> Whether Squarespace is bad for SEO: what the platform does, what its own checklist leaves to the owner, where sites lose ground, and how to test yours. - Canonical: https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/is-squarespace-bad-for-seo/ --- # Is Squarespace bad for SEO? Squarespace is not bad for SEO, and it is not a substitute for it. Squarespace says its sites are built for clean indexing, and its own checklist then leaves the work that decides rankings to the owner: titles, descriptions, headings, image text and content. Most Squarespace sites that do not rank have skipped that list. Updated 13 October 2026 ## What Squarespace does Squarespace’s help centre makes one claim about the platform itself: all Squarespace sites are built for clean indexing by search engines. It serves images in a smaller format automatically, and it provides the settings a site owner needs. ## What its checklist leaves to you Squarespace publishes an SEO checklist, and almost every item on it is the owner’s to do. - Add a site title and a site description. - Add a separate SEO description to each page. - Structure each page with headings. - Add descriptive text to every image. - Confirm that the secure connection is switched on. - Connect a custom domain. - Verify the site in Google Search Console and ask Google to index it. A site launched from a template with none of these done looks finished and says very little to a search engine. ## Where Squarespace sites most often go wrong Three things account for most Squarespace sites that are outranked. - The settings were never filled in. Every page shares the site’s name as its title, and has no description of its own. - The pages are heavy. Squarespace recommends pages of 5 MB or less and images of 500 KB or less, and template designs built on large photographs often exceed both. Our guide to [why a Squarespace site is slow](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/why-is-my-squarespace-site-so-slow/) covers the fixes. - The content is thin. A template encourages a few elegant pages, and search rewards a page for each thing customers look for. ## What you cannot change The owner of a Squarespace site chooses a template and fills it. How the pages are built and delivered is the platform’s business. That is the trade a website builder offers: less to manage, and less to adjust when a competitor’s site is faster. ## A test you can run today Three checks show where your own site stands. 1. Check which of your pages Google holds: search for `site:` followed by your domain. If pages are missing, start with [why a Squarespace site is not showing on Google](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/squarespace-site-not-showing-on-google/). 2. Put your home page, and the home page of a competitor who is not on Squarespace, through PageSpeed Insights on mobile. 3. Open one of your pages and the page that outranks it, and compare titles, headings and how fully each answers the search. If the settings are complete, the pages are as fast as the competition and the content is as full, the platform is doing its job. If the gap is in speed and will not close, a rebuild is the remaining answer. ## Questions people ask ### Can a Squarespace site rank on Google? Yes. A public Squarespace site on a paid plan is indexed and ranked like any other. Where one does not rank, the cause is usually unfinished SEO settings, thin pages or stronger competitors. ### Does Squarespace do SEO for you? No. Squarespace provides the settings, and it states that its customer support cannot assist with SEO strategy. The titles, descriptions, content and links that decide rankings are the owner's work. ### Why is my Squarespace site not ranking? Check first that the site is public and indexed, then that each page has its own SEO title and description. After that the question is how your pages compare with the ones above them. ## Free competitor gap report A platform is only as good as the site built on it. Name up to three competitors and we measure your Squarespace site against theirs on the same checks, then send you whether the gap is in the settings, the speed or the content. 1. Speed and technical health, side by side 2. On-page SEO and site structure 3. The content they are found for and you are not 4. Who holds the searches that matter in your market 5. A prioritised list of what to fix first [Request your free report by email](mailto:contact@hadalmedusa.com?subject=Competitor%20gap%20report%3A%20Guide%3A%20Is%20Squarespace%20bad%20for%20SEO%3F&body=Website%3A%0D%0A%0D%0AWhere%20you%20compete%20(area%2C%20country%20or%20countries)%3A%0D%0A%0D%0ACompetitors%20to%20compare%20against%20(up%20to%20three)%3A%0D%0A%0D%0AAnything%20else%20we%20should%20know%3A%0D%0A%0D%0A) - **Address** — contact@hadalmedusa.com - **Include** — your site; up to three competitors; where you compete ## More in this series - [Why your Wix site is so slow, and what to do about it](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/why-is-my-wix-site-so-slow/) - [Can you move a Wix site to another host?](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/can-you-move-a-wix-site-to-another-host/) - [Why your Squarespace site is so slow, and what to do about it](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/why-is-my-squarespace-site-so-slow/) - [Is Wix bad for SEO?](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/is-wix-bad-for-seo/) - [How to speed up a Wix website](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-speed-up-a-wix-website/) - [How to read the Wix Site Speed dashboard](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/wix-site-speed-dashboard/) - [Wix site still slow after the fixes? How to find the limit](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/wix-site-still-slow/) - [Is Wix slower than WordPress or Squarespace?](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/is-wix-slower-than-wordpress/) - [Is Wix worth it for a small business?](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/is-wix-worth-it-for-a-small-business/) - [How to speed up a Squarespace website](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-speed-up-a-squarespace-website/) - [Can you move a Squarespace site to another platform?](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/can-you-move-a-squarespace-site/) - [How to connect a Wix site to Google Search Console](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/connect-wix-to-google-search-console/) - [How to speed up a WordPress website](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-speed-up-a-wordpress-website/) - [Is WordPress bad for SEO?](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/is-wordpress-bad-for-seo/) - [Why your Shopify store is so slow, and how to speed it up](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/why-is-my-shopify-store-so-slow/) - [Is Shopify bad for SEO?](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/is-shopify-bad-for-seo/) - [How to move from Wix to WordPress](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-move-from-wix-to-wordpress/) - [How to move a store from Wix to Shopify](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-move-from-wix-to-shopify/) - [How to move from Squarespace to WordPress](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-move-from-squarespace-to-wordpress/) - [How to move a store from Squarespace to Shopify](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-move-from-squarespace-to-shopify/) - [How to speed up a Shopify store](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-speed-up-a-shopify-store/) - [How to transfer a domain away from Wix](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-transfer-a-domain-from-wix/) - [How to transfer a domain away from Squarespace](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/how-to-transfer-a-domain-from-squarespace/) - [Website platforms: fixing one, or leaving it: the whole topic](https://hadalmedusa.com/topics/website-builders/) - [All guides](https://hadalmedusa.com/guides/) - [On-site SEO: what the service includes](https://hadalmedusa.com/services/seo/)