Building Your Dream Website with Squarespace: A Step-by-Step Guide
Creating a stunning website can seem daunting, but with Squarespace, you can start to build a professional-looking site without any coding knowledge. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a complete beginner, follow our easy step-by-step guide to launch your new website with confidence.
A few Q&A’s before we begin
Do I need to know how to code?
Absolutely not! Squarespace gives you the best of both worlds, without any coding experience you can still create a well crafted website, and if you are more advanced and have coding knowledge then the options for a beautiful custom website are endless. But for the beginners out there, by the end of this guide, you'll have a live, fully functional website ready to showcase your business. The platform's intuitive interface allows you to drag and drop elements, making it simple to create a beautiful website without any technical expertise.
What happens if I make a mistake?
It's natural to worry about making mistakes, but if you follow this guide step-by-step, you'll be fine. We'll highlight any complex areas where you might want to consult a developer later. Squarespace also offers robust customer support and a comprehensive knowledge base to help you troubleshoot any issues that may arise.
Is it expensive?
Not at all. Aside from a small monthly hosting fee (around $10 - $40), building your website with Squarespace is very cost-effective.
Let’s get started!
Choose Your Domain Name
Your domain name is your website's address (e.g., www.moonstruckdigital.com.au). Here are some tips:
Business Websites: Use your company name or an exact match for consistency. This makes it easy for your customers to find you online.
Personal Websites: Use your name unless you have a personal brand name. This helps build a personal connection with your audience.
.com vs .com.au: For Australian businesses targeting the local market, get a .com.au or .au domain. These domains signal to users and search engines that your business is local.
You can purchase domains easily through Squarespace at Squarespace DomainsSquarespace provides a seamless process for domain registration, ensuring that your domain is correctly linked to your website from the start.
Set Up Hosting
Squarespace provides both hosting and website building services, making it an all-in-one solution. Here's how to get started:
Sign Up: Visit Squarespace and sign up for an account. The signup process is straightforward and includes a 7 or 14 day free trial period.
Choose a Template: Select a template that fits your business style. Squarespace offers a variety of professionally designed templates tailored to different industries and purposes.
Connect Your Domain: If you already have a domain, you can connect it to your Squarespace account. Squarespace provides detailed instructions on how to transfer or connect your existing domain.
Design Your Website
Now, the fun part—designing your website! Squarespace offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that makes customisation easy.
Log In: Access your Squarespace dashboard. The dashboard is user-friendly, with all the tools you need to manage your site.
Customise Your Template: Use the built-in tools to add your logo, change colour schemes, and update fonts. You can also add custom CSS if you want to tweak the design further.
Add Pages: Create essential pages like Home, About, Services, Contact, and Blog. Squarespace makes it easy to organise your site structure and add new content.
User Friendly SEO
To ensure your site is found by Google and ranks competitively in search engines, follow these basic SEO best practices:
Use Keywords: Research and use relevant keywords throughout your site content (page titles and descriptions, headings and body content). Tools like Google Keyword Planner and Semrush can help you find the best keywords for your business.
Optimise Images: Add alt text to images and compress them for faster load times (under 500kb at least). This improves your site's accessibility and performance.
Create a Sitemap: Squarespace automatically generates a sitemap for you, but you can submit it to Google Search Console for better indexing. This helps search engines understand the structure of your site and index your pages correctly.
Add Local Schema: Squarespace does create some basic organisation schema markup but you can always improve on it by adding local business, FAQ’s and product schema…now this can get a bit more complicated and you will need to add some code, so think of it as more of a bonus and not a necessity.
Launch Your Website
After you've customised your site and optimised it for SEO, it's time to go live!
Review Your Site: Check all pages for errors or inconsistencies. Make sure all links work and that your content is free of typos.
Connect Your Domain: Ensure your domain is correctly connected to your Squarespace site. Squarespace provides easy-to-follow instructions for this process.
Publish: Hit the publish button, and your website is live! Once your site is live, you can continue to make updates and improvements.
Final Tips
Keep It Updated: Regularly update your content and images to keep your site fresh. This not only improves user experience but also helps with SEO.
Engage with Visitors: Use forms and CTAs to engage with your audience and generate leads. Squarespace offers a variety of tools to help you capture visitor information and build your email list.
Monitor Performance: Use tools like Google Analytics (integrated with Squarespace) to track your site's performance and make necessary adjustments. Analytics can provide valuable insights into how visitors interact with your site and where you can make improvements.
Would you rather focus on what you are good at and partner with a specialist Squarespace web design agency?
