SEO Basics

Site-Wide SEO

• Set in Website Menu → SEO AIO, or Settings → Marketing → SEO Appearance

• Site title — go beyond just your business name; add what you do and where (e.g. "Jane Doe, Contemporary Silver Jewelry, Houston Texas")

• Site description — keep it under 50 characters; Google cuts off the rest with "..."; put the most important info first

• Avoid using Squarespace's AI SEO tool — it can overwrite your custom content

Per-Page SEO

• Each page has three separate name fields: Page Title (browser tab), Navigation Title (nav bar), URL Slug (address bar) — these can differ when needed (e.g. keep an old URL slug to avoid breaking existing links)

• Add a unique SEO description to every page — short, descriptive, front-load the important words

• Sometimes Google ignores your description and pulls from page content anyway — just do your best to guide it

H1 Header Hierarchy

• One H1 per page — the most important text; tells Google what the page is about

• Use descriptive, searchable words in your H1 (e.g. "Hand-fabricated silver jewelry with bold minimalist style")

• H1 → H2 → H3 → paragraph text; size doesn't matter, the tag does

• Template includes guidance on where to place H1 text on each page

Images

• Descriptive file names with dashes between words

• Alt text on every image — describe what's in it; make each one slightly different

• Especially important for product/shop images (e.g. "ceramic vessel front view", "ceramic vessel side view")

Hiding Pages from SEO

• Hide utility pages (404, thank you, coming soon, privacy policy, links page) from search results so they don't compete with important pages

• Disabled pages are invisible to everyone including search engines

• Not linked ≠ hidden from SEO — you must manually hide pages you don't want indexed

Blog-Specific

• Hide tags and categories from SEO in blog settings — Google indexes each one as a separate page, creating clutter that competes against your real content

• Leave blog post pages themselves searchable — they add valuable content

• Audit your tags; if you're not using them for filtering, delete them