• No plugin ecosystem for SEO – unlike WordPress where you can install Yoast or RankMath to handle technical SEO configuration, Squarespace has no equivalent. Every optimisation is either built-in (and limited) or manually implemented through code.
• Redirect management is clunky – for sites with more than a handful of URL changes, Squarespace’s redirect system becomes difficult to manage at scale. There’s no bulk upload, no regex matching, and no way to set redirect types beyond 301.
• The sitemap is auto-generated with no control – you can’t exclude pages, prioritise URLs, or split sitemaps by content type. For larger sites, this means Google is crawling pages you’d rather it ignored.
• Limited server-side control – you can’t modify robots.txt beyond basic settings, you can’t set custom canonical tags without code injection, and you have no access to server configuration for things like crawl rate or caching headers.

So Is Squarespace Bad for SEO?

No it’s not and anyone telling you to abandon Squarespace purely for SEO reasons is oversimplifying it.

The foundations are solid: clean HTML output, automatic mobile responsiveness, SSL included, decent page speed out of the box, and a logical content structure if you set it up properly.

The issue isn’t the platform itself. It’s that Squarespace gives you less room to manoeuvre when things need to be fine-tuned. And in competitive niches, those fine-tuning opportunities are exactly where rankings are won and lost.

Technical SEO Implementation

Technical SEO on Squarespace is a different discipline to technical SEO on WordPress or Shopify. You don’t have access to server configuration, you can’t install plugins, and most of the under-the-hood settings are either automatic or hidden behind code injection.

That doesn’t mean technical SEO isn’t possible it means you need someone who knows exactly how to address SEO issues within the limitations of the platform.

I handle the full technical scope for Squarespace sites – everything from crawl issues through to broken links, redirections, properly configured internal links, anchors, canonicals & anything else discovered on the crawl.

I also help clients with things such as Search Console setup and ongoing monitoring, ensuring your site is being crawled and indexed correctly, identifying coverage errors, and catching issues before they affect rankings. Schema markup implementation through code injection,  adding FAQ schema, LocalBusiness markup, service schema and review structured data that Squarespace doesn’t provide natively.

Crawlability checks to ensure JavaScript-rendered content is being properly discovered and indexed by Google. Redirect management for site restructures, URL changes or post-migration cleanup. And canonical tag auditing to make sure Squarespace isn’t creating duplicate content issues through its default settings.

If something can be done on Squarespace, I know how to do it. And if something genuinely can’t be done, I’ll tell you that too along with the best workaround available.

Link Building & Digital PR

A lot of squarespace websites tend to belong to smaller businesses & such, it’s these sites that typically lack on the link authority side of things. It’s a natural consequence of the fact that most Squarespace sites are relatively new, belong to smaller businesses, and haven’t had a properly orchestrated link building strategy.

The problem is that domain authority is still one of the strongest ranking signals. You can have perfect on-page SEO, excellent content and flawless technical setup, and still get outranked by a mediocre page on a domain with more authority than yours.

Closing that authority gap is what link building and digital PR are for. I don’t do spammy guest posts or bulk directory submissions. I build links through content-led digital PR that earns coverage from relevant, authoritative publications. Thought leadership placement that leverages your expertise and personal brand. Strategic outreach to sites in your industry that have genuine editorial standards. And creating linkable assets resources, tools, data or guides that naturally attract links over time.

For Squarespace sites specifically, I also focus on building topical relevance through the links we earn. It’s not just about getting any link it’s about getting links from sites in your space that tell Google your domain is a trusted voice in your industry.

Search is changing. Google’s AI Overviews now appear for a growing percentage of queries, and platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude are becoming popular discovery channels. If your Squarespace site isn’t structured to be understood and cited by large language models, you’re potentially going to lose visibility over time.

This is an area most Squarespace SEO providers aren’t even talking about yet,  but it matters now, not in two years’ time.

I optimise Squarespace sites for AI search by structuring content so it can be easily parsed, understood and cited by LLMs. This means clear, factual, well-attributed statements rather than vague marketing copy. Implementing the structured data that AI systems use to identify entities, services and expertise. Building the kind of topical authority signals that are consistent, comprehensive coverage of your subject area that make LLMs more likely to reference your site.

Ensuring your content appears in the source material for AI Overviews by targeting the informational queries that trigger them. And monitoring your visibility in AI search results alongside traditional rankings.

