This seems like the age-old question - search on Google, and you’ll likely see tonnes of people and articles covering “is Squarespace good for SEO?” and “is Squarespace bad for SEO?”.

They’re reasonable questions to ask - no one wants to build a website that doesn’t get found on search engines.

If you search around and a look at comparisons of web builders/CMS platforms next to Squarespace, they’ll often trump SQSP in the “SEO” section. But is this still true?

Is Squarespace SEO bad? And, how can you get SEO results on Squarespace?

To put this question to bed, we’ve spent four months analyzing Squarespace SEO data from 21,327 Squarespace websites from BuiltWith and our SEO plugin for Squarespace.

This article reveals the results of our analysis, the secrets behind the top 10% of Squarespace websites and what Squarespace should do to improve the SEO of its web-building platform and help users.

Is Squarespace Good or Bad for SEO? Key Findings:

Squarespace isn’t bad for SEO - Squarespace websites can generate seriously high traffic with the right knowledge.
Squarespace does lack some SEO features, and some sites may be held back in highly competitive niches (covered more below).
The top 10% of Squarespace websites have lots of high-quality backlinks, valuable blog content and a higher SEO score.
The steps for getting results through Squarespace SEO is no different than on all other web builders.

If you prefer to watch a walk-through of the results, checkout the below video:

21,327 Squarespace Websites Analyzed - Honest Review

We ran the home pages of 21,327 Squarespace websites through a basic scan of our Squarespace SEO plugin. Basic scans check for fundamental SEO pitfalls, such as broken links, oversized images, multiple H1s, poorly optimized meta descriptions, and indexing.

Here are the findings:

86.3% had oversized images (images >250kb)
47.0% had multiple H1s
32.2% had broken links
66.4% had images with missing alt tags
The average SEO score of the sites was 40.5/100

The Top 10%

When we analyzed the data further, we looked into what separates the top 10% of Squarespace websites from the bottom 90%.

What actually leads to sites that get the highest amount of visitors from Google?

On average, the top 10% of Squarespace websites we analyzed had:

7,638 organic visitors per month - 12.1 times more than the bottom 90%
A 62.1% higher domain authority (an average DR of 31.6)
2.85 times more backlinks (an average of 16,636 links)
6.75 times more keywords ranking on Google (an average of 5,007 keywords)
A 19.8% higher SEO score

So, Squarespace websites can generate significant traffic (some of the sites we analyzed received over 100,000 visitors per month!). A platform with “bad SEO” would unlikely allow sites to get this many visitors.

In short, to make it into the top 10%, you need more backlinks, more keywords (likely more content and blogs) and a better SEOSpace SEO score.

Interestingly, this also matches what we’ve seen with the SEOSpace website. Looking at the below, you can see how closely monthly visitors, the number of keywords and the number of referring domains correlate - i.e. the more backlinks and blogs we added, the more traffic we got.

Is Squarespace Good for SEO? Honest Review

Those who know SEO won’t be surprised about the above - what goes into getting results on Squarespace is no different to any platform.

Squarespace isn’t bad for SEO; Squarespace websites can get staggering amounts of organic traffic. Those top websites, in terms of traffic, have more backlinks, rank for more keywords and have a better SEO score.

That being said, we know Squarespace has its flaws. As highlighted in this Ahrefs study, Squarespace sites get significantly less traffic than WordPress; in fact, ~85% get 0 organic traffic!

In the section below, we’ll dig deeper into this and present solutions for Squarespace users to get more traffic and outrank the competition, and for the Squarespace team to help users and improve its platform.

What Holds Squarespace Users Back?

There are two things that we see holding Squarespace users back: education and missing/lacking functionality.

Note: The below shouldn’t be taken as a dig at Squarespace, nor are we affiliated with Squarespace btw.
Squarespace does a lot to support its users (much more than many alternatives), including connecting them to SEO experts, providing spaces for discussion and hosting webinars.
SEOSpace wouldn’t exist without Squarespace and my aim with this article is to highlight what users can do to grow more on Squarespace.
An additional point to remember is, one could also argue that a lack of access to SEO tools for Squarespace holds users back - as of writing this, SEOSpace is 5 month’s old, so there are still many users yet to benefit from SEOSpace.

