Squarespace SEO: the 8 settings to get right, step by step

Squarespace SEO is mostly a matter of filling in what the platform already gives you: an SEO title and a description for each page, short URL slugs, alt text on images, redirects when an address changes, and a sitemap that Google Search Console knows about. This tutorial takes those settings one by one, in the order they come up around a launch, on Squarespace 7.1, with the menu names of the English interface in October 2026.

One caveat first. Squarespace is a closed platform: you have no access to the source code, so a custom-coded site or a well-built WordPress site gives a specialist more room, and can rank higher for that reason. Yet the first site I built for Pilotech runs on Squarespace and ranks first or second on Google, with its metadata and keywords done right.

I move clients who edit their own site to Squarespace because they can change a page without the whole structure falling apart, and every setting below is within their reach. If you are still building the site, start with my Squarespace tutorial. This tutorial is part of my guide to small business SEO, which covers keywords, content and links.

What Squarespace SEO covers, and what is left to you

Squarespace takes care of the technical basics that used to need a developer. What is left is a set of fields to fill in, and the keywords you put in them decide whether they do any good.

Before you open a single setting, choose one main keyword per page: the words a customer would type to find that service, often with your town. One page, one service, one keyword. Of the sites I built for Pilotech’s founder, one offered too many services and did not work at all; the one that ranks sells very specific services.

Step 1: make sure search engines can see the site

A page Google cannot reach will not rank, however good its title. Four settings can hide a Squarespace site or page from search engines, so check all four before launch:

1. In Settings, open Site availability and choose Public. Every Squarespace site starts as private, and only a site on a paid plan can be public, so a site on a free trial stays out of Google.
2. If you protected the site with a password while building it, remove the password. It stops Google from indexing your content, and pages indexed before you added it can linger in the results for a while.
3. Check that none of your main pages has Hide page from search results switched on. Step 3 explains this toggle.
4. In Settings, open Crawlers and check that the option to block search engine crawlers is off: switched on, it keeps Google away from the whole site. Step 8 covers the AI option on the same panel.

Do this step first: Squarespace only serves your sitemap once the site is public.

Step 2: set the title formats for the whole site

The title Google shows for a page usually comes from its title tag, which Squarespace builds from formats you set once for the whole site. Open the SEO/AI Visibility panel and click SEO Settings: the title formats are there, with separate ones for the homepage, for pages and for collection items such as blog posts. They use three variables:

• %s: the site title, normally your business name
• %p: the page’s SEO title
• %i: the SEO title of a collection item, such as a blog post

For a heating engineer in Leeds, the formats could read:

Homepage:          %s | Boiler repairs and servicing in Leeds
Pages:             %p | %s
Collection items:  %i | %s

The homepage needs the most care, because it has no SEO title field in its page settings: its title tag comes from this format alone. Write your business name and what you do, with your town if you serve a local area. Keep the site title short, as the %p | %s format adds it to the end of every page title.

The homepage also needs a description, the short text Google may show under its title. Squarespace’s help on SEO descriptions shows where to add it.

Step 3: write an SEO title and a description for every page

Every other page has its own SEO fields. In the Pages panel, click the gear icon next to a page and open the SEO tab:

• SEO title: the title browsers and search engines use, up to 100 characters. Left empty, it falls back on the page title, which is often a single word such as Services.
• SEO description: the text Google may show under the title. Search engines cut it at around 160 characters, so say the essentials first.

Put the page’s keyword at the start of the title, and write the description like a small advert: what you offer, where, and why someone should choose you. For the same heating engineer:

SEO title:        Boiler repair in Leeds
SEO description:  Gas Safe registered engineers repair boilers of all major brands in Leeds and Bradford. Clear prices; call or book a visit online.

With the %p | %s format, Google receives “Boiler repair in Leeds | Your Business Name”. It sometimes shows other text from the page instead of your description, but a clear, accurate one gives it a good option, and those two lines are where a searcher decides to click.

My on-page SEO checklist covers the rest of each page: headings, copy and internal links.

Hide the pages Google does not need

The same SEO tab has a Hide page from search results toggle. Switch it on for pages with nothing to offer a searcher, such as the thank-you page after a form or a test page. The page stays public and still appears in your site’s own search. Homepages and single collection items, such as one blog post, have no such toggle, and hiding a collection page hides all its items.

Moving a page to the Not linked section of the Pages panel does something else: it only takes the page out of your navigation. Google can still find and index it.

Step 4: shorten your URL slugs

The URL slug is the last part of a page’s address: boiler-repair-leeds in yourbusiness.co.uk/boiler-repair-leeds. Squarespace sets it when you create the page and does not change it when you rename the page, so a renamed page can keep an address that no longer matches it.

To edit it, open the page settings with the gear icon, go to the General tab and change the URL slug field. A good slug:

• uses a few lowercase words joined by hyphens;
• contains the page’s keyword, without filler words or dates;
• describes one page: /boiler-repair-leeds, not /services-2.

Blog posts and products have their own URL setting in their item settings, and the same rules apply.

