Welcome to

Building Your Site

8

search engine optimization (seo)

setting page and site titles

Now that you’ve launched your site (super excited for you!) It’s time to walk through a few items to consider for your website’s overall house keeping, SEO and making sure your site is playing well with Google.

KEYWORD SEARCH

Search engines view your web pages in priority of your site’s page/blog titles, description and headings. The titles will appear in your search results to make sure they read easily and make sense for others searching on Google and other search tools.

One of my favorite tools for Keyword search is using Moz’s Keyword Explorer. Here you can view not only popular keywords but SERP Analysis (Search Engine Results Page) that can provide everything from popular articles and web pages using these keywords along with images and other helpful results.

Example:

1. Search “Encaustic Art”

You can see the results for top keywords related to this search below: Selecting “monthly volume” You can filter the highest search terms and match the highest “relevancy”. As I scroll down, I’ll see Search terms for the following:

2. Search "Online Art Teacher"

GOOGLE SEARCH

Another simple and quick way to find relevant keywords is to type in the same keywords within Google search and see what comes up. Just typing in “Encaustic Art”, I immediately see several top search terms related to my keyword search.

You can also do a quick search to see what others are adding to their Page Titles and Descriptions within your Google Search. Here’s an example when searching "online art teacher". You can see the most relevant keywords are in bold below:

ADD YOUR PAGE TITLE AND DESCRIPTION

Now that you've done your research, you can begin to create the page title and description for your page. Here’s an example:

Page Title: Ivy Newport | Online Art Teacher | Mixed Media Artist 

Description: Ivy Newport is a mixed media artist and teacher focused on using encaustic wax techniques. Providing online art classes, education, videos and art supplies.

TIPS FOR WRITING PAGE TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS

1-8 Words for Page Title (55 Character Max)
Page Description (160 Character Max)
Include keywords in your page title and description

Overall, Keep both of them short and to the point, but informative enough to have a good impact on your SEO. Think of using your keywords naturally and effectively.

SQUARESPACE SEO SETTINGS

Another quick area to add your site description is by visiting your SEO settings:

  • STEP 1: Click Settings > SEO
  • STEP 2: Paste your description in the SEO Engine Description. 
  • STEP 3: Click Save

As you can see, with just a little research you can begin to pull together your own effective page titles and descriptions. Now try and apply this to your other pages throughout your site.

structure your heading H1, H2, H3

Another important setting to your pages are your “Headings”. These are the H1, H2 and H3 headings that you use throughout your website. They are a great tool for visually organizing your content, and search engines give headings a higher priority. Typically you use H1 for titles and H2 and H3 for sub-titles or to highlight content.

Remember to only use your H1 once per page (i.e. main page title). Google will ding your ranking should you have multiple H1’s on your page. Use your H2’s and H3’s for your subheads.

alt text for your images

You know the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”? Just like good keywords for your web pages, Alt Text is important for search engines to identify the content of your page. It’s also a simple way to help your web site pages rise to the top!

Google even has a great post on the importance of tagging your images appropriately: READ HERE

To help you be more strategic on naming your images, use Moz’s Keyword Explorer. Just type in the relevant description of your image (i.e. encaustic wax materials). This may be enough description for your image but using the Keyword Explorer will help you find other words that may rank higher (i.e. “encaustic wax supplies” or “encaustic wax paints and tools”).

A little research can help your web page or blog post rank higher and become more relevant to those searching your specific topic.

Here’s a helpful link on where to add your alt text to the different images within Squarespace:

create your 404 error page

404 error pages are helpful when someone visits your site but entered the wrong URL or went to a page that no longer exists. Not only does Google recognize this page for better SEO, it creates a better branded experience for those visiting your site.

  • STEP 1: Add a new page or new cover page to the "Not-Linked" section of your website and name it "404 Error"
  • STEP 2: Design the page: Add photos and links to your home page or other pages on your site. The goal is to keep your visitor engaged and easily navigate someone else on your site.
  • STEP 3: Go to > Settings > Advanced > 404 Error / Page Not Found and select your 404 page.

Here’s an example:

register your site with google search console

Search engines don’t notice your website instantly but using Google’s Webmaster Tools, you can force your site to be registered faster and help your site be up-to-date with Google Search.

