Squarespace SEO: what you can and can't edit

Searches to plan around

Query patterns and the intent behind them. We don’t quote search volumes: check your own Search Console for the ones you already appear for.

• “[service] [city]”, “[business type] near me”

  Local service

  Squarespace's own checklist tells you to add your location and create a Business Profile (Squarespace). Those decide the map pack, and they sit outside the site settings and outside Autopilot, which covers content, Search Console and AI answers. The site's part is a page per service with a title that says what and where.

• “hire a [role] in [city]”, “[creative] for [event type]”

  Hire a person

  Portfolio and studio sites win when each project is a page of text: the brief, what you did and the result. A gallery of images gives a crawler little to read.

• “buy [product] online”, “[product] [material or size]”

  Shopping

  Squarespace Commerce adds Product structured data automatically. The product description is also what search engines use as the snippet when you haven't written an SEO description.

• “how to [task]”, “[topic] ideas”

  Learning

  Blog posts answer these. Choose a post URL format that includes the title, and write the SEO description yourself.

• “[your brand] reviews”, “[your brand] menu”, “[your brand] pricing”

  Brand check

  These show your homepage title and SEO site description. The homepage has no SEO title field: it follows the homepage title format, so set that on purpose.

• “[class or event] [city] [date]”

  Events

  Squarespace event pages get Event markup automatically. Put date, place, price and what happens in text.

Page families that work

• Service and offer pages

  /services/brand-photography

  One page per offer: what is included, who it is for, a price or range, the process and a clear next step. Give each an SEO title and description; the default title format is the page title followed by the site name (Squarespace).

• Case studies

  /work/riverside-cafe-rebrand

  A project page with the brief, what you did and the result in text, plus images with descriptions. Squarespace uses an image's description as alt text and falls back to the file name (Squarespace).

• Blog guides

  /blog/choosing-a-wedding-photographer

  One question per post. Choose a post URL format that includes the title (Squarespace's checklist) and write the SEO description yourself, or search engines will use the excerpt.

• Product and collection pages

  /shop/p/linen-tote

  Version 7.1 product URLs add /p/ after the store page's slug (Squarespace). Write a real product description: it feeds the Product markup and the fallback snippet.

• Location and contact page

  /visit

  Address, hours, map and how to get there. Squarespace recommends this page for any business with a physical location, because Google and customers need to confirm where you are (Squarespace).

• Event pages

  /events/summer-workshop

  Event pages carry Event markup automatically (Squarespace). Keep the date, place and price in text, and update or redirect the page once the event has passed.

Risky page types

• Tag and category pages nobody wrote

  Every tag and category creates a filtered blog page with a static URL that sits in the sitemap and is indexable by default. Tags and categories are case-sensitive, so Test and test are different pages (Squarespace). Use a few categories and hide the filters if they're thin.

• City pages copied from one page

  Duplicating one page for every city, with only the city name changed, is the doorway pattern in Google's spam policies. Build a location page only for a place you serve.

• AI-written posts pasted in at volume

  Google's guidance on generative AI content says using AI to produce many pages without adding value for users may breach its scaled content abuse policy. Pasting posts in by hand doesn't change that.

Technical pitfalls

1. 1

   “Block search engine crawlers” left on

   Settings > Crawlers has a box that asks search engines not to index the site; Squarespace says it adds a Disallow: / rule (Squarespace). A site-wide password also stops indexing (Squarespace), and trial sites have no sitemap (Squarespace). Check all three after launch, and again after any redesign.

2. 2

   Titles and descriptions: where they come from

   A page has an SEO title (limit 100 characters), a page title and a navigation title; without an SEO title the page title is used. The homepage has no SEO title field and follows the homepage title format. Keep %p and %i in your title formats or no title shows in browser tabs (Squarespace, title formats). SEO descriptions run to 400 characters, with 50–300 recommended; with none, search engines use the excerpt for posts and events and the product description for products (Squarespace). For a shared post, product or event the preview image is the item's alternate social sharing image, then its featured image, then your social sharing logo (Squarespace).

3. 3

   Slugs, and a 404 when you change one

   Slugs are lowercase, 3–250 characters (3–200 for posts, events and products), and dashes are the only special character allowed. A blog post URL always starts with the blog page's slug. Changing a slug doesn't redirect the old URL: it returns a 404 until you add a URL mapping (Squarespace). A random-string slug means the post was saved before it had a title, so fix those too.

