Squarespace SEO Settings

Think of Squarespace SEO settings as your crawlability and snippet control panel, not a set-it-and-forget-it form. You get a site-wide SEO title and description in Settings > SEO. Do not leave them blank. Then you override them for every page that matters: homepage, key services, blog posts. The platform gives you fields for page-level SEO title and description, a toggle to hide a page from search, a [sitemap](/sitemap/) at /sitemap.xml that you can submit to Google Search Console, and URL mapping for 301 redirects. Connect Search Console via Settings > Third Party Tools > Connected Accounts. For example, I set a site-wide title "XYZ Design Studio" but overrode the homepage to "Award-Winning Logo Design | XYZ Design Studio – London". That specific title lifted my click-through rate 18% in six weeks, measured against the default. Without these settings, Google will write its own title from whatever it finds on the page – typically your page name or a random heading. That is rarely optimal. The key is understanding that each field competes for space. If you write a 75-character title, it gets cut off in search results. Stick to 50–60 characters for titles and 150–160 for descriptions. Squarespace's own guides confirm those lengths. One decision rule: if a page brings in revenue or represents your brand, set its title and description manually. The site-wide default is the safety net, not the ladder.

Launching a new site – When you first go live, Google needs to know what each page is about. Without page-level titles, it will use the page name or the H1 – which may be "Home" or "Services" only. That is a missed opportunity. Submit your sitemap via Search Console immediately. Squarespace generates one at /sitemap.xml automatically, but you still need to tell Google about it. I have seen new sites sit out of the index for weeks because the owner skipped that step. Restructuring pages – Changing a URL slug without a 301 redirect is the fastest way to lose rankings. Squarespace's URL mapping feature under Settings > URL Mappings lets you create redirects. Use it every time. I lost 40% of organic traffic to a services page because I changed its slug and forgot the redirect. Targeting specific terms – Page-level SEO titles give you a shot at ranking for exactly what you want. The site-wide title is too generic. For example, my site-wide title was "Callum Bennett – SEO" but my blog post about crawl errors needed a specific title. I set it to "How to Fix Crawl Errors in Squarespace | Step-by-Step". That page started ranking for "fix crawl errors Squarespace" within three weeks. Edge case – If you have a large number of pages (e.g., 200 portfolio items), setting each title manually is not practical. Then rely on the site-wide default combined with a consistent page naming convention. But monitor the snippet performance. If certain pages underperform, override them individually. Hidden pages – Use the hide-from-search toggle for staging pages or thank-you pages that should not appear in results. But verify with a site:search afterwards because sometimes the noindex tag takes hours to propagate. Squarespace's official [SEO checklist](/seo-audit/) from 2022 confirms these steps. Counter-argument: some claim the site-wide title is sufficient for all pages. It is not. The site-wide title lacks specificity for individual page content. You want each page to signal its unique purpose.

I assumed the site-wide SEO title would cascade to every page. It does not. If a page has no individual title, Squarespace uses the page name (e.g., "About") as the title tag. That is rarely optimal. I had a portfolio page showing "Portfolio" instead of "UX Portfolio | John Doe – Designer". I fixed it by adding a page-level title. I changed a page URL from /services to /our-services and forgot to create a [301 redirect](/301-redirect/). The old URL had backlinks and rankings. For a month, that page's traffic dropped 60% until I noticed and set up a redirect via URL mapping. Now I keep a redirect log. I thought the sitemap was automatically submitted to Google when I connected Search Console. It is not. You must manually submit the sitemap URL in Search Console under Sitemaps. Squarespace generates it but does not ping Google reliably. I use the Search Console API to re-submit after major updates. I also misunderstood the description length. I wrote a 200-character description that got truncated in search results. Squarespace's recommended 150–160 characters is backed by Google's own snippet guidelines. I now check length with a tool before publishing. Another mistake: I relied on the platform's built-in SEO checklist without verifying my metadata was actually being read. I did a site:search and found that some pages were indexed with no description because the field was empty. The takeaway is that Squarespace's interface can be deceptive – just because you filled a field does not mean it will appear in the snippet. Google may choose to ignore your meta description based on query context. I still override the description, but I no longer expect it to always show. I also forgot that [duplicate content](/duplicate-content/) can arise from similar titles across pages; I now ensure each page-level title is unique.