First you need to register with Google. If you’ve already created your Google Business account, that’s great! You’re all set.

Visit here to begin: https://www.google.com/webmasters

NOTE: Click the images below to zoom...

STEP 1: Click Add Property and enter your full domain name: i.e. https://www.ivyartist.com

STETP 2: Click “Alternate Methods” tab and then select “HTML Tag”. 

Copy Meta Tag code.

STETP 3: Add your meta tag by clicking Home > Settings > Advanced > Code Injection.

Paste the meta tag code in your HEADER section

STETP 4: Go back to Google Search Console and select “Verify”

STETP 5: You should see a congratulations message on your screen.

INDEX YOUR WEBSITE

The major reason I use Google Search Console is to request Google to index my site. This forces Google to review your site and update with any new content you may have added.

NOTE: Click the images below to zoom...

STETP 1: 

In the Google Search Console Page select your site.

STETP 2: 

Click the Crawl button and then Fetch as Google

Click Fetch

Click Request Indexing

STETP 3: 

Check “Crawl this URL and its direct Links

Click Go

The next step is to wait. According to Google, "Once you submit your URL, you might need to wait some time for Google to process your request as well as crawl and index the page.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

As you can see, Squarespace already has some powerful analytics tools build in. However, if you'd like more detailed information about your sites statistics then adding Google Analytics is a more powerful solution.

If you choose to add your Google G Suite account to Squarespace. You can also take advantage of Google's own site analytics as well.

It's a great tool for monitoring your website's performance in greater detail and integrating with all of Google's amazing analytics tools for online marketing through AdWords.

Here are few features you gain by using Google Analytics over Squarespace:

Mobile site reports: Find out which mobile device is used most frequently to view your site, see the location on a map of where mobile devices are used, and discover mobile-device-specific metrics such as bounce rates and visit duration.
Real-time analytics: See exactly how many visitors are on your site right now, which pages they are viewing, and whether a current social status update directed them to your site.
Social media reports: Discover what content on your site is being shared on social media sites such as Google+ and YouTube, and which social media channel is referring the most traffic.
Site speed: Find out how fast your pages are loading for your site visitors
In-page analytics: See information overlaid on your website showing how many clicks each link on a specific page gets.
Conversions: Set up goals to measure the success rate of how visitors move through your site.
Reports: Create custom reports to be e-mailed to you on a routine basis.

STETP 1: Go to https://www.google.com/analytics

Set up your account by logging in with your Google Business Account

STETP 2: Click “admin > Tracking Info > Tracking Code

STETP 3: At the top, you’ll see your Tracking ID Code

STETP 4: Copy this code and paste it into your Squarespace account:

Click Home → Settings → Advanced → External Services

Paste your Tracking ID number

Click Save

NOTE: It may take up to 24 hours for site statistics to populate in Google Analytics.

be active on your blog

We’ve covered some simple SEO tips on blogging in our previous section of the class. Here’s a quick refresher if you need it :)

Blog - 101 and SEO

Another important tip is to remove the dates and keep your titles as short as possible. Change the default settings to only include “%t”

STEP 1: Click Settings → Blogging

STEP 2: In the Post URL Format section, Remove “%y/%m/%d/” and only keep “%t”

STEP 3: Click Save

This will keep your blog URLs short and make sure to use those keywords and proper blogging structure. 

Here’s an example after fixing the blog URL format:

Before: https://ivyartist.com/blog/2017/12/10/top-ipad-apps-for-creating-amazing-art

After: https://ivyartist.com/blog/top-ipad-apps-for-creating-amazing-art

BE "MOBILE FRIENDLY" WITH YOUR BLOG

Before you leave your Blogging settings screen… One other simple SEO boost is to select the “Use AMP” box for optimizing your blog posts on mobile devices. Google rewards fast loading pages for mobile and doing this is just helpful way for Google to like your blog posts even more! :)

CONGRATULATIONS!

You’ve made it! I hope this provides a better understanding of SEO and help your web pages rank higher within Google and other search engines.

Keep at it and continue to play with keywords and checking your website analytics for web pages that are ranking higher than others. It’s a continuing process but a lot of fun as you watch your page rankings rise because of your hard work!

Now, let's move to your Squarespace Analytics and how to better understand your website's performance.

Let's continue to understanding analytics ...