Yoast is a well-known plugin used with Wordpress sites. It has tools and features that help boost a site’s SEO and overall search engine readability. If you have a Squarespace site, you cannot use Yoast - and that is okay. Squarespace doesn’t need it! It has its own built in SEO capabilities that Wordpress does not. Here are the main components and how they differ.

Sitemaps

A sitemap is a blueprint of your website and contains information about each pages, videos and other files and how they relate to each other. Sitemaps allow search engines like Google to crawl through and understand your website more efficiently.

Squarespace automatically creates a sitemap whereas Wordpress does not (this is another reason why the Yoast add-on is helpful). Squarespace already includes all the URL’s for every website page and updates the sitemap automatically whenever any changes are made.

Robots.txt Files

A robots.txt file tells Google which pages (URLs) that can be accessed and which ones should be ignored. Basically, it allows you to keep a file off of Google so it won’t be indexed. While Wordpress needs Yoast yet again to flag these files, Squarespace does this automatically.

Metadata

Metadata can be descriptive, structural, or administrative. Meta descriptions carry a variety information including where a resource was produced, by whom, and access history. Metadata is a critical component of your website and describes how every piece is managed, organized, and used. Proper use of metadata allow key parts of your website to be more easily discovered through search engines.

Squarespace has a very easy way to access all of your metadata and it’s built right in. In order to access metadata in Wordpress, you’ll need Yoast or another plugin to help you.

Summary

Onsite SEO is critical to making your website visible online. Without it, you will just have a pretty little website that no one can find.

As you can tell, I am a huge fan of Squarespace website design. Not only does it offer superior design features and the ability to easily add custom code for a truly unique site, it has the easiest access to optimize a website’s SEO already built in. Does this mean that everyone knows how to access it and use it correctly? Unfortunately, this usually takes years of experience or at least the desire to take a few courses.

With over 100 websites and counting, Charlotte’s Web Designs, LLC specializes in Squarespace design for any size business, from startups to multi-generational larger firms. Feel free to reach out for a free consultation.

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