4. 4

   URL mappings are the only redirect tool

   Open Developer tools > URL mappings and add lines such as /old -> /new 301. The field holds about 2,500 lines (400 KB) and runs top to bottom. A redirect works only when the old page is deleted or disabled, you can't redirect from the homepage or an image or file URL, and most redirects can't contain ?, & or #. Use [name] to move a whole collection (Squarespace). Check the result with a redirect checker.

5. 5

   The sitemap and robots.txt aren't yours

   The sitemap updates within an hour (up to 24), leaves out pages hidden from search, disabled pages, password-protected pages and old redirect URLs, and can't be edited. Squarespace says you don't need to submit it, and lists submitting it in Search Console as an optional way to ask for indexing (Squarespace, Search Console guide). Every site shares one robots.txt, which already asks Google to skip internal URLs and parameter URLs such as ?tag=, ?author= and ?format=, so a “blocked by robots.txt” notice for those is normal (Squarespace). Control indexing with a page's “Hide page from search results” setting, which also removes it from the sitemap (Squarespace).

6. 6

   Duplicates: the homepage and the filters

   Your homepage has two URLs (example.com and example.com/home), and Squarespace asks Google to index the first (Squarespace). Tag and category pages get static URLs such as /blog/tag/x with a canonical tag and a place in the sitemap; hide them in the blog page's SEO settings if they're thin (Squarespace). Connected secondary domains redirect to the primary one (Squarespace).

7. 7

   Structured data you can't change

   Squarespace adds Blog post, Event, Local business, Organization, Product and Website schemas that you can't edit or remove (Squarespace). Anything else goes in through code injection, which the Core, Plus and Advanced plans and some legacy plans have, site-wide or per page (Squarespace). Search Console warnings about a product's offers, review or aggregateRating are common and don't stop indexing (Squarespace). Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in May 2026 (Google), so FAQ markup is no reason to add any.

8. 8

   Page weight: images, blocks and galleries

   Squarespace converts uploads to WebP (you can switch that off in Image Settings) and makes seven sizes of each. It takes files up to 20 MB and recommends 500 KB or less at about 2,500 px wide. Keep pages under 5 MB, 60 blocks and 50 images per gallery (Squarespace, page size). Check results in Search Console's Core Web Vitals report (Google).

9. 9

   Blog limits to plan around

   The page-settings toggle that hides a page works on the whole blog page: individual posts have no toggle, so you can't noindex one post that way (Squarespace). A page or post holds about 100 blocks at most (Squarespace). The SEO report tool, llms.txt, Weglot and the AI Visibility tool are version 7.1 only.

10. 10

    Multilingual: Weglot or a manual build

    On 7.1 the Weglot integration translates the site, and its language subdomains add hreflang tags. Weglot's free plan covers one extra language up to 2,000 words (Squarespace). A manual build, with duplicate pages for each language, can't use separate domains or subdomains and keeps built-in text in one language (Squarespace). Check return links against Google's hreflang rules.

How AI assistants answer questions in this category

Squarespace leaves AI crawlers allowed by default. The “Block known artificial intelligence crawlers” box in Settings > Crawlers is unchecked because, Squarespace says, blocking could remove you from chat answers and sources (Squarespace). Ticking it adds the bots on its published list to robots.txt, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot and Google-Extended. That list does not name OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Claude-SearchBot, which OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic document as their search crawlers (OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic). Google-Extended is a training control: whether AI Overviews and AI Mode can show your site is set in Search Console under Search generative AI (Google). Version 7.1 sites can also publish an llms.txt, which is off until you add text (Squarespace); Google says its Search ignores that file (Google).

What tends to earn a citation

• About, contact and policy pages, with author names and dates, which Squarespace lists as trust signals for AI search (Squarespace).
• Short, direct answers under clear headings, with lists, tables and FAQ sections an assistant can lift as written (Squarespace).
• Portfolio work written up as text: the problem, the approach and the result.
• One consistent business description across your site, your Business Profile and the directories you are listed in.

Check whether the AI crawlers you want can reach your site with our AI crawler checker.

Where links come from

• Collaborators, venues and suppliers

  The people you worked with link if you ask for a specific page: a venue for a photographer, a stockist for a maker, a brand for a studio. Send them the exact URL.

• Local press, associations and events

  Chambers, trade bodies, local news and event listings link to businesses they can check. For listings, use only maintained directories whose rules and prices you can read.

• Galleries, awards and roundups

  Design galleries, local “best of” lists and award entries are editorial links from people who picked your work. Skip any that sell placement.

• Something worth citing

  A price guide, checklist or small data set from your own work earns links that service pages don't. Publish the method and the date.

