Top Five SEO Mistakes Squarespace Web Designers Make, and How to Avoid Them
Your web design skills are exceptional, and clients enjoy working with you. However, while striving to build sleek websites that wow clients, one ingredient may be missing from your design recipe—search engine optimization (SEO). This oversight—such as failing to optimize images, implementing a poor page structure, and more—can result in reduced visibility and traffic. This means your client could miss out on business.
As a Squarespace web designer, it’s important to be aware of common SEO mistakes so you can avoid them. That way, you can build sites that not only look great but also attract target customers, delighting your clients and helping them reach their bottom line.
The following are five common SEO pitfalls to avoid and how you can steer clear of them as a Squarespace website designer:
Educating your clients about SEO best practices is one of the most valuable services you can provide. It can also help you stand out as a web designer. Many small business owners have limited knowledge about how search engines work and how to optimize their sites. Take the time to explain how to avoid common SEO mistakes for improved performance.
Making this a priority can benefit your reputation and brand in the following ways:
Improve results for your designs
Some businesses might need guidance to fully use Squarespace’s SEO capabilities. Providing clients with the best strategies to enhance their website performance is crucial. This not only ensures clients have a positive experience with Squarespace but also establishes you as someone they can trust.
Earn referrals
When you provide exceptional service and ensure that your clients’ websites generate high traffic, their businesses are more likely to benefit from increased sales and revenue. This may lead to them recommending your services to other clients.
Word-of-mouth referrals are powerful in the design industry. According to Squarespace Circle’s “State of the Web Design Industry” report, nearly 80% of professional web designers rely on word-of-mouth to grow their business. By delivering excellent results, you can build a strong network of satisfied clients who are willing to recommend your services to others.
Grow your business
Providing helpful tips can strengthen your reputation with clients, leading to more trust. And as confidence in you and the Squarespace platform grows, the demand for your services can also increase, helping you scale your web design business.
Consider educating your clients by covering the following topics:
How search engines find and rank websites
Explain that SEO helps improve their site’s ranking in search results, improving visibility to their target customers.
The importance of choosing keywords and optimizing content
Show clients how to do keyword research. Make suggestions on the tools to use and the appropriate ways to use those keywords on their site pages and blog posts (covered in mistake #2 below).
Fast page load times and mobile-friendly designs matter
Inform clients that faster, mobile-optimized sites are ranked higher on search engine results, so their choice of web design and graphic sizes (e.g., images and videos) directly impact SEO (more on this in mistake #3 below).
Inbound links, social media shares, and reviews can help
Explain that quality inbound links (i.e., a hyperlink that originates from a different webpage and leads to their site), social media engagement, and positive reviews are signals to search engines that your client’s site is authoritative and trustworthy.
An SEO-optimized blog can drive more traffic
Let them know that a regularly updated blog with optimized content is one of the best ways to improve search ranking and reach new customers.
Educating your client on SEO best practices may require an additional time investment on your end, but the rewards to their brand (and yours) are worth it.
Another common SEO mistake web designers make is not having a solid keyword and content strategy. Keywords are the phrases that customers use when they search for information on the web. Search engines scan web pages for these keywords and synonyms, returning only the best match to the searcher.
While you may not be writing all the page content—particularly in cases where your client handles content strategy and writing—you’ll want to ensure the content you add to each page has the right keywords and follows SEO best practices.
Here are tips for conducting keyword research that will help determine the terms and phrases to use on a website, either for yourself or your client:
Consider using free tools to discover keywords that people commonly search for.
Do thorough keyword research to identify phrases that cater to target customers and search queries but aren’t overly competitive with too many results. Start by entering the issue that your client addresses for their customers into keyword research tools to view the recommended keywords.
Look for phrases that have at least 100 searches per month and low competition. A low-competition keyword is a term that isn't being targeted by many businesses or websites. New sites are less likely to rank high on search engines, so you’ll want to balance low-competition keywords and those with a high search volume.
It isn't enough to simply include keywords in your client’s content. The content must also be informative, well-organized, and beneficial to visitors to entice them to stay on the page and ultimately become customers. Search engines are more likely to rank a page when visitors remain on it for a longer period of time.
It’s crucial to educate your clients on SEO (refer to mistake #1) if they will be responsible for conducting keyword research and creating a content strategy after the website is published.
When adding images and videos to a Squarespace website, it’s important to optimize them for search engines. Failure to optimize these elements may lead to a lower chance of search engines indexing your clients’ web pages.
A poorly optimized image or video can also reduce a website’s load speed. Given visitors’ short attention spans, they may impatiently leave the website, leading to high bounce rates. Higher bounce rates imply poor SEO, ultimately affecting the site’s ranking.
To optimize images, do the following:
Provide a descriptive filename, alt text, and caption. The filename and alt text should contain target keywords. This also helps you build a more accessible website.
