How to Make the Most of Your URLs on Squarespace

I know, I know. It’s not the most glamorous of tasks. And it’s definitely a reason why this SEO hack is so often overlooked. Too often, if you ask me!

It’s so easy to make changes to your URL Slugs to optimise them for search engine results. It’s a no brainer, really. 30 minutes spent in your Squarespace settings for 1, 5, 20 sales? Let’s do this!

Now, you may well be thinking: “Erm, Eleanor what on earth is a URL slug?”

A URL is the website address for each unique page. For example, this particular blog’s URL is eleanorstones.co.uk/blog-posts/optimise-url-squarespace

And a slug? Nothing to do with the slimy critters. No, URL Slugs are the part of your URL that change depending on your webpage. For example, this page’s URL Slug is /blog-posts/optimise-url-squarespace. It’s the bit that comes after the domain (in this case, eleanorstones.co.uk).

Squarespace is brilliant as it does a lot of the hard work for you. With URL Slugs, the platforms generates a Slug for you. This means most people don’t give them a second glance. They can get us by, but we can do better!

In this blog post, I’m going to talk you through how to optimise your Squarespace URL Slugs. I’ll walk you through the exact steps to take to use them to your advantage to improve your SEO ranking.

It’s a lot easier than it sounds, promise!

Top URL Slug Tips

Before we dive into how to edit your URL Slugs, I want to guide you through the best practices.

Scroll down to learn all about how to optimise your Page Slugs here and Blog Post Slugs here. And I’ve also included a section for those of you who are editing existing links, read about Redirect Slugs here.

1. Use hyphens to separate words

To help Google ‘read’ your URL Slug, you want to separate words out with ‘-’. So instead of writing ‘/optimiseurlsquarespace’ which, let’s face it, just looks like a toddler has just slammed their fist onto the keyboard, we want to split the words up. ‘/optimise-url-squarespace’ is a lot easier to read for humans and search engines alike.

2. Keep it short and sweet

A golden rule that applies across digital marketing! Keeping your URL Slug short and sweet filled with as much information as possible is the balance we aim to achieve here. Try to aim for between 3-5 keywords in your URL Slug. This will make them really easy to remember for us mere mortals and is a brilliant plus point for SEO.

3. Get rid of pointless words

Also known as stop words. These are those pointless fluffy filler words that we use in human to human conversation. Things like ‘a’ ‘and’ ‘the’ are ripe to get binned. Why? Because Google filters them out anyway, they’re just wasted space.

4. But Don’t overstuff it

Now the art of SEO is a delicate balancing act. As much as we want those juicy keywords, we also don’t want Search Engines to think you’re overdoing it and penalise you for it. Sticking to 3-5 keywords is good enough to keep your Slug in the good books.

Page Slugs

If you don’t create a page and immediately change its page name, Squarespace will assign a URL Slug to it. It might look something like “new-page-32” or “about-4” which is less than pretty and certainly not attractive to search engines like Google.

This applies to single pages and pages within an index.

How to:

• To edit, head to the Pages panel in Squarespace. Click the cog to the right of the page settings that you want to edit.

• In the General section scroll down to URL Slug

Changing any URLs on your live site? Note them down and head here to make sure users and Google don’t get lost. (Don’t worry about this if your website isn’t live yet.)

Blog Posts Slugs

Now we’ll dive into another type of URL Slug, the Blog Post URL Slug. The foundations remain the same, but this is where I often see the biggest opportunities to improve your SEO.

One thing I like to do on my own and clients sites is to switch the information Squarespace automatically includes in your URL Slug. The most important bit for me is removing the date from your post URL Slugs.

To do this, head to Settings > Blogging > Post URL Format and change it to ‘%t’.

Removing that date will make your blog evergreen, meaning you won’t be penalised for your content being seen as ‘outdate’.

Now you’ve made this change, Squarespace will automatically create a URL Slug for your new blog based on your blog title. This is a great improvement, but we can certainly do better.

This often means your URL Slugs end up loooong. Not quite the short and sweet version we want and they usually end up with way too many of those fluffy stop words.

So, every time you create a new blog, make sure to optimise your URL Slug.

How to:

• Head to Blog Settings > Options > Post URL and edit it with my top tips in mind, picking out keywords from your blog content.

Don’t forget to note down the old and new URL Slug for your blog posts too, we’ll get those old links redirected to the new ones next…

Redirects

If your site is live and you want to make some changes, then by all means do. It’s worth optimising at any time. But always make sure you note them down and set up some URL Redirects in Squarespace. This means search engines and visitors alike will be able to navigate through the site even if they’re sent to the old link.

If your site isn’t yet live, there’s no need to worry about this.

How to:

• With your old and new URL Slugs to hands, head to Settings > Advanced > URL Mappings

• Follow this formula for your redirects, just add in your details in the italics sections and copy and paste it in: /old-url-slug -> /new-url-slug 301

Now, we can be as meticulous as we possibly can but chances are something will slip through the net. This means people will end up on a 404 Error page. To keep them on the site for longer, you’re going to want to customise your 404 Page. Read this blog to find out how.

And just like that you’ve optimised your URL Slugs. Let me know how you get on!