34: How To Transform Your Blog into an SEO Powerhouse
In this episode, we're diving deep into the world of Squarespace blogs and SEO, so you can supercharge your website's visibility and connect with your audience like never before.
Learn why having a blog on your Squarespace site is a game-changer for attracting visitors and establishing your expertise in your industry.
You'll learn how to choose the right topics to talk about, the perfect keywords to optimize for, and about the magic of internal links and categories/tags to enhance your site's rank while improving user experience. By the end of this episode, you'll have the tools and know-how to take your Squarespace blog to the next level.
-
It seems like the world is obsessed with short form video content these days, like tech talks and reels. But now more than ever, creating quality blog posts for your audience can have a huge impact on how often your website is found on Google. In this episode of Think Inside the Square, I'm sharing some of my top SEO secrets specifically for your blog. You'll learn about some creative ways to make sure you get more eyes on the articles that you worked so hard to create. Get ready to take some notes, my friend. I've got a lot to cover today.
Welcome to Think Inside the Square, a podcast full of tips and tricks to help you create a Squarespace website that you're proud of. I'm your host, Becca Harpain, Squarespace expert and creator of Inside the Square Echo. In this episode, we're talking about search engine optimization specifically for blog posts, because I think everyone, every single Squarespace user out there should have a blog. And in this episode you'll learn why. For a transcript of this episode, along with the links to any resources mentioned, visit insidethesquare.co/podcast
The term Squarespace is a trademark of Squarespace Inc. This content is not affiliated with Squarespace Inc..
Earlier this week, I got to attend a Squarespace meetup here in Vancouver. Shout out to Khristine Neil for putting it together. Sincerely appreciate it. She is the queen of Squarespace e-commerce. And I'll be sure to link to her website in the show notes if you want to check out her stuff.
But meeting people in real life was really awesome because we got to nerd out together. I think it took all of maybe 10 minutes before we started talking about SEO, which gave me the idea for this episode as SEO, specifically for a Squarespace blog. Now, to be clear, I think that every Squarespace or out there should have a blog on their website, and here's why.
A blog is a signal to your customers and to Google that you know what you're talking about. It's a way for you to provide value, build trust, and establish yourself as a leader in the industry. It honestly doesn't matter what your business is or what you're offering. If you have customers, it's because you're offering them a solution to a problem, which means they have a question that needs to be answered, and that's something that you can blog about. Now, a blog isn't just an SEO powerhouse. It's a valuable tool for building stronger customer relationships. It positions you as a thought leader in your industry because you can share valuable insights, tips, industry trends, anything to demonstrate your expertize and build that trust with your potential customers. They're going to see you as a reliable source of information, not just someone trying to sell something. It also helps you connect with your audience on a deeper level. You can address the pain points your customers face, answer their questions, share stories that resonate with them. It fosters this sense of connection, and it makes your brand more relatable, the more relatable you are. The more people are going to want to do business with you. It's also a fantastic way of offering educational content that goes beyond just promoting your products or services. This isn't a quick tech talk or a short form reel. This is long form content that empowers potential customers to make informed decisions and again, positions you as a resource, not just a salesperson. Despite the title of this episode, a blog isn't about attracting search engines. It's about attracting and nurturing relationships with customers. But the best way to get your blog content in front of the right people is to optimize that content so it ranks higher in search results. Okay. Ready for the world's quickest recap on SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it's the concept of optimizing your content so that search engines like Google will know what answers to search for, what searches. The more of your site content is optimized to show up for the right searches, the higher your website rakes in search results. And here's why. You'll be consistently creating fresh content. Search engines love fresh, valuable content, and a blog lets you add new information to your site regularly keeping it relevant and interesting. If you've had the same product for five years, you might change the product description a little bit every now and again. But if you have a blog, you can post about that product and creative, informative articles in so many different ways at so many different times, constantly creating fresh content. Secondly, with a blog, you can focus on specific topics incorporating relevant keywords that people might search for that have to do with the other content on your site. Now, to be clear, when I'm using the term keyword, that's a bit of a misnomer. It can be a phrase or a few words that are relevant to your site content that you're optimizing for. A keyword that I try to rank well for is the phrase. How to Customize Squarespace. So there you go. It's a phrase, but it's also referred to as keywords. Just so we're on the same page here. All right. One last thing I want to mention backlinks. The more people love your blog content, the more likely they are to link to it from their own websites. Not only are these backlinks gold for SEO, but it's also a great way to get more exposure for your website to people who might not have discovered it yet. Now having a blog itself isn't a direct ranking factor. But again, this blog content, it's going to act like an SEO superpower for your Squarespace site as long as you optimize it like a pro. So let's get into this. Let's talk about the Squarespace side of things. They make it super easy to set up a blog. It's literally built into every site, even if it wasn't there when you picked that template to start with. Click on Web site and under your pages menu. Click the plus sign next to not linked to add a blog any time. Now I always recommend creating one in the not linked section of your site so you can launch the blog with a few posts. You'll want to take some time to create your content. So let's go ahead and dig into that. How do you create SEO friendly blog content in Squarespace? Here are some of my top tips.
