SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. A search engine is any tool or website like Google, Yahoo or Bing that searches the web based on search terms from the user. Everything you do for your business can be optimized to bring it closer to the top of search engine results. That’s all search engine optimization is: creating content so that it gets further to the top of search engine results.

If you have a new site or want to attract customers, yes, you need SEO. But SEO is a long term strategy. It won’t work over night but it will work if you put the effort in to it and if you know how to do it.

If you want to quickly grow your website traffic in the beginning stages of your business then there are more aggressive strategies like inbound marketing or email marketing that you should add to your digital marketing strategy.

Everything you need for SEO is baked right in to the core functionality of Squarespace. That means, no additional costly plugins and no extra coding is required to optimize your site.

While SEO is easy with Squarespace, this is the perfect time to clear up some rumors about Squarespace and SEO. There is a lot of talk that Squarespace is bad with SEO and that Squarespace sites can’t rank as well as Wordpress or Wix sites. Let’s think about this like calculators:

You have two graphing calculators, a Texas Instruments and a CASIO. They both can create the same graphs, calculate the same formulas and display the same answers. The difference comes in with the users. Some people can use a CASIO calculator and some can’t. That doesn’t mean you can’t do the same thing a Texas Instruments calculator can do. The same can be said for Squarespace and Wordpress. Squarespace gives you the ability to control more of your SEO tools included in the code of your site.

When people want to know anything they type it into Google. Most people will go with the top results that Google displays. That means that when they want to go to a local Thai food place for dinner they are typing it in to Google and trusting that Google will give them the results they want. That’s pretty powerful. Just by being on the front page of a Google search your business can be exposed to everyone searching for your business’ services. When only 0.78% of searches get clicked on the second page, getting on the first page can be a vital free way to gain clients.

The results get better as you go up the first page in rank. According to a study by Backlinko 31% of all Google search clicks go to the top result. If your business were in that spot that’s 31% of Google searchers arriving to your website.

And it still gets better as you specify for serach intent. A user’s search intent is as easy as it sounds. Why are they searching Google in the first place? Pulling the latest statistics from Advanced Web Ranking shows that 34% of commercial intent searches in May 2020 went to the top position! That’s a ton of free traffic.