Traditional SEO and AI search optimisation aren’t competing strategies they work together. The sites that do well in one tend to do well in the other, because both reward genuine expertise, clear structure and authoritative content. I build strategies that cover both.

Where You Need a Professional

Keyword strategy and mapping
knowing which keywords to target, which pages should target them, and whether your pages are cannibalising each other requires tools, experience and judgement. Getting this wrong means months of effort aimed at the wrong terms.

Technical audits
Squarespace hides a lot under the hood. Crawl issues, Core Web Vitals problems, canonical tag errors, JavaScript rendering gaps — you won’t spot these from the page editor.

Schema markup
Squarespace doesn’t generate FAQ, service or local business schema natively. Adding it requires code injection, and getting structured data wrong can do more harm than good.

Content architecture
deciding what pages your site needs, how they should link together, and how to build topical authority within Squarespace’s flat URL structure is strategic work, not a settings change.

Link building
you can’t rank in competitive spaces on on-page SEO alone. Building genuine authority through links and digital PR requires relationships, outreach infrastructure and a strategy most business owners don’t have time to execute.

Cannibalisation and consolidation
if multiple pages on your site are targeting similar terms and none of them are ranking, that’s a cannibalisation problem. Diagnosing it and fixing it without losing whatever equity those pages have built is specialist work.

The Challenge:

The challenge was the original website build had a lot of issues – a lot of the office pod products were not being indexed properly, there were a lot of technical SEO issues and issues with JS in the navigation that left a lot of pages in a non-indexable state. Many of the websites pages were in crawled currently not indexed / discovered currently not indexed. The domain was also young and had limited authority when we began the work.

The Results:

We helped myofficepod.co.uk to rank in the top 3 in the UK and in international markets for a wide range of office pod searches including office pod and office pods. We increased organic traffic by over 300% over a 3 year period. We demonstrated consistent year on year growth. We also helped them launch into the US and Ireland.

We helped My Office Pod with a Migration from Squarespace to WordPress. 

We worked with My Office Pod on their Squarespace CMS for around 2-3 years before working with them on a migration to WordPress as they wanted to unlock more flexibility for their international SEO strategy. 

Can you handle all of the SEO work for our Squarespace Website?

Yes I am able to provide a fully bespoke SEO service that covers all facets of what your SEO campaign / strategy is likely to require. I perform the initial SEO audit of your website, following this I build a strategy around the SEO recommendations made. I can then execute the SEO campaign implementing everything from technical SEO fixes through to getting high quality content written (E-E-A-T / YMYL compliant) through to link building & digital PR.

In short, I can handle ALL of the SEO work within your SEO needs/requirements.

Who is Daniel Foley Carter & Why do Businesses Choose him for SEO?

I am an established SEO specialist with over 25+ years of SEO experience. I have worked in SEO for an extensive amount of time, as such, I have built up strong knowledge and capabilities that allow me to help businesses in all different niches / across all different CMS types to achieve strong organic growth.

I have worked for some of the largest organisations globally in SEO, I have ran agencies, built teams and spearheaded SEO audits, strategies and campaigns for clients including Sage, Sky, Barclays, Virgin, BNP Paribas, Lenovoo and other large organisations.

I have extensive experience working with Squarespace websites – from auditing to SEO execution.

You can learn more about me here

If you are wondering whether or not to hire a squarespace SEO agency or to find a dedicated consultant – there are pros and cons to both.

Working with a dedicated SEO consultant on you Squarespace website you are likely to get a more personalised service and more 1 on 1 attention, however, you are exposed to a greater degree of risk as to their capabilities from the outset, something you tend to get less of with SEO agencies.

If your budget is lower (< £1,000 a month) then going for a specialist freelance SEO consultant like myself is a better choice in general, however if your project is larger and is likely to need a lot of external support i.e. specialist content creation than the agency route tends to be more efficient.

Below I have put together a table that compares choosing a squarespace agency over a consultant.

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Medium & Large businesses across the UK choose to work with me because of my extensive experience and demonstrated industry wide knowledge. With over 21 years SEO experience, I have built up SEO expertise that is generally unmatched elsewhere – meaning I can deliver exceptional ranking growth for businesses operating websites on any platform including Squarespace.

SEO Results Delivered For Clients

Daniel Foley has delivered substantial results for businesses across a whole variety of different business verticals/niches from finance and healthcare through to education, home improvement, manufacturing and more.