24: The Art of Organizing Your Website Content // Squarespace Content Tips
Even the most simple Squarespace website still has a lot of content on it. From images to text blocks, forms, and links, it can be a LOT to keep track of. Trust me, with over 300 blog posts, and more every week, I needed a solid system to keep my content organized. Wanna learn how I do it? Cool - because that’s exactly what I’m covering in this episode of ThinkInsideTheSquare!
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Even the most simple Squarespace website still has a lot of content on it. From images to text blocks, forms, and links, it can be a LOT to keep track of. Trust me, with over 300 blog posts, and more every week, I needed a solid system to keep my content organized. Wanna learn how I do it? Cool - because that’s exactly what I’m covering in this episode of ThinkinsideTheSquare!
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Welcome to ThinkInsideTheSquare, a podcast full of tips and tricks taht will help you make Squarespace uniquely yours. I’m your host, Becca Harpain, Squarespace Expert and creator of InsideTheSquare.co
In this episode, I want to share my best advice for organizing your website content. We’ll be exploring ideas like using folders in your asset library to organize images, creatign more folders for pages in the unlinked pages menu , and some other tricks I use to keep my content in check.
Before we dig in, I have to mention this part - the term Squarespace is a trademark of Squarespace Inc. This content is not affiliated with Squaresapce inc.
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Diving right in, I want to talk about a feature that is relatively new to Squarespace and I consider it a game changer when it comes to organization - your asset library.
You’ll find this feature in your main menu, just above settings. The asset library holds all of the images you've uploaded to your site. Blog thumbnails and page section backgrounds - it’s all there. But did you know you create folders to organize your images? heck - you can even create folders within folders? Such a cool update.
Here is a sneak peek into how I started to organize my images once I started using this feature.
I have one folder for my asset library that is my brand folder. Inside this folder I have a few others. One holds all of the page section background images I use. Another is for the icons I use, and the third is for images of me that I’ll use across my website.
The second folder in my asset library is for my blog. This folder is exclusively for blog thumbnails. I use these images for my thumbnails and as my social share images and as the custom featured image for my videos. I label all of them with the date at the beginning - month, then week, then year - followed by a keyword or two that’s easy for me to remember what it’s for. The numbers help me sort the images because I upload a new set every month, and the words in the title help me grab the right one so I’m not double-checking. Wait, was it split layout 01.09 or 01.16?! It’s right there in the title.
That’s just a little sneak peek into my asset library - folders within folders, and images reused for specific things that have easily sortable names. And anything you want to add an image to Squaresapce - always look for the option to open your images. It might be labeled search my images or select from library - both will lead you there.
Next on my list of organiztaion tips is folders. Specifically the folders in the not linked section of my website.
A folder inside your website menu will create a dropdown if you use it in your main navigation. But in the not linked section, its an easy way to organize random pages that need to exist on your website, but not in your main menu.
I have four folders I use the most - important pages, landing pages, sales pages, and old pages. Old pages is where I move pages that had a great design, great copy, or both, and if they are no longer accessible or needed, I still want to hang on to them in case they can inspire part of an upcoming project.
Saying this out loud, it’s kinda like a digital version of that donation box in my garage. I really should take the time to make super duper sure I’m done with that stuff and let it go, but that isn’t on my to do list today, so those old pages live in a folder until I’m ready to get rid of them.
Next up is the sales pages folder. Here I have pages for anything I am actively selling, and a template for a sales page when I need to create a new one. I can duplicate that template page, update the text and images, move page sections as needed, and I can build a sales page within an hour. Super helpful for anyone selling physical and digital products.
I have SO much to talk about when it comes to creating sales pages, so you can look foward to an upcoming episode about that.
Okay - so old pages, sales pages, next on the list is my landing pages folder. Again, these are all in the not linked section of my site. The folder feature helps me organize them so I don’t have to stare at the giant list to find what I need. I can expand the folder I want to dig into and find the page I need to edit. I also have a page in this folder that is a private template page I can duplicate when I have something new to offer.
