Resource: Checklist for consistent, impactful blogs on your Squarespace website
How to ensure your blogs are consistent & well-optimised on your Squarespace website
Contents
Introduction
Key principles to remember
Step by step checklist
Login & open your blog
Start with the title
Fill out your Post URL in Options
Map out your headings before text content
Add the body text and images
Use categories and tags appropriately
Fill out the rest of the menus
Further reading on best practice for blogging
Introduction
Keeping your website up to date with regular blogs, whether new projects or announcements, is key to your marketing and publicity. A website that is never updated is a wasted marketing channel and won’t do much for you.
As with our previous checklist on images, there are several aspects to creating blogs which can be bundled into a workflow. They can also be tweaked to feed into your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) performance.
The steps are relatively straightforward, but repetitive, so building a workflow can be helpful. This is why we’ve laid out the key steps below to help you with your site maintenance and updates.
We are a brand studio based in Torquay, South Devon, offering branding, website design & brand video to creative businesses across the UK - find out more about our website design services for businesses.
Key principles to remember
Ensure you know what the keywords are for your business (e.g., ‘branding’ or ‘interior design’) as you will need to pepper these at appropriate places in the blog and its settings
Use headings to create a structure and logical flow for readers of your blogs, rather than for styling (which Google frowns upon)
Ensure your images are all optimised (check our previous checklist on optimised images for info)
Step by step checklist
1. Login & open your blog
Log in via squarespace.com/login or your built-in domain https://www.YOURDOMAIN.squarespace.com/config/
Find your site in your Account Dashboard and click the ‘edit site’ button on the thumbnail image of your site
Using the Home Menu on the left or live preview panel on the right, navigate to the area where you want to update an image
Go to your blog by clicking on the ‘a’ icon (in courier typewriter font)
Either start a new blog or duplicate an existing one
2. Start with the title
The title of the blog is one of the most important items as people will choose to read the piece (or not) based on this text
It’s also important for signalling to Google about the content of your blog, so whether it is relevant or not
Depending on how you are using your blog, it may make sense to keep it simple, e.g., if it feeds into your portfolio, so a short title with location may suffice
For longer form how-to articles, you can use a longer title
3. Fill out your Post URL in Options
Once you have written your title, you can copy and paste it into your Post URL under the Options menu tab
This is a bit of a time-saver as you can sort the title and URL at the same time
Again, take a moment to think about keywords and whether it is appropriate to include them in the URL
Sometimes you may need to compromise, as if you need to share the URL publicly, such as for tenders, you may need to keep the URL short and concise
You can remove filler words like ‘the’, ‘or’, ‘and’ etc.
4. Map out your headings before text content
Headings are crucial to strong, impactful blogs as they guide the reader along and provide markers if someone is skimming for key information
There is a range of opinions on whether to have heading 1 per blog or page, or multiple
We tend to say have one heading 1 only
Try to rewrite your heading 1 as a variation on a theme of the title of your blog
Google likes unique content, rather than duplication, which applies to headings
Structure heading 2 & 3 appropriately in layers, depending on your sub-points and whether they unpack your points further
5. Add the body text and images
Add your text and images as required, ensuring to optimise your images
Read our checklist on getting images right, if you are unsure
It can save you time if you have duplicated your post from a previous piece, as you will retain the layout
6. Use categories and tags appropriately
If you have summary blocks elsewhere on your site pulling in blog entries, ensure that you categorise new blogs appropriately so they show up in the right place
For example, if you have a residential section in your main portfolio, ensure to categorise your blog with ‘residential interior design’
If you don’t add a category or use the wrong one, it will either not appear or turn up in the wrong place elsewhere on your site
7. Fill out the rest of the menus
Ensure to add a thumbnail image under Options
An excerpt is helpful too signalling to readers about the content and feeds into your SEO with Google
Again, remember unique content, rather than duplication, where possible
This applies to the SEO menu too - consider your keywords and unique content when filling out SEO Title and SEO Description
Finally, add a Location for your blog, and if privacy is a concern or you don’t have a location per se, add your business address
Further reading on best practice for blogging
SEO checklist from Squarespace
Increasing your site’s visibility to search engines from Squarespace
Built-in SEO tools from Squarespace
This website checklist should help get you get to grips with your blogging process, and if you’d like to receive our studio e-mail which we (usually) send out on a Tuesday, pop your details in below.
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