How to get the most SEO out of your Squarespace blog post
I know, you’re already sick to death of hearing about SEO. If you’ve had a professional redesign your website, I’m sure they’ve mentioned it one, or five thousand, times to you… Mentioning rankings, load time, keywords, backlinks…
All of it gets to be a bit much, doesn’t it?
In a perfect world, we would do all the things perfectly. We would write guest blog posts for websites with better ranking than ours. We would resize our images perfectly, tag and embed data in them, use keywords in a “conversational manner” (as if you throw keywords around when you’re chatting with your friends!)…
But you know what? You probably do. You just don’t realize it.
When we start saying things like keywords, SEO, backlinks, and webcrawler, some times it’s easy to blank out a bit. And then when web experts start going off on all the things you need to do, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed.
My approach is a bit different. Yes, it would be amazing if you could do all the things perfectly.
It would be amazing if I could manage wash, dry, fold, and put my laundry away all in the same day too (does anyone actually do that?!)… But since we have a loveseat that my children refer to as “the clean laundry couch”, I’m pretty sure that goal is a bit out of my reach at the moment. So instead, I work on doing the best I can with the time and energy I have for laundry.
That’s all I’m asking you to do for your SEO too.
In regards to blogging - you’ve heard something about it being good for your SEO right? It is.
Search engines (like Google, Bing, etc) like it when you blog and have your website showing new content. It shows you’re still active. You’re still relevant.
And for clients, if you are a business, it means you are still open.
But then you look up things on what you need to do SEO-wise for your blog post and get overwhelmed wanting to be perfect, and instead of blogging, you put it to the back burner (again) and forget about it.
STOP. BEING. PERFECT.
Go back to where you were going to try.
Let’s try doing the best you can with the energy you have, and hitting publish.
Here are a few things that you can do to make SEO-ing your blog posts easier. Do what you can, when you can… And when your minimum gets easier, then come back, re-read this post, and add on the next thing.
Pre-think your keywords
Yeah, this is annoying - but it only has to be done once every six months or so. Write a list (or create a document) with all the keywords and combinations you have for your business. I’m also a photographer in the Buffalo, NY area, so I’m going to add some photographer examples here:
-Buffalo NY Family Photographer
-WNY Family Pictures
-Buffalo NY Family Portrait Photographer
-WNY Family Portraits
The big trick is to use words your clients would search for. Photographers often call everything a “session”. We do family sessions, engagement sessions, newborn session…. But do you know how many people type in “family sessions” in the google search bar to find a photographer?
ALMOST ZERO.
They will type what they want to find - a photographer. They will also usually type a location, because if I’m having my family portraits taken in Buffalo, I’m not looking for a San Diego Photographer… and they will specify a type - because again, if you want a wedding photographer you won’t want a whole page of newborn photographers to come up.
Your keywords need those three things:
Your Location (Buffalo)
Your niche (Family)
Your career (Photographer)
But, your location could have many towns around it, or many names for the same town. Buffalo is also referred to as WNY (although that covers a wider area). And then there are towns near Buffalo (like Orchard Park, Williamsville, or Niagara Falls) that people may also search for. So add all the locations near you, or that you are willing to drive to, to your list.
And your niche might have sub-niches, or other names. A newborn photographer may also be searched up under the terms baby, fresh 48, etc.
And finally your career might have other terms that someone would use to look for it: photographer, photography, pictures, portraits, etc. (remember: not sessions or shoots - words your client would use).
Make sure all of those are on your keyword list - and then when you are writing a title to a blog post, check your list and choose a set of keywords you want to use.
Hint: choose one set of keywords per post - that way you aren’t fighting with your other blog posts or pages for rankings in google.
Resize your Images
Naked blog posts are kind of like naked websites - boring. But sometimes image files are really big and can slow down a website. So first, you want to make sure they are sized and compressed down to a useable size. You can do this in photoshop or when exporting from Lightroom. Or you can use a program like JPEGmini to resize them for you (https://jpegmini.com). They have a free account that allows up to 50 photos per day!
Rename Your Images
This is a step I see so many photographers skip over - they upload all of their pictures under names like “IMG0357.jpg” or “JackandDianeSession001.jpg”. These can be used as places to stick keywords! Rename your files to “DelawareParkEngagementPortraits_001.jpg” and have google pick it up in searches!
Write your blog post without worrying about SEO.
Yeah, that sounds counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? But that’s how you get it conversational. Write it as you talk, without worrying about the keywords. Just type and upload your resized and renamed images where you want them to go.
Then, when you are done - go back and add your keywords in where it makes sense. Switch out words you would use for a search-able term.
Instead of saying “Jack and Diane’s session was so fun! We met at the park and the colors were so pretty!”Switch it to “Jack and Diane’s engagement portraits were so fun! We met at Delaware Park, just north of Buffalo, and the fall colors were so pretty!” (I added “fall” in there, because sometimes seasons are searched for in photography as well). It still sounds conversational - but now it has some SEO juice.
Update your title and post link
Same rule applies - rewrite your blog post title to say something SEO-worthy. Don’t write something sweet sounding like “Jack and Diane’s gorgeous session” - write something like “Fall Engagement Portraits in Buffalo NY - Jack + Diane.”
If “post link” is starting to lose you, just do the title. Squarespace is cool enough that it will generate a link based on your title - so as long as your title has the right keywords in it, the link will too!
If you aren’t overwhelmed yet, click on the settings wheel for your blog post and update the post link with the same searchable terms you decided to use for the blog post. Make sure you name it something short and sweet and without spaces (so either /BuffaloFallEngagement, or /buffalo_fall_engagement).
That’s it for now!Yes, there are MANY more steps you can take - but let’s start here. Start small, make it a habit, and then more on.
Do me a favor - check your google rankings (search up “Free website rank checker” and try out one of the many that are out there!). Try out these tips consistently for a month, and in 3 months, check your google rankings again.
