Where to add keywords in squarespace.
Adding keywords into your squarespace website is a very similiar process to pretty much any other website provider whether that be wordpress or another site builder like wix. Keywords are a very important component to your site as it tells google and other search engines what your company is about so it can direct the correct traffic to your site. Without the keywords implemented you will be potentially attracting the wrong sorts of visitors or no visitors at all.
I need to explain first how I find my keywords and then how I implement them. One thing that many people miss out on when explaining keywords is that you need to figure out what people are searching for first before implementing the keywords into your website. If you already know how to conduct keyword research you can skip this part and go to 2. Adding keywords to titles & images, but if not, keep reading, it’s an important step!
Finding keywords that fit your target market
There are a variety of ways of doing keyword research, there are many tools out there and techniques and it can all get a bit daunting. I have tried a bunch of them myself but for me the best two I have found works is simply google search search and my tool of choice.
Google search your keywords
Let’s start with google search first as it’s the easiest and quickest way to have a look at what people may be searching for in relation to what you do. Let’s take an example. You are a wedding photographer that works in the city of Portsmouth. You should simply start by writing down these keywords such as ‘wedding photographer in portsmouth’ or ‘portsmouth wedding photographer’ these terms would be the sort of thing people would search for so you need to look at it from a persons point of view looking for your product or service, this is the first step I recommend taking.
Now that you have written out a list of say 5 keyword phrases start by typing these terms in google but do it it word by word, after each word google will predict what you are wanting to type next, let’s say I type in ‘portsmouth wedding ..’ in google it will predict what you are going to say next and these terms are often what people have already searched for and are normally the highest searched terms. Some of those keywords naturally will be unrelated to what you do but some will, play around with it, be creative! Also once you hit search, scroll right to the bottom of the page, there will be even more suggested searched terms. This is always the first step I take when conducting research and is a nice little tip for you that many marketers leave out!
Use a keyword research tool
When i start nailing down on specific keywords and finding more accurate data I do use a tool called kwfinder which gives me much more in depth and accurate view into what is ranking well and search volume of the keywords I am looking for, it shows me how many people are searching for it, when they are searching and much more. You can see also where people are searching for so it reveals locations and also whether the search term is increasing over time or decreasing and a lot more but that would be an entire post all together. I do recommend giving it a try as it will certainly you help get a more accurate reading and they do give you a 10 day trial, link below if needed. I have posted a video too which is a short tutorial that I think will help you understand the fundamentals of keyword research, don’t worry I picked a video that is easy to follow and understand!
2. Adding keywords to titles & images
The first place you are going to want to add your keywords for your website is in the squarespace menu. Squarespace has cleverly divided the different components of your website so you can easily edit certain sections and settings, you are going to want to add your keywords. In the left hand side menu, if you go to ‘Design’ and then ‘Logo & Title’. Here it is important that you include the keywords you want as the website title is one of the first places google looks to understand what your website is about. As you can see, there are a few options. There is the ‘site title’ the ‘tag line’ and the ‘logo image’ the ‘browser icon’ and ‘social sharing logo’. We can go through them individually.
Site title
The ‘site title’ is one of the most important places to put your keywords, this is the title that google displays when you are on the search engine. The site title should always contain three things and have found it to be a good mix for experience seperated by either a hypen or line. These are:
Your business name ( i.e. Jane Photography )
What you do ( i.e. Wedding photography )
Location ( i.e. Portsmouth )
Example: Jane Photography | Wedding Photographer | Portsmouth UK
Title tag
The title tag below is almost like an extended version of the title tag. This is the small description that is located under the title in the search engines. Here you want to inclue a small paragraph including your keywords that explains exactly what you do. Imagine someone who has never met you who asked “so what is your business?”. You could answer:
“Jane photography is a specialist wedding photographer catering to portsmouth and surround areas”.
Be creative, make sure it is clear and people understand exactly what you do and most importantly include your keywords!
