How To Submit A Squarespace Sitemap To Google Search Console

Google Search Console And Your Squarespace Website

Squarespace SEO and Your Sitemap

Submit Your Squarespace Sitemap To Google and Fix Your 404 Pages

Getting your website seen by Google isn’t just a matter of writing good content, using the correct code or placing a few keywords on a page. It requires a basic knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes of your website and how continual updates will help drive your site higher in search engine results. That includes submitting your Squarespace sitemap to Google Search Console.

What Is A Sitemap?

A Squarespace sitemap, like sitemaps on other websites, is an XML file listing all the individual URLs of the pages of your site. This file is visible to Google’s website crawlers and tells search engines the location of your entire site, whenever new pages are created, and when you’ve updated pages. Squarespace is especially handy because it automatically updates your sitemap with any new pages you add or remove.

All Squarespace websites come with a sitemap using the .xml format. Unlike other content management systems, Squarespace builds this for you eliminating the need to create one manually. Your Squarespace sitemap includes the URLs for all the pages on your site as well as image metadata for SEO-friendly indexing. If you're an architect, interior designer, design-build contractor or landscape architect, image metadata and alternative tags are an essential SEO element if your website has a large number of project portfolios. 

Where Do I Find My Squarespace Sitemap?

You can find your sitemap easily by adding:  /sitemap.xml at the end of your domain. My sitemap, as an example, is https://.means-of-production.com/sitemap.xml. If you do not have a custom domain and are using a built-in Squarespace domain, your sitemap URL will appear as below: http://sitename.squarespace.com/sitemap.xml Replace site name with your own Squarespace site name.

Submitting your Sitemap to your Google Search Engine Console account is easy.

1. Log into your Google Search Console Account - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

2. View the Navigation Bar on the left titled Dashboard

3. Select Crawl > Sitemap

4. Click the Add/Test Sitemap button

Submitting a Squarespace Sitemap to Google Search Console Will Boost SEO

Google Search Console is a free tool that lets users control their website from the search engine’s perspective and provides a variety of tools that will allow you to thoroughly analyze the SEO health of your site. The tool helps you identify problem areas, improving your website get found and rank better in Google Search Engine Results Pages or "SERP's." 

Checking For and Fixing 404 Errors with Google Search Console

An error 404 message is typically triggered when website content has been removed or moved to another URL. Other reasons why an error message could appear include:

• The URL or its content (such as files or images) were either deleted or moved (without adjusting any internal links accordingly)

• The URL was miswritten (during the creation process or a redesign), linked incorrectly, or typed into the browser incorrectly

• The entered domain name doesn’t exist (anymore)

Often dead links are left for long periods of time because the operators don’t know the linked content has been deleted or moved. Many websites still appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs) even though they aren’t available online anymore, at least not at the specified URL. 

Search engines will penalize your website if it has multiple 404 errors and can degrade a website’s search ranking. Once Google's crawlers see that numerous search engine requests result in 404 codes, it assumes the site isn’t maintained. Google can decrease its placement in the SERPs or even stop indexing the site if there are too many 404 error pages. If your site is sinking in the search engine results, it can result in a considerable decrease in site visitors.

Google Search Console: Fetch as Google

The Fetch as Google tool lets you test how Google “crawls” or renders a URL on your site. Use Fetch as Google to see whether Googlebot can access a page on your site, how it renders the page, and whether any part of your page, such as images or scripts, are blocked to Googlebot. If your Fetch as Google gives you a "Not found" status error, it means your website visitors may see the HTTP 404 error code when they try to access your page using a web browser. You can fix bad link 404 errors on your Squarespace website by creating 301 redirects.

What Are 301 Redirects?

301 redirects are for when the page has moved permanently and most often when a URL has changed. For example:

• If you changed a page's URL in Page Settings

• If you deleted a page from your site and need to redirect to your homepage or another page

• If URLs are different after importing content. This usually happens when your previous site didn't have a page slug for the blog page, just posts. Squarespace uses a page slug for the Blog Page followed by the slug for the post.

