Squarespace Blogging Tips (From A Designer & SEO Specialist)

There’s a lot of confusion out there about the term blogging. I remember the good ol’ days of blogging, when the term meant basically just having an online journal. Back then, we used blogging as a way to meet people with similar interests and share what we were up to.

Now, blogging is a business. We aren’t telling what we did that day anymore, now blogging means content marketing, attracting your target audience(s) by anticipating what they’ll be searching for on Google, then creating quality content that positions you in front of them.

Blogging is now usually monetized in some way, and in order for it to be lucrative, you need a solid strategy. You can’t just write whimsically anymore, there has to be intent and research behind it.

In this article I’m going to provide tips for blogging with Squarespace, from a design and SEO perspective.

I hope you find it helpful!

Squarespace blogging tips

Is Squarespace good for blogging?

Before I go into specific tips, first I want to address this very common question: is Squarespace a good choice for setting up your blog?

You have to remember I’m biased- not only am I a Squarespace Designer & SEO Expert, but I also run niche sites of my own, and all of them are built on the Squarespace platform. One of them, which is focused on outdoors and homesteading lifestyle, ranks above several big brands on Google searches.

Blogging with Squarespace is simple and the design is —in my opinion— nicer than other common platform such as Wordpress.

Yes - Squarespace is great for blogging.

Can you monetize a Squarespace blog?

You can monetize a Squarespace site just like you can any other site, yes. I monetize my Squarespace websites in the following ways:

Online courses
Digital products
Google AdSense
Amazon Affiliate Links

You could also set up a membership portal using an integration like Memberspace and charge a recurring fee for member access to high-quality content.

My Tips For Squarespace Blogging:

Build a sidebar

I’m a big fan of sidebars.

To me, a blog feels more complete and legitimate when I can glance over and see a sidebar of the individual or company who has created the article.

As I read on down the blog post, I might see related posts they’ve written that I also find useful or I might see a service they offer that I’m interested in.

You can build a sidebar into your Squarespace blog, no matter what template you’re using.

Here’s an instructional post on how to do just that: Building A Sidebar For Your Squarespace Blog: What To Include & How To Design

Format posts in an engaging way

Your blog posts should be written in a way that takes into consideration the user experience.

Do you enjoy huge walls of text on a website? Or do you prefer when some visuals are included? It’s important to think about these things when laying out a blog post for your own site.

Here are some pointers when crafting a blog post for your site:

Start with an intro around two to three paragraphs in length
Layout the post using headers to separate sections, sort of like chapters in a book
Use white space to break up walls of text throughout the post
Include at least two images in your blog post, making sure to optimize the images for SEO (which in a nutshell means: resize to no larger than 1500px on the longest side, add your keywords for the blog post to the filename and caption of each image you use); learn more here: Three Crucial Steps To Optimize Images For SEO
And don’t forget the sidebar!

Feature Related Posts

You’ve probably read many online articles that offer related posts at the bottom. This is a great way to engage visitors and keep them on your site, and you can easily do this with Squarespace.

How? Using summary blocks and categories.

To do this, simply come up with a list of categories for the content you write about to all fit within. Some blog posts might just fit into one category while other blog posts can be assigned four different categories, or even all categories depending on the topic.

Be sure to categorize all of you blog posts before publishing.

Then, at the bottom of each blog post, add a summary block to automatically filter in blog posts in a category that best relates to that specific post.

For example, let’s say you have a recipe blog and your categories are: dessert, breakfast, dinner, lunch, and beverages. When you publish a new blog post about brownies, you’ll want to assign the category dessert to it and at the bottom of the post, add a summary block to show blog posts within the category of dessert. Make sense? This is an easy way to show related posts in a Squarespace blog.

Call to action

It’s important to add at least one call to action to each blog post you publish.

What is a call to action?

A call to action is an invitation to your visitor to connect more, either by contact or a purchase or even further perusal around your site.

Examples of call to actions you can place in your blog posts:

a contact button to get in touch if they could use your services
a link to point them to your Services or Portfolio (remember, links can be embedded in text, images, buttons, etc.)
newsletter signup
offering a free download in the post
pointing them to a product you sell that relates to the content of the blog post in question

Don’t just write a blog post that drops off at the end, if nothing else add a simple contact button a the bottom of each post.

Provide good quality content while providing options for your reader to dig deeper and learn more. Scatter these options throughout your post.

Keyword Research

Last but certainly not least: keyword research.

As a Squarespace SEO expert, it’s my position that keyword research must be done before anything else, as keyword research informs all choices you would make in regard to your website, and especially blogging.

Be sure to know what your target keyword is for each blog post and to include it in the title and URL. It’s also beneficial to include this keyword in your headings and image meta data.

If you don’t really get keyword research, we need to fix that, because you can’t do SEO without that crucial foundation. My Squarespace SEO Expert Course teaches this and more- I divulge all of the secrets and techniques I use to get Squarespace websites to Google Page 1!

I recommend this to every Squarespace website owner, and especially designers who want to bring more value to their clients.

Okay everyone, those are some of my top tips for Squarespace blogging.

As always, please feel free to leave questions in the comments section. I’m happy to help out as I have time!

Thanks for stopping by. Talk to you soon.

x
Tiffany