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SEO for authors part six: last tips and tricks

Phew! The road has been long and winding but we are finally at the end of my series of posts all about SEO for authors! I hope you have found these posts helpful. I’m going to wrap up this week with a few last tips and tricks for you.

Tips for Squarespace websites

If you have a Squarespace website, there's lots you can do to improve the SEO of your site, and most of the settings are built into the back-end of your website - it's just a case of using them!

Here's a little rundown of things to consider. You'll find more details on how to do all these things here.

Add a site title - You should always add a site title. Keep the title under 60 characters and include one or more keywords.

Add a site description - Add a short (50-300 characters), relevant, readable description of your site to your SEO site description. This text may appear below your site title in search results, depending on what your visitors search for.

Connect to social media - Set up social sharing to link to your social media profiles, push content as you publish it, and encourage people to share your pages.

Add a browser icon - Your site's browser icon or favicon gives visibility to your site's brand. The icon may appear in search results.

Add social sharing images - Social sharing images display on social media when you or someone else shares your site. Add one to represent your whole site and one for each page individually.

Add SEO descriptions - Ensure each page on your site has a unique SEO description. The text should be short and readable (50-300 characters), and describe the content of the page.

Create a custom 404 page - Customize the 404 Page with links to some of the popular or important areas of your site. This encourages visitors who encounter a broken link to stay on your site, rather than immediately going back to search results.

Feeling confident you've got a handle on all-things SEO now? OK, here's some super-advanced tips to help you super-charge your website's visibility!

Verify your site with Google Search Console - Google's Search Console allows you to control how Google views your website, and see keywords that people have used to find it. It's really interesting if you want to get deep into your search results! It's a free service, but you need to verify your website with Google first. Find out more about this here.

Request that Google index your site - This asks Google's bots to review your site and update search results with your new content. It's a good idea to do this after you make a major change to your website. You do this by submitting a new sitemap, and you can find out more about this here.

Enable AMP - If you have a blog, enabling AMP creates a stripped-down version of your site that loads faster on mobile devices. It's super easy to do on Squarespace - find out how here.

SEO Checklist

Here's a quick checklist for you to tick off as you go...

1) Content makes good use of keywords

2) Content is organised by keyword-rich headings

3) Each page has a minimum of 400 words on it

4) Images have relevant filenames, and descriptive alt text

5) Images have been resized so that they are under 500KB

6) Each page has at least one internal link on

7) External links are used wherever appropriate, and open in a new browser window

8) You link to your own website wherever possible, especially from your own social media, and your publisher and agent's websites

9) Your website is responsive and resizes on mobile

10) Your website has an SSL certificate installed

11) All pages have relevant URL slugs

12) You log in to your website to update its content regularly (at least monthly)

And that’s it! Simples. Please do leave me a comment if you have any questions at all and happy SEOing!

Looking for help with your Squarespace author website? Check out my website support services here>>

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