Now if you don’t sell things on your site, or if you don’t have landing pages for freebies, you’ll still need this next folder: important pages. This is where I keep my terms and conditions page, my privacy policy page, and any other important page I’ll want to keep on hand for a quick link. I think right now I also have my affiliate page linked in there.
Moral of the story here friend is that you can use the folders in the not linked section of your site to organize all of the magic that isn’t for your main menu. Folders are functional - they don’t affect the URL at all - and they make it easy for me to find what I need when I’m working on my website.
The next thing I wanted to cover in this episode about organizing your content has more to do with how your site is structured. Nested URLs.
Collection pages - like a blog or a store - they have nested URLs. A blog post URL will be your domain foward slash your blog url forward slash the blog post url. The shownotes for this episode are at [insidethesquare.co](http://insidethesquare.co) forward slash podcast forward slash 24.
That’s a nested URL. The way Squarespace is built - two levels is all we get. Your domain - the url for the collection and then the URL for the collection item. That’s it.
Other website platforms and programs can let oyu get REALLY deep with nested URLs, but we have a max of three levels on Squarspace. Trust me - that’s a great thing for SEO.
I’ll save that for a future epsiode too - SEO tips for URL. Dont worry, as I’m writing out these epusodes I’m making a note of all these good ideas, so stay tuned.
For now - lets stick to organizing - and when it comes to URL labels, collections are the way to go. But the nested URL you create isn’t what you have to sick with. You can share a short easy-to-remember URL for marketing. Thats called a vanity URL and yes, it can help you organize your content.
One of my most popular tutorials to date is how to install a custom font in your Squarespace site. I have to link to this tutorial in YouTube comments and forum posts and in emails all the time. The URL for this tutorial is [insidethesquare.co](http://insidethesquare.co) forwardx slash squarsapce dash tutorials forward slash install dash custom dash font. There is no way I am going to type that every single time. You know what I will type? [insidethesquare.co/font](http://insidethesquare.co/font)
Seriously - go to that URL and you’ll get to the long one that I am too lazy to type out every time.
But here is where a vanity URL can get tricky. I released a guide about the common font and text proeprties you can use in CSS. [insidethesquare.co](http://insidethesquare.co) / font would be a grea tname for taht. but i already put that url EVERYWHERE so i had to go with insidethesquare.co forward slash text. So when you use a vanity url, be careful with the name - it might be so easy to remember that it can be used for more than one thing.
So how to do you create one of these vanity urls in Squarespace? If it’s a stand alone page, just change the URL in the page settings. But if its a nested URL, like a blog post, you can create one. Click on settings, then developer tools, then URL mappings. Or press the forward slash key on your keyboard when your editing your Squarespace site. This opens a qui k search for your menu so you can type URL and grab URL mappings from there.
Anywho - once you are here - you can list the URL you want people to type, then create an arrow with the dash key adnthee right carrot, then type in the URL people actually need to go to.
Back to my example - i typed in forward slash font and then a dash and a right pointing caret followed by https dot dot slash slash insidethesquare dot co forward slash squarespace dash tutorials orward slash install dash custom dash font
The last part to add here is 301 or 302. This tells a computer if it needs to remember this link. 301 redirects are permanent, and 302 redirects are temporary. Because I planned to aways use [insidethesquare.co](http://insidethesquare.co) forward slash font to link to this tutorial, I made it a 301 - a permanent redirect. B ut maybe you have a yearly event and your domain forward slash event will be different every yea - make it a 30 - a temporary redirect.
Cool? okay - lets recap before I get into how the heck I remember all this stuff.
First up - we talked about your asset library. Create folders to organize your content, and name the content you add to your site in a way that is easy to sort. For me, it using the date for all my blog content so I can easily sort it. I only add that info about once a month, so the date, and an easy to reference keyword works for me.
Next - we talked about the pages on your site and using folders in the not linked section of your site. I have a folder for important pages like my privacy policy and terms and conditions page, then a folder for landing pages, and one for sales pages. A folder does not change the URL for your page but it can help you stay organized.