Think about what questions your ideal customer might have and Anything that's related to your product or your industry. And answer those questions with a blog post. Now, it's important to keep their tone and the terms they use in mind. What terms are they using to try and find this answer? I'll give you an example of what I mean. On my own site, I have a basic tutorial about how to change a list item background color using CC one of many tutorials on my site. The title of that blog post is How to Change List Item Colors. Now, technically, in that blog post, I'm teaching people how to isolate a child element with the pseudo selector to override the background color with their own. But no one's going to Google that. They're going to Google how to change list item color Squarespace and they'll see my blog. So think about the questions your audience asks and how they ask it so you can incorporate their terms into your text. Now, once you know what you're going to write about and the terms you're going to be focusing on, it's time to create optimized titles, descriptions and hooks inside Squarespace. Under the settings for every individual post, we can add a specific SEO title and SEO description. Now, there is no guarantee that Google is going to use that specific description. It can pull data from your blog if it likes that content instead. But I do recommend that you add one there inside the settings that uses the phrase or the keyword that you're optimizing for. If someone's looking at that specific term and it's in their Google search and then it shows that matted description in the search results, Google is going to make that keyword bold, so it's more eye catching. Now, I also mentioned a hook. We're not talking about the settings of your blog post. It's important to write a hook or an intro paragraph for your blog post that has your keyword within the first 200 characters. So people searching for that term, they're going to know they're in the right place right away. It's also a chance to get a little creative and write something intriguing, engaging, something that makes people excited to read more. You want them to scroll down the page And they're more likely to do that if they're confident they landed on the right page. So again, try to write a hook for every article that includes your keyword within the first 200 characters. Now the next blog SEO Tip internal wakes. You're going to love this one when you recommend other content on your site, specifically in a blog post and link directly to it. This helps to show how your content is connected. It keeps people engaged and offers them deeper dives into related content. But Google likes it too. Now here's the key ditch the generic phrases like Click here or read more. Instead, I want you to link the full title of the blog post or the page that you're referencing. This tells the search engine crawlers that the entire linked page, that whole sentence is the most relevant term that you could be linking to further strengthening your contents. Topical authority. Pretty cool tip, right? So again, skip phrases like Click here or read more and link the full title of the blog post or the page that you're referencing and try to include two or three links to additional content on every blog post you create. All right, I've got another SEO tip for your blog post. Categories and tags. These can help you improve your site rank in a way that is very similar to internal links. Squarespace creates automatic pages for you for every tag and category in your blog. When you click on those links in your blog post, they'll be there placed at the top of the bottom of the blog, depending upon your layout settings. You'll click on that category or that tag, and you'll be taken to a page that generates a list of any content in your blog that also has that category or tag. If a Google Web crawler stumbles upon a tag that has 30 blog posts, it's going to make a note that you've got a lot to say about that specific topic. Now you might be wondering what the difference is when to use category and when to use tags. So here is a quick analogy for you. Imagine that your library is a website. I said it backwards. Imagine that your website is a library. Categories are like the main sections fiction or nonfiction, but the tags are like those subgenres within each section. You want to go to a library and expect to find fiction, nonfiction history. Right. You're going to have fiction and nonfiction as the main sections and those subgenres. Those are the tags. Now, as you're creating categories and tags for your Squarespace blog, you need to optimize those for search. Think back to those key phrases that people are using to find your content and group the smaller sets of keywords together. But be careful that you don't overdo it. While categories and tags are helpful, using too many of them makes them a little less effective. It's like you're saying everything is important, so try to stick to a few main categories and then tags within those categories. Strategically, using these can help you create a well-organized website that's SEO friendly and user friendly, which is the goal here, right? We're going to drive more traffic and engagement. And we're going to do that by creating a blog that answers your customers questions. Okay, it's a recap time, my friend. Let's do this. In today's episode, we explored the power of blog posts for boosting your Squarespace website's SEO. We talked about consistent, high quality blog content being a magnet for search engines thanks to factors like fresh content, targeted keywords and backlinks, and also optimizing your blog post with relevant keywords in the titles, descriptions and in the hook that first 200 characters. So anyone that finds your blog on an online search is going to read that first step of the blog and say, Yep, that's where I belong. Don't forget to include internal links as well. These internal links are going to be a link of the entire title of the blog post or the page, so that the person who's visiting your site as well as Google will recognize how much related content you have. And you're also going to use your keywords inside categories and tags, but you're not going to overdo it. Now taking you all the way back to the beginning of this episode. MCO isn't the only reason to have a blog. A well-maintained blog can be a gold mine for building these stronger customer relationships. You can offer valuable educational content and position yourself as an expert and a trusted resource, not just a salesperson. This blog is going to allow you to connect with your audience on a deeper level. Address their pain points and showcase your brand's personality. So whether you're selling handcrafted jewelry or Instagram services or offering a plethora of Squarespace tutorials like yours truly having a blog on your Squarespace website is a great idea for everyone. It's going to strengthen your CEO and foster those strong customer connections, leading more and more people to your amazing Squarespace website. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Think Inside the Square. I have a lot more to teach you about how to make an amazing Squarespace website that's uniquely yours. So be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you happen to be listening to this episode For links to all the resources that I mentioned, including some past episodes about blog content and about SEO, because I've talked about this a little already. Check out the show notes at Inside the Square Darko Forward Slash Podcast. Thanks again for listening and most importantly, have fun with your Squarespace website. Bye for now.
-