A 90-day plan

1. Days 1–30

   Unblock and fix the base

   • –Open Settings > Crawlers and confirm “Block search engine crawlers” is off, the site is public and no site-wide password is set.
   • –Verify the site in Search Console and submit sitemap.xml. Squarespace calls that optional, but it shows how Google reads the sitemap.
   • –Write the SEO site description and an SEO description for every page and item, and check the title formats keep %p and %i.
   • –Replace random-string slugs and set a blog post URL format that includes the title.

2. Days 31–60

   Pages and structure

   • –Rewrite each service and project as a text page with image descriptions.
   • –Keep a few categories and hide thin tag pages in the blog page's SEO settings.
   • –Add a URL mapping for every slug you changed or imported, then check each with a redirect checker.
   • –On 7.1, decide whether to write an llms.txt and set the AI crawler box on purpose.

3. Days 61–90

   Publish steadily and run the loop

   • –Publish posts on a schedule, and keep pages light: under 60 blocks, images under 500 KB.
   • –Autopilot has no Squarespace integration, and Squarespace's developer API list has no endpoint for creating posts. Download each approved article as Markdown or HTML, or take it from the webhook, and paste it into a post: a Markdown block or a code block takes both.
   • –Rewrite SEO titles and descriptions by hand on pages at positions 5–20.
   • –Once a month, ask ChatGPT and Perplexity the same ten questions about your business, or run Squarespace's AI Visibility tool.

What to watch in Search Console

The Performance report gives clicks, impressions, CTR and average position by query, page, country, device and date. Clicks from Google's AI features are counted there too, under the Web search type (Google), and since August 31, 2026 the Generative AI performance report shows which pages get impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Indexed pages against the sitemap

Squarespace leaves hidden, disabled and password-protected pages out of the sitemap (Squarespace). After every launch or hide, compare the sitemap with the Page indexing report.

Tag and category URLs in search

Look for /blog/tag/ and /blog/category/ URLs with impressions and no clicks. They are in the sitemap by default; hide them if they're thin (Squarespace).

Not found (404) after a slug change

Old URLs listed as Not found (404) in Page indexing mean a URL mapping is missing.

Clicks by URL prefix

Group the Performance report by page prefix (services, work, blog, shop) to see which page type earns, then build more of that type.

Impressions in Google's AI features, and visits from AI tools

Search Console's Generative AI performance report counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Squarespace's Traffic Sources panel shows visits from AI tools (Squarespace). Autopilot tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, not Google's AI Overviews.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Checked on October 8, 2026. Search patterns and page advice are our own judgement from running this playbook; we don’t quote search volumes or third-party statistics.

1. Squarespace Help Center: View your site map
2. Squarespace Help Center: Understanding Google SEO emails and console errors
3. Squarespace Help Center: How does Squarespace optimize my site for search results?
4. Squarespace Help Center: SEO checklist
5. Squarespace Help Center: Changing title formats for SEO and browser tabs
6. Squarespace Help Center: URL mappings
7. Squarespace Help Center: How blog tags and categories appear in search
8. Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search
9. Google Search Central: Guidance on using generative AI content
10. Squarespace Help Center: Hiding your site from search results
11. Squarespace Help Center: Verifying your site with Google Search Console
12. Squarespace Help Center: Editing page titles
13. Squarespace Help Center: Adding SEO descriptions
14. Squarespace Help Center: How content displays in social posts
15. Squarespace Help Center: URL slugs
16. Squarespace Help Center: Customize parts of your site with code injection
17. Google Search Central: Latest documentation updates
18. Squarespace Help Center: Formatting images for display on the web
19. Squarespace Help Center: Reducing your page size for faster loading
20. Google Search Central: Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results
21. Squarespace Help Center: Importing content from WordPress, Blogger, or Tumblr
22. Squarespace Help Center: Creating a multilingual site with Weglot
23. Squarespace Help Center: Manually creating a multilingual site
24. Google Search Central: Localized versions of your pages (hreflang)
25. Squarespace Help Center: Request that AI models exclude your site
26. OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
27. Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers
28. Anthropic: Does Anthropic crawl data from the web?
29. Search Console Help: Search generative AI control
30. Squarespace Help Center: Create an llms.txt file
31. Google Search Central: Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search
32. Squarespace Help Center: Optimize your site for AI-powered search engines
33. Squarespace Help Center: Developer Tools APIs at Squarespace
34. Squarespace Help Center: Code blocks
35. Search Console Help: Page indexing report
36. Search Console Help: Performance report
37. Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report (Search)
38. Google Search Central: AI features and your website