We also talked about nested URLs and vanity URLS. Any page inside a collection will be a third level page. The first level is your domain ,the second is the collection itself, and the third is the collection item. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. If you want to create an easy-to-remember link to a collection page, you can create a vanity URL.
Under settings, you’ll find developer tools, and then URL mappings. This is where you can say “when someone goes to my domain forward slash THIS - send them here instead!” Then you have to tell the browser if that is a permanent change - a 301 - or a temporary one - a 302.
Wowza - that was a lot of info - and were not done yet!! I have one last bit I wanted to share with you. I want my podcast to be for all Squarepace uers, but I gotta be honest, this tip is for the bloggers. But if you arent a blogger - before you hit that pause button - let me fill you in on a little secret. I have four blogs on my site, and only two of them get new content every week.
Remember that nested URL concept we talked about? Blogs can be really helpful for organizing your content! I have a resources blog and a setup blog on my website - both are focused on sharing Squarespace info, but they aren’t blogs I update regularly. What they do have are nested URLs, an organized list of content, and they have categories and tags.
The search feature in Squarespace isnt amazing, but categories and tags can help.
So why did I bring these blogs up? Over the last 3 years I’ve created a much more organized way to create and share content on my blog.
Every blog post in Squarespace needs seven basic things: a thumbnail , a title, an excerpt, a URL, an SEO tile, an SEO description and a social share image. But the truth is, you only need to create four of those seven things.
Your blog thumbnail can be your social share image. Your blog post title can be an SEO title - for mine, all I do is add “in Squarespace” to the end of it! And the excerpt your write can be your SEO description. You can resuse the content you’ve already created, turning the 7 things you need into 4 things you have to create.
So how do I keep all of this organized outside of Squarespace? The answer is Notion - a program i use to track all of the things. Like literally - not just Squarespace - i have an entire notion doc for meal planing and an other one for home projects. Kind of obsessed.
But when it comes to website content, I have a database I made that helps me organize my Squarepsace projects. It’s actually a project I duplicate for client websites because it tracks all the things, from colors and fonts to blog posts tags and thumbnail images. I call it the Website Workbook because I love alliteration. You can grab a copy of it at [i](http://insidetheswuare.co)nsidethesquare.co forward slash workbook
So a quick rewind before I call this a wrap, Ready? Lets do this.
I use notion to organize all the content for my website projects. You can grab the template I use at insidethesquare dot co forward slash workbook.
For every blog post I create, I only need to make four things: an image, a title, an expert, and a URL. The image becomes my thumbnail and my social share image, and my custom. My blog psot title becomes my SEO title with a little text added to the end as needed. The excerpt is my SEO description, and the URL is the basic text I use to describe the post.
For my popular blog posts, I use a vanity URL so it’s easy to share. You can set this up under Settings → Developer Tools → URL Mappings. Make sure you specify if its a perment redirect - a 301 - or a temporary one - a 302.
I use folders in the not linked section of my website to keep my content in check. I have a folder for landing pages, one for sales pages, and another for important pages.
Finally - don’t forget about your asset library! You can create folders within folders to keep your images organized. I have a folder for my brand content and another specifically for my blog posts. If possible, name your images in a way that you can sort alphabetically. I use month then day then year followed by a keyword so I can easily find the image.
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Okay - this became a long episode- and I hope you loved it! Please leave me a review wherever you happen to be listening to this episode - it will help other Squarespaceers find my content and I’d greatly appreciate it.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of think inside the square. I’m Becca Harpain from [InsideTheSqauare.co](http://InsideTheSauare.co) and I have a lot more tips and tricks to share with you that will help you make Squarespace uniquely yours, so be sure to subscribe wherever you happen to be listening to this episode.
Thanks again for listening, and most importantly, have fun with your Squarespace website
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Website Workbook:
insidethesquare.co/workbookHow to create a vanity URL / URL redirect in Squarespace:
insidethesquare.co/tiny/url-redirectHow to install a custom font in Squarespace:
