with the owner's taste |
| Technical SEO basics | Covered out of the box | Covered out of the box, closed the old gap |
| Best for | An owner managing the site themselves | An owner who wants more layout freedom and will spend the time to use it well |
Which Is Better for SEO, WordPress or Squarespace?
WordPress wins on raw capability and it isn't the answer for most owners anyway. With WordPress you can control everything: hosting speed, plugins, structured data, every technical detail. You also have to, updates, security, plugin conflicts, and a hundred small decisions Squarespace makes for you.
The honest split: if you'll have a professional building and maintaining the site, WordPress or better still a custom build gives you the higher ceiling. If you're running it yourself, a platform that can't break beats a platform that can.
| What matters | Squarespace | WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| Technical control | Limited to the settings panel | Full control of hosting, plugins, structured data |
| Maintenance burden | Nearly none, the platform can't break | Real, updates and plugin conflicts are yours to manage |
| Best when self-managed | Usually the better call | Riskier without ongoing attention |
| Best when professionally maintained | Still fewer levers than WordPress | Higher ceiling, or a custom build instead |
How Do You Actually Do SEO on Squarespace?
Squarespace SEO happens inside the platform's own settings panel, and this eight-step SEO checklist, the same one I run on the Squarespace sites I manage, covers almost all of it. None of the steps need code, they're the same SEO best practices any platform rewards, and every one changes something a search engine actually reads: your page titles, your descriptions, your alt text, and the links search engines follow between your pages.
1
Connect Google Search Console first, because it's free and it's the only honest scoreboard you get.
2
Write a real title and description for every page. The keyword your customers type belongs in the page title, the browser tab one, not just the headline, because that title is the line search engines print in the search results.
3
Name pages for searches instead of for yourself, so that "Wedding Venue in Dundalk" outranks "Home" every day of the week.
4
One topic per page, and enough words to matter. Thin pages don't rank on any platform. A real service page explains the service, the area, the process, and answers the questions you hear on the phone, so a page that only lists a service name without that context reads thin to Google and to the visitor who clicked it.
5
Fill in alt text like you're describing the photo to someone, since it's an accessibility feature that doubles as search context.
6
Compress images before you upload, because the platform's speed ceiling is real and there's no sense spending it on ten-megabyte photos.
7
Link your pages to each other in sentences, so a services page that mentions your pricing page links the words that say so, and your blog posts do the same, since internal links are how a search engine works out which pages of a Squarespace website matter most.
8
Keep your Google Business Profile and site telling the same story. Same name, same phone, same services. Google reads both.
Do those eight consistently and your Squarespace SEO is ahead of most of the local businesses you compete with, and the same eight would carry you on any other platform too.
When Squarespace Is the Right Call, and When It Isn't
Squarespace is the right call when you're running the site yourself, the budget is real but not big, and your competition is local, it's a fine home for a venue, a studio, a practice, a restaurant.
It stops being the right call when search is your primary growth channel in a hard market and every point of page speed and flexibility counts, which is the point where custom-coded builds earn their keep. That's the work I do now, and it's also why I can write this article without a thumb on the scale: I moved my own work off Squarespace, and I'd still put plenty of businesses on it.
One of my clients, an appliance repair company, is making that exact move as their search ambitions outgrew the platform. That's not a Squarespace failure, that's a business graduating, and the platform got them there. If you're weighing that kind of decision, the wider read on Baltimore SEO company work covers what a search-first build involves, and the template-versus-custom question gets its own treatment on the what a custom build looks like page.
Pick the platform you'll actually maintain.
Trying to figure out if you've outgrown your platform? Let's look at it together.
Grab 30 minutes with WillisThe Discount, and How to Get It
As a Squarespace Circle Gold member, which is Squarespace's partner program, I can get you a discount on your Squarespace subscription if you decide it's your platform. That's the whole pitch.
Here's how it works. We pick a template together, or Squarespace suggests one, and I do the initial setup under my Circle account. Then I add you as an owner and transfer the site to you, so it's yours from day one and you take over the build. When you start paying for your subscription, the discount applies to you, and I get a partner credit from Squarespace, which is the relationship being disclosed here.
I'm not building your Squarespace site and I'm not selling you a plan, so if this article helped you decide, reach out, I'll do the setup and hand it over, answer what I can, and send you on your way. Call or text 410-999-0169 or use the contact form, and mention Squarespace.
Disclosure, plainly: Circle membership is a partner program, so treat this article accordingly, though the opinions above are the same ones I give paying clients.
Squarespace SEO Questions
These come up in almost every conversation I have with an owner before they pick a platform. I answer them the same way I would across a table.
Is Squarespace good for SEO?
Squarespace covers the technical SEO fundamentals well enough that the platform is rarely why a site doesn't rank. Rankings on Squarespace come down to the same things as everywhere else: real content, sensible page titles, and consistency.
What is the downside to Squarespace?
The main downsides are a page speed ceiling, limited technical flexibility, and the effort of leaving the platform later. For local businesses competing locally, none of the three usually decides anything.
How do you do SEO in Squarespace?
Connect Google Search Console, write a real title and description for every page, build one substantial page per topic, fill in alt text, compress images, and link your pages together in sentences. The settings all exist; the work is using them.
Which is better for SEO, WordPress or Squarespace?
WordPress has the higher ceiling and the higher maintenance burden; Squarespace has fewer levers and fewer ways to break. Professionally maintained, WordPress or custom wins. Self-managed, Squarespace usually serves an owner better.
Are Squarespace websites SEO friendly?
A Squarespace website is SEO friendly out of the box: automatic sitemaps, SSL, mobile rendering, editable metadata, and clean URLs that search engines crawl without trouble. The friendliness ends at the defaults, which you still have to change.
Does Squarespace do SEO for you?
Squarespace handles the technical plumbing automatically, but nobody's platform writes your titles, chooses your keywords, publishes a blog post, or follows SEO best practices for you. The tools are provided; the work is still your job or your marketer's.
Do I need an SEO plugin for Squarespace?
No. Squarespace builds the essential SEO functions into the platform, and the third-party plugin ecosystem mostly repackages settings you already have. Spend the money on content or photography instead.
How long does Squarespace SEO take to work?
The same as SEO anywhere: early movement inside about 90 days and compounding results after, assuming pages worth ranking. The platform doesn't speed that up or slow it down meaningfully.
Is Squarespace better than Wix?
For most business owners, yes. The technical SEO gap between them has closed, so the difference is output quality, and Squarespace's tighter templates and editor produce cleaner sites in unsupervised hands.
Can a Squarespace site rank for local searches?
Yes, comfortably. My own event venue ran on Squarespace while search drove it to 380+ bookings. Local search results lean on your content, your Google Business Profile, and your reviews far more than on your platform.
Squarespace holding you back?
Send me the site. I'll tell you whether it's the platform or the pages.
Deciding Between Squarespace and a Custom Build?
A free 30-minute strategy session with someone who has built both. A straight read on what your business actually needs, no platform to sell you.
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