If the page is already live, changing its slug creates a new address. Add a redirect from the old one straight away (step 6), or visitors and Google will land on an error page.

Step 5: add alt text to your images

Alt text is a short written description of an image: screen readers read it aloud to people who cannot see the image, and search engines use it to understand what the image shows. It takes a minute per image.

Click an image block, open its editing options and fill in the alt text field. Describe what the image shows in one plain sentence, as you would to someone over the phone:

Rename your files before you upload them as well: boiler-service-leeds.jpg tells Google a little more than IMG_4521.jpg. Purely decorative images, such as a background texture, do not need a description.

Step 6: redirect old addresses with URL mappings

A 301 redirect sends visitors and search engines from an old address to a new one, permanently, and tells Google to show the new page in place of the old one. You need one whenever an address changes: a new slug, a deleted or merged page, or a move from another platform.

Open the Developer tools panel, click URL mappings, type one redirect per line, then click Save:

/old-services -> /boiler-repair-leeds 301
/blog/[name] -> /news/[name] 301

The second line uses the [name] variable, which stands for every item of a collection: one line moves a whole blog. The rules, from Squarespace’s help on URL mappings:

• Lines apply from top to bottom, so put a specific redirect, such as a single blog post, above a broad rule that could conflict with it.
• Keep the capitalisation of the old address, and leave out ?, & and #.
• You cannot redirect an image or a file, or redirect away from the homepage.
• The field holds roughly 2,500 lines.

If you are moving a whole site, my guide to moving from WordPress to Squarespace without losing your rankings shows how to list every old address before you start.

Step 7: connect Google Search Console and submit your sitemap

Google Search Console is Google’s free tool for site owners: it shows which searches bring up your pages and which pages Google has left out. Check three things before you start:

• the site is public on a paid plan, as verification does not work on a trial site;
• there is no site-wide or homepage password;
• if your domain comes from another registrar, 48 hours have passed since you connected it.

Then verify the site and hand Google your sitemap:

1. In Search Console, add your site as a Domain property and copy the TXT record Google gives you.
2. Add that record to your domain’s DNS settings: in Squarespace’s Domains panel if Squarespace manages the domain, or at your registrar if not. Squarespace does not let you upload Google’s verification file, so the DNS record is the way to go.
3. Back in Search Console, click Verify. DNS changes can take a while to show, so try again later if it fails.
4. Open Sitemaps, enter https://www.yourbusiness.co.uk/sitemap.xml (with your own domain) under Add a new sitemap and click Submit.

A Couldn’t fetch status can show for 24 to 48 hours while Google processes a new sitemap, so give it two days before you look for a problem.

Last, bring the data into Squarespace. In Analytics, open Search keywords, click Connect, sign in with the Google account that owns the property and allow access. The searches that bring visitors to your site then appear in Squarespace, within about 72 hours.

Squarespace’s help on Search Console covers the Squarespace side, and my Google Search Console tutorial explains the reports worth reading each month.

Step 8: decide what AI assistants can read

AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity send their own crawlers to read websites. Squarespace gives you two settings for them.

The crawler setting. In Settings, open Crawlers. The Block known artificial intelligence crawlers option is off by default. Leave it off if you want AI assistants to find and recommend your business: blocking their crawlers can keep you out of their answers. OpenAI, for one, says that sites which block its search crawler are not shown in ChatGPT’s search answers. Switch the option on only if keeping your content away from AI companies matters more to you than that visibility. Squarespace’s help on crawlers describes each option on the panel.

llms.txt. Since late July 2026, version 7.1 sites can publish an llms.txt file, a plain summary of the site for AI tools, from the LLMS.txt tab of the same SEO Settings. It is off by default and Squarespace writes nothing for you. Google Search ignores the file and no major AI company has confirmed that it reads one, so treat it as ten minutes of optional work. My llms.txt guide shows what to write and where to paste it.

Your Squarespace SEO checklist, and when to hand it over

Run through this list before launch, then again whenever you add a page:

1. The site is Public, with no site-wide password, and search engine crawlers are not blocked.
2. The title formats are set, and the homepage title says who you are, what you do and where.
3. Every page has an SEO title and a description built around one keyword.
4. Slugs are short, and every changed address has a 301 in URL mappings.
5. Every image that carries meaning has alt text.
6. Search Console is verified, the sitemap is submitted and Search keywords is connected.
7. AI crawlers are allowed, and llms.txt is added if you want one.
8. Once a month, you read the Performance and Page indexing reports in Search Console.

You do not need me for any of this. These settings are within reach of anyone who can edit a Squarespace site, which is the whole point of putting my clients on it: they change their pages whenever they want. I usually add a little custom code to their sites, nothing destructive, and that is the part they call me for.

The settings are the easy part of SEO. What takes time is the work around them: keyword research, a page for each service, a Google Business Profile, then mentions and links from other sites. Pilotech’s site took about a month to build, and its first lead came three weeks after it went live; my SEO case study tells the story step by step. If you would rather hand that work over, it is what my SEO service covers.