Starting a brand new website on any platform can be overwhelming. However, there a couple of tasks that every new Squarespace user should check off their todo list before diving in to the content and design customization.
Hide your site from Search Engines: No Index / No Archive
“What?! Hide my site? Are ya nuts!” Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying! Every new website starts out as a Squarespace subdomain- yourwebsite.squarespace.com. The majority of you will be (or at least should be!) using a custom domain. Squarespace even gives you a free domain with any annual purchase. Otherwise, you can easily get one for under $10 per year elsewhere. (I like Namecheap.com).
A popular topic on the community forums
There are ways to “downgrade” or redirect these links, but why not make your life easier and just don’t link, share or be found while on your Squarespace subdomain. Of course, you must make a note to go back and check the option and allow search engines to index/archive your website once you are ready. Hehem, trust me, this kind of thing happens to the best of us 
Optimize your Titles and Meta Descriptions
It may seem strange that we are optimizing titles and meta descriptions for search engines while at the same time hiding (noindex/noarchive) it from them. But this will have major seo benefits once you have mapped your custom domain and you are ready for your site to go live. Creating meta descriptions for each of your pages as you go will make your life easier in the long run.
Goto Website Management > Website Settings > Searching/Indexing > Search Engine Parameters
Squarespace Management -> Squarespace Settings
Search Indexing
Search Engine Parameters
Meta Descriptions Option will add a field to Page Configuration
What’s Next?
Of course there are many options of where to go from here. For the most part and now that you have cut your strings (albeit temporarily) from the search engines recording your every move, feel free to play around and create whatever you want in whatever order that gets the job done. However, I do suggest signing up for Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Even if you don’t have the inclination or the time to use these tools right now, go ahead and let them start working for you. Eventually you will want access to the valuable (and free!) data these tools have been aggregating in the background.
I’m almost finished with a “How to Optimize your Journal Configuration” post that will walk you step by step in setting up your blog / journal so be sure to check back or subscribe to our Rss feed!
Related Official Squarespace Help Docs:
- CAN I RESTRICT PORTIONS OF MY WEBSITE BEHIND A PASSWORD? HOW DO I ADD AN EDITOR TO MY ACCOUNT?
- RECONFIGURING A PAGE, WIDGET OR SECTION
*All links to Squarespace include referral links. Thanks for supporting Squarespace Plugins!
Hi Holly:
I’ve been following your posts on squarespaceplugins.com and the developers forum about SEO issues and squarespace.com. Specifically , I have a strong suspicion that our website has fallen from grace with google because of subdomain duplicate content (and likely other issues). This post above is good for new websites, but what if you are sure there are links to your squarespace sudomain already out there? Just seek to get them removed?
I guess what I’m really asking is are there concrete steps a novice can take to have all the link juice point to their actual website if the subdomain is already indexed? I’ve read about submitting your own xml sitemap, 301s from the subdomain to you site(?), and canonical URLs (if possible at the page level in squarespace), but do you have a step-by-step recommendation if the subdomain damage is already done?
Finally, if the subdomain and duplicate content issues is resolved any guess if this could be the primary reason for why a sight has a Penguin penalty?
Thanks for any comments or ideas.
First, I’d bet dollars to donuts that the indexing of a ss subdomain in addition to your actual domain alone, would NOT give you a penguin (or panda) penalty. (These updates were more about getting rid of spam and thin content sites.) The rest, depending on what version of squarespace you are using, can be helped by some of the things you have mentioned. Let me know which version you are using and/or your site url and I can be more specific. In general, first see if you can remove the subdomain links from wherever they were found/crawled by the bots. Many times, this happens on the forums when people ask for help. Also, I’ve often seen sites that actually have the ss subdomain url within it’s own site! This can happen while creating a site if you have interlinked between posts and pages. If you have ss6, submit the sitemap to google webmaster tools (and bing for that matter). It will look like – yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. Unfortunately, ss5 doesn’t have a sitemap..if I remember correctly, you can submit your RSS feed instead. Then, I would get the list of the “wrong” urls and try redirects. With ss6, they’ve made this much easier to do in bulk. I’ve created a tool and need to write the post to go along with it, but in the mean time, you can see it here – https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvojJnyOvgfDdEdMMXI2ZmV3WU85V0Q4bkgxdkFkanc#gid=1 . For ss5 you’ll need to do them one at a time. See this post for a bit more info- http://www.squarespaceplugins.com/squarespace-journal-titles-and-urls-quick-tip/ . As far as canonical, not much you can do there manually anyways. In fact, I’m still a bit uncertain as to the implications of how ss is using them in ss6 for tags and categories. (last I looked, they are using blog home as canonical for all tags and cats in ss6…but I digress.) More important than all of this, is if/while you are moving your site – whether from ss5 to ss6 or WordPress to ss6. If your urls are not EXACTLY the same, you have got to do redirects or you WILL lose rankings, juice, social proof, authority, etc. A handful of ss users have added me on to their GWT and this has been the number 1 issue.
Hi again, Holly.
This is a belated thank you for your comments and suggestions. I’ll definitely do some more research to see if most if not all of your ideas can be implemented. Kudos to you for a great website and thank you for your willingness to help.
You’re Welcome Greg. Thanks for the feedback and good luck with your site