Edit your logo image, browser icon & social sharing logo
As the title suggests, this where you add your logo for your website and here you are about to learn something very interesting about images and keywords. Did you know that you can add hidden keywords behind your images and google still picks this up and ranks it and treats it just like normal text? Google or any search engine for that matter cannot see images, only text so in order for them to understand what your image is they have to rely on the text that your image is labelled as to understand what it is. I do believe this is something that google are currently working on so can start ranking video, images, voice from it’s contents just like text however this is still a long way off but is a hint for things to come. This rule applies for any image on your website. Your images should be labelled as the same as below with your keywords.
The rule I follow for labelling images is to start with what the image is, followed by two to three keywords after this so should be no more than 4 words. You should also seperate each word with a hyphen. Also make sure to vary up the keywords for each image as to not keyword stuff. A thing google hates more than anything is keyword stuffing which as the name suggests is cramming the same word over and over on your website, websites have been penalised for this so be careful!
papertrailbookkeeping-bookkeeper-southampton-uk.jpg
Add a website description (SEO)
If you go back to your menu in squarespace you will see an option called ‘marketing’. If you click on this you will also see an option called ‘SEO’. Here you can add a website description in more detail that will help google further understand your website and also means you can include more keywords. Similar to a tag line a website description needs to be well written and understood so anyone can understand what you to do. Again I think it’s important to include your business name, what you do including as many keywords as you can and your location, if you are internet only business you can leave the location bit out, just include more keywords about what you do specifically. Below is an example of the same photography business we discussed earlier, here you can see exactly what Jane does and where she operates her services.
3. Naming your pages & URL’s
Naming your pages is very important and naming them correctly with the keywords chosen is even more so. Despite google scanning your on page content it places the name of your pages at the same importance. Assuming you know how to locate your pages in the menu, if you click on the little anchor tag when you hover over a page name it will bring up a window just likes the one’s below, here are your page settings where you can edit them.
The way I like to name my pages and by implementing my keywords is relatively straight forward, this is providing you already know which keywords you want to use! For standard pages that are in the main navigation of a website such as, home, about, services, contact etc. these are the only pages that I leave keywords out of it. Why? It looks untidy, cluttered and isn’t the best look when visiting a website’s home page and you see a bunch of keywords stuffed in the browser search bar. Below you can see how I have labelled my home page, you have the ‘page title’ which appears in the browser, the navigation title which is displayed on your website and URL which is the destination of the page but is also visible on your browser search bar.
All other pages such as blog posts, product pages, sub pages that lay within a main page which squarespace includes are all great places for including your keywords. Let’s take for example the page below that is in relation to page called 'Classic Angle Shots For Wedding Photography’. Below is how you could incorporate your keywords to match the post but always make sure that it is somewhat tidy looking and suits it’s purpose, people may share your post by pasting your link, the last thing they want to post is a link that looks like spam!
4. On page content for SEO
This is probably the most important aspect when trying to rank your website for your target market. Google will scan all of your pages frequently to keep up to date with changes on your website. There is a simple structure that you can follow in order to include your keywords that fit well within your website.
When designing and building your website it can sometimes be a bit tricky including your keywords within the site without looking like you are stuffing as many keywords as possible, a lot of websites back in the late 90’s early 2000’s were guilty of this and it’s actually quite funny looking back!
Take below as an example, this is a client I worked with who is a ‘bookkeeper located in the city of southampton and specialises in helping small businesses and sole traders in this area’. The keywords are spread across the website. I did keyword research to ensure that people were searching these terms and included them in the headers and on page content throughout the site. The title’s are especially important and should take priority over the on page content for your keywords as this is how google crawls specific text type.
Well that’s all today folks! I hope this guide helped some of you. I am planning on doing a whole article/tutorial on keyword research as this can go into great depth. If you have any further questions regarding anything squarespace related, you can get in touch with me via email at home@clickpeach.co.uk or you can try livechat, if I am not available at this moment, leave your email and I will get back to you shortly!
Ashley