Keep image file sizes under 500 KB. Aim for 250 KB so they load quickly.
Consider the following when optimizing videos:
When adding videos to a Squarespace website, embed them onto webpages by uploading them to platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo. This increases the page speed and, by extension, the website’s ranking on search engines.
Give videos keyword-rich titles, tags, and descriptions on the hosting platform.
Optimizing images and videos may seem tedious, but it’s well worth it. By adding relevant keywords and keeping file sizes small, you can vastly improve user experience and search ranking. The website's media will be accurately categorized for optimal indexing, helping search engines comprehend the content more effectively. The result? Higher click-through rates and more traffic to your client’s website.
As a web designer, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is creating a site structure or sitemap without SEO in mind.
A site structure that’s rooted in SEO should have dedicated service pages for each product, service, or offering that your client has. It is not possible for a single page to rank for all topics. Therefore, to help your client's website get discovered through organic means, it's crucial to clearly define the purpose of each page and what it's intended to rank for.
Additionally, a website structure built without SEO considerations can negatively impact the navigation experience. If visitors can’t locate every web page or understand its purpose, it’s unlikely search engines can either.
Failing to implement an SEO-oriented website structure can lead to increased bounce rates and poor user experience. Given that search engines prioritize websites that visitors find helpful and don’t leave immediately, getting the site structure and navigation right from the start can boost your clients’ websites’ rankings.
Here are some tips to keep in mind when creating an SEO-focused website structure:
Group similar or related content together. Don’t make people search high and low for related information.
Use relevant page titles, headings, SEO titles, and SEO descriptions to signal the main topic and purpose of each page.
Introduce internal links when appropriate to create connections throughout the website, but don’t overdo it. Only provide links when it’s truly useful for the visitor.
Ensure the site has a clear flow and hierarchy. The homepage should give an overview, which then leads to the main sections, and then to individual pages. Don’t bury important content too deep.
Use breadcrumbs to show page location. This helps visitors understand where they are in the site's structure and how to navigate back.
Keep the page URL structure simple and consistent, including keywords only when appropriate. Short, memorable URLs are best. A good rule of thumb is to limit URLs to three to six words.
Have a clear idea of what pages are likely to rank for a certain group of keywords (covered in mistake #2 above). One page with too many topics is unlikely to result in strong SEO outcomes.
In a nutshell, an intuitive site structure with clear navigation, page titles, content grouping, and URL structure can boost your client’s site’s readability and search engine ranking.
A site’s headings are like a map that helps search engines navigate its content. If you don’t use the proper heading hierarchy, both search engines and visitors will have trouble understanding how the content is organized.
To avoid this common SEO mistake, stick to using one H1 per page for the page title. Then, use H2 tags (<h2>) for major sections, H3 (<h3>) tags for subsections under those, and so on. It's important to not disregard heading levels and avoid jumping from H2 to H4 (<h4>).
Consider the following sample outline for a page with the topic, “Top 10 Mistakes Web Designers Make.”
H1: The Top 10 Mistakes Web Designers Make
H2: Mistake #1: Not optimizing for mobile
H3: Responsive design is a must
H3: Creating mobile-friendly content
H2: Mistake #2: Omitting alt image text
H3: What is alt text, and why is it important?
H3: Best practices for alt text
And so on.
This clear structure helps search engines understand the content on a page and rank it appropriately in search results. It also makes the page content more navigable for visitors.
If your client’s headings aren’t structured properly, audit the site and make the necessary changes. It may take time upfront, but it’s beneficial to the site’s long-term SEO strategy and user experience.
Continuous learning and professional development
The world of web design is constantly changing. As a Squarespace designer, it's important to keep up with trends to create successful websites and avoid common SEO mistakes.
Investing in continuous learning and professional development is crucial. Online courses, webinars, and tutorials can provide the latest insights into SEO best practices and Squarespace functionalities.
Apply the knowledge
Learning isn’t simply about acquiring knowledge; it’s about applying it. Make it a habit to implement new strategies, test different approaches, and track their impact on the SEO performance of your site designs. Before implementing these new strategies on client websites, it’s best to first test and monitor their impact on your own website. This will give you the chance to fine-tune them and ensure more effective results.
Connect with other experts
Professional development goes beyond reading tons of books and articles or spending hours completing online courses. It involves actively engaging and networking with other specialists and learning from them. Collaborating with fellow industry professionals, especially Squarespace Circle members, can provide a vast pool of collective knowledge. By exchanging experiences, difficulties, and resolutions, you can gain new outlooks and stay motivated to find creative SEO solutions for your clients. Connect with industry experts in the members-only forum.
Want more?
Check out Squarespace Circle, Squarespace’s program for professional designers. Along with exclusive content, discounts, and other perks, Circle brings professionals together from across the globe to exchange advice while connecting with new clients and collaborators.