How To Create a 301 Redirect On A Squarespace Website

First, make sure the old URL doesn't exist and that the new URL does by deleting the old page, disabling it, or changing its URL. Here’s how:
Go to Advanced Settings
1. From your Home menu, click Settings. Then, click Advanced and URL Mappings.
To Redirect one page
To create a URL mapping, you need four elements:

• The old URL for the page that doesn't exist

• The "arrow," which is a dash immediately followed by a greater than sign (->)

• The new URL for the page you want to redirect to

• The redirect type – 301

Your 301 redirect will look like this /old-url -> /new-url 301

To Redirect Multiple Blog Posts, Events, or Products

Whenever there are multiple blog posts, product pages or event pages in a page, each item will have a unique URL with the page's slug followed by the item's slug (for example, /blog/example-post).

If you change a page's URL slug in Page Settings, every item in the page will have a new URL. You will want to direct visitors to the right place even if they use an outdated URL to open an item. Instead of adding separate redirect lines for every page, save time by adding one line that redirects all item URLs.

To do this, use the [name] variable when creating the redirect. For example, your old Blog Page's URL was /blog. You changed it to /posts. To ensure visitors can still view "Example Post" through http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/example-post, enter [name] in the redirect:
That redirect looks like this: /blog/[name] -> /posts/[name] 301

Redirecting From a Deleted Page To Your Homepage

I deleted a page from my site that had the URL www.mybusiness.com/history. To prevent visitors from seeing a 404 error page, I want to direct them to my homepage instead. Since my homepage doesn't have a specific page name, I'll use a blank slug to direct to my primary domain.

My redirect looks like this: 
/history -> / 301

Imported Content From Another Site

My website used to be with a different company, and I imported my blog into Squarespace.

My old website's blog had this URL structure:
http://mybusiness.com/the-title-of-this-post
In Squarespace, my blog has this URL structure:
http://mybusiness.com/blog/the-title-of-this-post

To ensure my links still work, I need to create a redirect for every blog post. They look like this:
/the-title-of-this-post -> /blog/the-title-of-this-post 301
/the-title-of-another-post -> /blog/the-title-of-another-post 301

Redirecting to another domain

For example, your business site has a page to display information for a Houzz campaign. The URL is www.mybusiness.com/houzz. If you want to link directly to the Houzz website instead of that page, you need to:

1. Ensure the URL you're directing to begins with http:// (or https:// if you've enabled the Secure SSL setting)

2. In URL Mappings, create a redirect from /houzz to your Houzz page URL.

3. Delete or disable /houzz on your site.

The redirect looks like this:
/houzz -> http://www.houzz.com/projects/12345678/my-business-project 301
After adding your redirects, click Save.

Whenever deleting pages, adding redirects or changing URLs, we recommend indexing (or re-indexing) your site using Google Search Console. This will prevent deleted pages and error messages from showing up in Google searches.

For further information about your Squarespace sitemap, and how to use behind-the-scenes tips to maximize SEO, please take a look at the articles below. They are full information you can use to boost customer traffic to your company's website.

Additional Articles on Squarespace SEO

• How Search Engines Work In Conjunction with Website Copy

• How To Build A Squarespace Website That Gets Found In Search Engines!

• Blogging with Keywords is Home Building Marketing That Works!

• How To Choose a Squarespace Template Design For Your New Website

About Means-of-Production

Hi, I’m Michael Conway. My firm builds Squarespace websites and marketing campaigns for construction and design firms. I’ve been building Squarespace websites at least a hundred websites over the last six years and have built websites for a few of the largest contractors in the country as well as sole practitioners. If you have questions about Squarespace or need a new website, we want to build it for you. Reach out to me at (603) 289-6616 or mc@means-of-production.com. I’m here to help.