Limitation #1: Squarespace SEO Education

As the Ahrefs study mentioned above concluded, “Squarespace tends to attract less SEO-savvy people than WordPress”.

This matches what we’ve seen - Squarespace often attracts creatives who may avoid or even dislike SEO.

The data and our experience show Squarespace users aren’t as SEO savvy when compared to WordPress users; therefore, they’re less likely to know how to get high-quality backlinks, write optimized content and do on-page SEO - the three ingredients for success, that don’t come without knowledge and effort.

We have also found that Squarespace users don’t have OR aren’t willing to spend as much on SEO when compared to WordPress users.

This isn’t the fault of Squarespace users, nor can it not be solved. A few tweaks would make a world of difference:

Squarespace’s official SEO checklist,

100s of thousands of users have likely read this checklist, which needs an update and contains incorrect information. For example, the below recommendations either go against what most SEO experts suggest, don’t follow other more recent SEO checklists or tips, OR need more context to be helpful:

Make SEO descriptions 50-300 characters
Keep images under 500 KB
Enabling AMP

Instead, you should follow our tried and tested Squarespace SEO checklist.

At SEOSpace, our mission is to make Squarespace the best website builder for SEO, so if anyone from the Squarespace Team is reading this, we’d love to help out - whether it’s educating users, updating the checklist or sharing our on-the-ground insight 👋

User-specific education

From our experience at SEOSpace, there are a large amount of creatives that use Squarespace.

Photographers, designers, artists, small business owners, etc., are most likely to use the platform.

These audiences face specific issues/challenges around SEO that could be solved via specific recommendations and education.

For example, photographers (from our experience) typically don’t blog as much, frequently have very little text on their web pages, i.e. thin content (<300 words on a page) and have lots of oversized images, which they don’t realize is hurting their SEO as much as it is.

This is an easy fix and could help grow their businesses faster on Squarespace - who wouldn’t want that?

Limitation #2: Squarespace SEO Features/Functionality

Squarespace has come under fire in the past for being built in a way that’s difficult for users and search engines. Who remembers index sections? 👀

However, that’s the past. Let’s look at the platform right now and its 7.1 builder.

Below are some of the features/functionality that potentially hurt SEO, particularly for those looking to join the top 10%:

Slow page speed: You can’t streamline/speed up Squarespace’s code - as a result, Squarespace sites constantly get hammered in page speed score tests, a top 10 ranking factor for Google which certainly damages rankings.
Image compression: It’s nearly impossible to get images below 100kb on Squarespace (which is typically recommended by experts). In fact, Squarespace often increases the size of images you upload if you’ve already compressed them!
No WebP: You can’t use next-generation image formats such as WebP on Squarespace, which hurts page speed score.
Default schema: Squarespace has local business schema as the default on all Squarespace websites, which you can’t change - frustrating if you’re not a local business.
Lack of SEO extensions: There currently aren’t many SEO extension or tool on the Squarespace extension marketplace (check out the best Squarespace plugins and extensions). While plugins and extensions aren’t needed for SEO, it’s clear looking at Wix, WordPress and Webflow that plugins are commonplace in web toolkits and do help. In fact, an independent team found those new to SEO increased their traffic by up to 68% in 2 months using SEOSpace.
Missing SEO settings: You can’t add/edit meta descriptions or titles on category pages - this is especially bad for eCommerce websites.

As with anything in life, where there are pros, there will be cons. Much of the above is solved on other web builders via plugins, extra customization, and manual coding.

Squarespace is incredibly easy to use, which limits how much you can customize it.

Would you rather lack the above functionality and have an easy-to-use platform that doesn’t break, or have the above along with complication and security issues?

If you picked the latter, Squarespace isn’t for you.

Conclusion: The Definitive Squarespace SEO Review

So, is Squarespace good or bad for SEO?

While SEO itself is relatively platform-independent, there’s reason for people to call Squarespace out for having bad SEO.

Poor SEO education and a lack of certain SEO features/functionality are things Squarespace needs to work on, and SEOSpace is hoping to play a big part in this push.

