What makes a good website?

One that performs well - How to make sure your Squarespace website is going to perform well for you.

Wondering how you should know if your website is working properly or not?

Here’s my step-by-step guide to the SEO elements you should make sure you have included while creating your Squarespace website, and how to confidently ignore spammy emails dissing your website and offering (possibly dodgy) SEO services.

1. Research well-performing keywords that are going to keep your customers on your website. If you use keywords that are not being searched for already or do not accurately describe your website, this will affect the performance of the website. You will be discovered less because your keywords are not matching the ones people are already using to find businesses like yours. If the keywords don’t accurately portray you and your services you will get a high bounce rate. A bounce rate is when someone clicks on your website and then leaves straight away. Anything under 70% is acceptable as average. Google rewards low bounce rates. You can check your bounce rate and your keywords in your analytics.

2. Natural placement of your keywords in logical places. By this I mean if you use the keyword ‘web designer’, make sure it’s on the page about web design. If you use the phrase ‘Social media management’, make sure that’s on the page that talks about this service.

3. Make sure you use keywords in the image alt text while making sure they accurately describe the photo. For example on a photo of myself, I wrote, ‘Squarespace designer, Emily Jagger, smiling outside’. so I have ticked the requirement to describe the image for anyone with accessibility issues while taking the keyword opportunity that is offered in the alt text.

4. Use your keywords to describe your business in the Site Title which is found in the header section. It gives you a ton of characters, but remember this is what appears in a search on Google, so keep it short and accurate.

5. Create a Google Business account and connect the google search engine to this account. This should be checked every month to make sure it’s pulling in data and still connecting to Google.

6. Connect your website to Google Analytics. You will need to open an account and add some code to the website. Google will advise you on how to do this. It’s a bit complicated but worth the effort. You will see your analytics in slightly different formats than the analytics for Squarespace. It’s good to compare though. Just in case you don’t always trust your sources!

7. Continue adding fresh content to your website. This tells Google that the website is active. The easiest way to add fresh content is to write a blog, keep an events page updated or include an Instagram gallery- This needs to be checked monthly as the connection drops regularly with Instagram. Providing that you post regularly on Instagram your website will count each new post to your grid as a little update.

Above all, Check your analytics every month! If you see the numbers are dropping off, you may need to give your website a little check over and make any amendments that you think may improve traffic.

I offer an SEO consultation where I carry out research into your best-performing keywords, and apply them to the website using my method that I know to perform well for my clients in a natural and organic way. No tricks!

If you would like to start a blog but need some guidance, I can help you get started, working with you in a way that will make sure your content is still coming from you, but that all the boxes have been ticked to make sure your blog performs well for you.

Contact me today if you would like to sort out your website and get it performing properly for your business.