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Hi there! Before I dig into this week’s post, I wanted to let you know that we announced a new consulting service this week. It’s called “Productize, Systemize & Thrive,” and it’s a process in which Kath and I guide you through crafting your own signature productized service (yes, like our Design in a Day™ program). This can truly transform your relationship with your business and your clients when implemented the right way (and I don’t say that sort of thing often), so if you’re interested in learning more, all the info is here.
Here’s the backstory: several months ago, Squarespace updated their system to include a new SEO panel. This has been a feature that Squarespace experts like me have bene begging for for ages. We previously had to use the page descriptions and titles, which often need to be used for marketing purposes, so we’d end up having to choose between marketing and search optimization. The system has finally solved this problem.
When this was announced, we were told that our current SEO settings, implemented the old way, would carry over. I was busy and didn’t think much about it.
Welp, for 90% of users this worked beautifully. A couple months later, I was googling myself trying to find an old article I wrote and saw some bizarre previews in Google. If you’re not familiar with those, here’s what they are supposed to look like:
Nice, clean and tidy, prompting people to click through. Instead mine were a hodgepodge of random image file URLs and headlines from my pages. Not good, not good at all.
When there are large technical changes, things happen. That’s why it’s important for business owners to stay on top of what’s going on with their infrastructure. But the lesson is even bigger than that. When I dug in further, the descriptions that remained were incredibly outdated. I’d updated my content, but neglected adjusting my search optimization as part of that workflow. So even if all my optimization had carried over, it wouldn’t have been optimized for my current content and targeted keywords.
Lesson #1: Don’t sleep on technical changes.
Lesson #2: Make sure that all the tactics you’re using still feed your overall strategy.
I know this, do this work for a living, and yet I neglected it for my own business and could have really been harmed if I hadn’t happened upon the problem when I did. So don’t be like me. Stay on top of these little pieces, adjust what’s not quite current anymore, remove pieces that are no longer serving you, and add new things that feed your strategy.
Did you know that we’re, for the first time ever, running a special this summer on Squarespace SEO? Yes indeed.
Click here to be automatically sent our price list!
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