Despite Squarespace’s pros and cons, the fantastic SEO results we’ve seen and contributed to at SEOSpace, Squarespace’s ease-of-use and the fact Squarespace’s SEO education and third-party tools are getting better mean the platform is better for most people for SEO.

Most people don’t like, understand or want to do SEO. Therefore, the platform that makes it the easiest, most accessible and jargon-free will be best for most people. You can also enrol in our Squarespace SEO course and training waiting list to better understand SEO and Squarespace.

With the proper education, businesses will not find Squarespace bad for SEO - they will find the platform the best option, rank high on Google and be on the path to thriving on their SEO journey.

Final Thoughts

Upon reflection of this study, there are a few things I would have changed and will likely build into a bigger and more comprehensive study in the future. For example, I didn’t/couldn’t consider:

Content quality: 1,000 pages with rubbish content won’t rank as well as 1,000 pages with unique, mind-blowing value. A way to score content quality across the sites would have been interesting - particularly using the keyword scan feature on SEOSpace.
Page speed score: Squarespace often gets slammed for having a slow page loading speed - it would have been extremely valuable to see how this impacts traffic across the group.
Non-Squarespace group/comparison: Comparing 20,000 Wix, Custom, WordPress, Webflow, etc. sites to 20,000 Squarespace sites would have been a better way to determine whether Squarespace is good or bad for SEO.
Site health: At the time of writing this, SEOSpace is building site-wide scans and depending upon the server costs… we may revisit this in the future and gather site-wide SEO scores to see how this impacts traffic.

Have any questions, comments or feedback on this study? Feel free to email info@seospace.co.uk

Squarespace SEO Review FAQs

Does SEO work with Squarespace?

Yes, SEO works effectively with Squarespace. Squarespace sites are capable of achieving good search engine rankings due to their built-in SEO features. The platform supports fundamental SEO practices including on-page SEO, which involves optimizing meta descriptions and titles, structuring content with proper header tags, and maintaining a clean, responsive design with Squarespace templates.

Additionally, connecting your Squarespace site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools can help you monitor and enhance your site's search engine performance.

Do Squarespace websites rank well?

Squarespace websites can rank well on search engines, provided the right SEO strategies are implemented. The platform's design is SEO-friendly, and with features like the SEO tab, users can manage essential SEO elements easily.

However, ranking well also depends on consistent content quality, effective use of SEO tools, and active engagement with SEO performance metrics through tools like Google Analytics. It's crucial to optimize all aspects of SEO to improve a Squarespace site's search engine rankings.

Can a Squarespace website rank on Google?

Absolutely, a Squarespace website can rank on Google and other search engines. To enhance visibility in search results, it's important to utilize Squarespace's SEO capabilities fully, such as integrating SEO-friendly URLs, using responsive Squarespace templates, and optimizing your content with relevant keywords. Regularly updating your content and employing SEO best practices will help boost your site's search engine rankings significantly.

How do I rank higher on Google with Squarespace?

To rank higher on Google with your Squarespace site, focus on several key SEO strategies:

Optimize On-Page Elements: Ensure your titles, headers, and meta descriptions are well-crafted and include relevant keywords.
Use Google Search Console: Connect your Squarespace site to Google Search Console to track your SEO performance and make informed adjustments.
Publish Quality Content: Regularly update your site with high-quality, relevant content that addresses your audience's needs.
Build Backlinks: Increase your site's authority by acquiring backlinks from reputable sites within your industry.
Leverage SEO Tools: Utilize Squarespace’s built-in SEO tools and integrate third-party analytics like Google Analytics to deepen your SEO insights.

How do I get my Squarespace website to show up on Google?

To ensure your Squarespace website shows up on Google:

Verify Your Site with Google Search Console: This tool allows you to submit your sitemap and tracks how your site is performing in Google search results.
Optimize SEO Settings: Use the Squarespace SEO tab to manage your SEO settings effectively, ensuring all content is optimized for search engines.
Create Quality Content: Develop content that is engaging, informative, and includes keywords that are relevant to your target audience to improve your visibility in search results.
Improve Site Speed: Ensure your Squarespace site loads quickly, as page speed is a critical factor for ranking in search engines.

Is Squarespace Good or Bad for SEO? (Honest 2024 Review)

Is Squarespace Good or Bad for SEO? Key Findings: