45: The Ultimate Squarespace Website Maintenance Checklist: Keep Your Site Thriving (Every 6 Months!)

Written By insidethesquare

EPISODE SUMMARY

Website Maintenance Made Fun:
Your Squarespace TLC Checklist (Do This Every 6 Months!)

We all know the feeling: that neglected houseplant in the corner, leaves drooping, soil dry as a bone. Websites can fall victim to the same neglect! Just like your favorite greenery, your Squarespace site needs a little TLC every now and then to stay happy, healthy, and performing at its best. The good news? Website maintenance doesn't have to be a chore. In fact, with the right approach, it can be a breeze!

Think of website maintenance as a chance to show your website some love. It's about ensuring a smooth experience for visitors, keeping your content fresh and engaging, and staying on top of SEO best practices. Ready to give your Squarespace site a spa day? Let's dive into a handy checklist you can use every 6 months to keep your website thriving!

First up: Forms

The forms on your website are the bridge between you and your audience. Whether you're collecting email sign-ups, processing orders, or hosting a fun quiz, you want them to work flawlessly. Here's the secret weapon: testing! Fill out your forms with different information, pretending to be a new customer or a first-time email subscriber. This way, you can catch any glitches before your real visitors encounter them. Don't forget the power of a personalized "thank you" message after someone submits a form! It shows appreciation and gives you a chance to offer a special discount or exclusive content.

Next: Broken Link Review

Ever click a link with excitement, only to be met with a frustrating error message? Broken links are the buzzkills of the internet, and they can seriously hurt your website's reputation. The good news is that hunting them down doesn't have to be a nightmare. There are tons of free tools available online that can scan your entire website in a flash, revealing any hidden link monsters lurking in the shadows. Once you have your trusty link-checking tool in hand, unleash it on your website! Fixing a broken link is usually as simple as replacing it with the correct URL, or removing it entirely if the original page no longer exists. By taking a few minutes to banish those broken links, you'll keep your website running smoothly and ensure a frustration-free experience for your visitors.

Create Current Content

The internet is a fast-paced world, and your website content needs to keep up! Think about it: would you rather read a dusty old newspaper from the year 2000, or a fresh, informative website packed with the latest news and updates? Exactly! Here's why keeping your website content fresh is a website maintenance superpower:

  • Search engines love fresh, relevant content! Regularly updating your website with new blog posts, product descriptions, or service offerings helps you climb the SEO rankings.

  • Fresh content keeps your audience engaged. People crave new information and experiences.

By regularly updating your content, you give visitors a reason to keep coming back for more.

Ready to Dive Deeper?

Listen to the full episode of ThinkInsideTheSquare above!

This is just a taste of the website maintenance tips and tricks that I cover in in episode 45 of Think Inside the Square! We'll explore additional checklist items like website analytics, mobile testing, and keeping your social media share images up-to-date. Listen to the full episode here on this page, or find ThinkInsideTheSquare wherever you happen to listen to podcasts.

  • Just like our favorite houseplants, websites need a little TLC every now and then to stay happy and healthy. That's where website maintenance comes in, and believe it or not, it can actually be kind of fun. In this episode of thinkinsidethesquare, I’m sharing my 7 step website maintenance checklist that I run through twice a year, every year.

    Welcome to thinkinsidethesquare - a podcast full of tips and tricks to help you create a website that you’re proud of. In this episode I’m sharing my super simple website maintenace checklist with you, a friednly reminder that even after you launch your digital creation to the world wide web, you still need to check on it every once in a while.

    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.

    Website maintenance is all about making sure everything runs smoothly, looks polished, and delivers the best possible experience for anyone who visits your virtual space.

    What you need to double check will be different than my to do list - some of us have online stores, some of us have blogs, some folks like me have both! but the list of 7 things I’m talking about in this episode is universal for every Squarespacer, so lets dive in.

    First up - test your forms. Forms are bridge between you and your audience, allowing you to collect valuable information, connect with potential customers, and build relationships. Think about it: whether you're collecting email sign-ups for your newsletter, processing orders for your amazing products, or even hosting a hilarious personality quiz, you want these forms to work flawlessly.

    Take some time to actually fill out your forms with different information. Pretend to be a new customer placing an order, or imagine yourself signing up for your email list with a brand new email address. What happened when you clicked submit? Maybe when you launched the site, you were so overwhelmed with everything else you needed to do, you left the simple generic thank you text. Well now is your chance to elevate someones experience on your site!

    Craft a personalized "thank you" message that shows your appreciation for their interest, or even consider redirecting them to a custom page. This is your chance to make a great impression, and maybe even offer a special discount or a sneak peek at some exclusive content as a thank you for joining the party!

    So step one - check your forms and make sure the experience is awesome, and make sure the info goes to the right place. Did it land in the right inbox? the right mailing list? the right spreadsheet? double check it all.

    Next up, lets test your internal links.

    Broken links are the buzzkills of the internet, and they can seriously hurt your website's reputation. Not only do they leave visitors feeling lost and annoyed, but they can also drag down your ranking in search engines.

    Here's the good news: hunting down broken links doesn't have to be a nightmarish scavenger hunt. There are tons of free tools available online that can scan your entire website superfast and ill link to a few of my favorites in the show notes.

    Once you have your list of broken links, fixing them is usually as simple as replacing it with the correct URL, or removing it entirely if the original page no longer exists. By taking a few minutes to banish those broken links, you'll keep your website running smoothly and ensure a frustration-free experience for your visitors.

    Next up - i want you to double check that you’ve optimized your images for speed and search.

    Large, unoptimized images can take forever to load, which can lead to frustrated visitors clicking away before they even see your amazing content. Thankfully, there are tools like TinyPNG that can compress your images without sacrificing quality, making them load lightning fast and keeping your website happy. it’s also important to remember that PNGs are generally larger than JPGs because JPGs are a single layer. Only use a PNG when you need a level of transparency. JPGs should be fine for other things.

    Next on our maintenance checklist is to take a look at the actual content on your site. Here's why keeping your website content fresh is a website maintenance superpower:

    First of all, search engines love fresh, new and relevant content. They're constantly crawling and indexing websites, and new content is like a flashing neon sign that says "Hey, come check me out! I’m still here, and I have even more to offer". Regularly updating your website with new blog posts, product descriptions, or service offerings helps you stay ahead of the curve and climb the SEO rankings.

    But keeping your content fresh isn't just about impressing search engines, it's also about engaging your audience. People crave new information and experiences. Imagine you visit a website and everything seems outdated and stale. They still call Twitter Twitter, and the humorous copy about game of thrones being the best show HBO ever made isn’t hitting the pop culture mark anymore.

    By regularly updating your content, you give visitors a reason to keep coming back for more. Plus, here's a bonus tip: when you create new content, consider linking to other relevant pages on your website. This creates a network of internal links, which helps search engines understand your website's structure and improves your overall SEO. Once you've published your shiny new content, don't forget to submit it to Google Search Console for indexing. This helps Google discover your new page faster and get it out there for the world to see!

    The fifth item on our maintenance checklist is a real can of worms if I’m being honest. If you don’t regularly look at your website analytics, you definitely should. Every month isn’t feasible for some folks, but every six months is a minimum, okay? Now for those of you new to the idea, Squarespace Analytics provides a treasure trove of valuable data about your website traffic, visitor demographics, and even which pages are the most popular. But with all this information at your fingertips, where do you even begin? Here are a few key website analytics metrics to keep an eye on:

    • Traffic Source: This metric tells you how many visitors come to your website over a specific period and where they came from. It's a great way to gauge overall website interest and track your progress over time.

    • Page Views:This one's pretty straightforward! It shows you how many times individual pages on your website are viewed. By looking at which pages have the most views, you can understand what content resonates most with your audience.

    • Bounce Rate: This metric tells you the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing just one page. A high bounce rate might indicate that visitors aren't finding what they're looking for, or that your website might be slow to load.

    For a more in-depth exploration of website analytics and the 5 essential metrics you should be tracking, be sure to check out Episode 20 of this podcast. I did an overview of important website analytics and i might be biased here, but i think it’s worth a listen. you’ll find it at That’s episode 20 of thinkinsidethesquare.

    Moving on - lets talk about mobile maintenance.

    The internet has become a mobile-first world, with more and more people browsing the web on their smartphones and tablets. This means that ensuring a seamless experience across all devices is no longer optional, it's crucial!

    So, why exactly is mobile testing so important? Think about it: if your website looks amazing on a giant desktop screen but becomes a jumbled mess on a phone, you're alienating a huge chunk of your potential audience. Mobile users are impatient, and if your website takes too long to load, has buttons that are too small to click, or text that's impossible to read, they'll simply tap away and move on to the next website.

    Luckily, Squarespace makes it easy to test your website on different devices. You can utilize the built-in mobile preview mode to see how your website looks on a variety of phone and tablet screen sizes. But don't stop there - that is just one screen size, and being a responsive website builder means your site will look different on a droid vs an iphone. I want you to grab your own smartphone or tablet and do some real-world testing. Here's what to look for:

    - Starting with the layout, Does everything fit comfortably on the screen, or is there unwanted overlapping or zooming required? Auto layouts like collection lists or gallery sections are set up to fit on any screen, but fluid engine sections can have overlapping content if you aren’t careful. If anything is overlapping on a smaller screen, hop into edit the page and make sure the blue outlines for content blocks are not overlapping.

    - You should also test your buttons on your site - are buttons easy to tap with a finger, or are they too small or too close together?

    - Does your website load quickly and scroll smoothly on a mobile device, or does it lag and stutter? You might want to rearrange some of your content so fast loading info like a block of text is at the top, so the other stuff has a second to load.

    - Again i want to encourage you to not use the editor for this but acutally test on a literal phone. Dimensions are always changing and it might not look as awesome as you think it does.

    Alright - we talked about your forms, your broken links, optimizing your images, updating your content, and taking a look at your sire on mobile, but there is one more thing I do when I am doing a 6 month maintenance check

    Social share images. When a link to your site is shared on social media; linked in, facebook, or another platform, what happens it the paltform will want to pull a thumbnail image to display with the link. You can update that image yourself and add a custom social share image for every page, post and product. But here is the catch - you need to make sure the social media platform uses the new image. It wont know that you updated it unless you tell it! For meta, theirs is called the sharing debugger and on linked in its the post inspector and for twitter or x it’s called the card validator, i’ll link to all of them in the show notes at [insidethesquare.co](http://insidethesquare.co) / podcast

    So when you do update that image, update their programs too!

    Alright, that wraps it up for this quick episode of thinkinsidethesquare. i hope you found my maintenance checklist helpful. ts like watering your house plants - it might be considered a chore but all you’re really doing is showing your website some love and keep it performing at its best.

    Thank you so much for tuning int to this episode of thinkinsidethesquare. if you liked this episode be sure to subscribe to my podcast where ever you happen to be listening to this episode. you can also sign up for my email list at insidethesquare.co/email

    i send out tups and tricks to my subscribers every week and id love for oyu to be one of them

    thats insidethesquare.co/email

    Thanks again for listening, and most importantly, have fun with your Squarepsace website. Bye for now.

Music Credit: Arpenter // Audio Editing: Adobe Enhance
insidethesquare

Squarespace Circle Leader & Creator of InsideTheSquare.co

https://insidethesquare.co
Previous

46: Five Not Linked Pages Every Squarespace Site Needs
Next

44: Why Your Website Needs a Blog & How to Get Started