Squarespace for Blogging: My Complete Guide (+ results)
In the summer of 2022, I started using Squarespace for blogging. And after 2+ years of writing online and growing three separate blogs, these are my results.
This is my complete guide and review of blogging with Squarespace.
In this post, I share my traffic results, key takeaways and top tips for building a successful Squarespace blog.
Because the truth is, growing a great website is less about the platform or software you’re using and more about your blog strategy and the quality of content you put out.
So trust me, your niche isn’t too saturated and it’s not too late. Blogging isn’t dead and anyone can do it.
Now let’s do this!
Hey, just a quick heads up that some links in this post may be affiliate links. This is at no extra cost to you, but helps me keep the lights on. Thanks for your support!
So, Why Squarespace?
Squarespace is a popular website builder and CMS (content management system) platform. But they’re not the only one — there are plenty of other options, such WordPress, HubSpot, Wix and more.
But here’s why I use Squarepace:
It’s easy to manage backend stuff — no updates or confusing plugin management
It’s easy to build the front end stuff — it’s a super intuitive design and there are lots of awesome templates
It’s a trustworthy platform — Squarespace started over 20 years ago and is constantly improving and innovating
I vibe with their whole aesthetic — their designs are minimalist, artistic and lifestyle-driven
It’s built for creatives and modern solopreneurs — solid business tools and infrastructure for managing leads and making money
It has powerful SEO capabilities for ranking posts and pages
Is Squarespace Good for Blogging?
Definitely! I’ve grown three personal sites and helped others grow their own blogs all using Squarespace .
SEO and blogging have matured and platforms like Squarespace can give you results just as well as WordPress or any other CMS.
As blogging continues to evolve, it’s becoming more apparent that what matters most right now is content quality, authenticity, firsthand experience and original perspectives.
Squarespace Blog Examples
Inside the Square
If you’re curious about leveling up your Squarespace customization, this site is definitely worth your time.
Inside the Square has a ton of awesome beginner-friendly resources, workshops and blog posts on making your Squarespace site unique with custom CSS programming.
travelingmitch
I love to travel, so I was excited about this one. travelingmitch is a travel blog that’s hosted on Squarespace. They write on all sorts of unique and local travel experiences.
It’s nice to know that you can start a travel blog successfully through Squarespace, especially since this niche has a lot of competition.
Beatriz Caraballo
Beatriz, or “B”, runs an awesome site on coding for Squarespace designers. She uses her programming chops to share tips, tricks and tutorials for customizing your site.
She has an online store with various plugins and customizations as well as masterclasses and a monthly membership. Personally, I’m psyched that I found her as a resource.
Sorelle Amore
I found Sorelle Amore through her YouTube channel. Simply put, I love what she does and her content is amazing.
She’s a true creative entrepreneur (from music and photography to finance and building a brand online).
She also uses Squarespace as her main brand hub and keeps her blog updated by turning her video content into short posts.
My Site :)
Okay, shameless plug, but I use Squarespace for all of my personal blogs. If you’re keen to explore what I’m building, here are my main hubs (besides this blog here):
Squarespace for Blogging (my results)
These are results from my travel site | *All data is sourced from Google Search Console |
These are results from my travel site | *All data is sourced from Google Search Console |
Months 0-4
My traffic was just under 300 clicks (woo!)
During my first few months, I wasn’t publishing regularly and I was hopping around topics, exploring the direction of my blog. So there wasn’t much blog growth. But this is normal (even if you have a clear idea for your content direction).
It takes a while to show up in Google — so 300 clicks is a solid start!
During the first 4 months, I published about 30 blogs in total.
Months 4-8
My traffic grew to almost 4K clicks (nice!)
Once I dialed in on the type of content I wanted to write about (and started publishing more consistently), traffic started growing. Go figure!
Over the next 4(ish) months, I narrowed my niche — which was a lot of lifestyle and self development posts — and wrote a lot of new articles.
I published about 50 more posts.
Months 8-12
My traffic was just over 14K clicks (solid!)
Over the next few months, I started to find my brand voice and stride (and my traffic numbers reflect this).
I finally started to hit more exciting numbers and milestones (like hitting my first monthly traffic goal of 5K visitors).
I published around 50 more posts during this time.
Months 12-16
My traffic was just over 32K (epic!)
In October 2023, I hit my first major milestone — getting over 10K monthly visits to my blog in a single month!
This is an exciting turning point in a blog’s life. It means your hard work is starting to really pay off and Google is starting to really trust you. Good stuff.
From month 12-16, I published another ~50 posts.
Months 16-20
My traffic was just shy of 65K (huzzah!)
Over the past four months, I’ve doubled my traffic again. And this is awesome! My blog’s growth trend is clearly on an upward trajectory.
At this point, I also started investing more time updating older posts, shifting my brand image and improving my content strategy.
Because honestly, for the first year or so, my blogging strategy was a bit unfocused. I probably could have grown this site quicker if I had more clarity. But hey, hindsight!
From months 16-20, I published another ~50 posts.
Months 20-24
My traffic was ~41K (ahh!)
*March 2024 Google core update + site rebrand
In March 2024, Google released a core update that took traffic away from many small bloggers. It’s been a one big ongoing debate (the state of Google, that is) in the blogging world ever since.
And unfortunately, my site got hit too. But (given my optimistic outlook), I took advantage of this traffic loss as a chance to rebrand my site and clean things up.
In April/May of 2024, I started my site rebrand, which included a site wide 301 to a new domain name, updating all of my old articles and doing a lot of content pruning.
From months 20-24, I published 22 posts.
Months 24-28
My traffic was over 74K
*Recovery from March 2024 updates and site rebrand
For months 24-28, I continued focus on my site rebrand, updating old articles and pruning more content. And all of these rebranding efforts have definitely paid off — my traffic has returned stronger than before.
Woo!
I’m also inching closer to my next personal goal of getting 1K visits per day (~30K visits per month).
I still have a lot of work to do, but here’s what I learned from losing my traffic due to an algorithm update:
Invest in traffic diversification and build an email list.
Having an email list and another traffic source (like Pinterest or YouTube) expands your reach and protects you from traffic disruptions.
From months 20-24, I only published 15 posts.
*It’s worth noting that I’ve been “deleting” (301 redirects to new sites) more articles than publishing new — and yet, my traffic is actually increasing. This is the power of updating old content and niching down.
How to Start A Squarespace Blog (4 steps)
1. Choose Your Template
The first step to growing a Squarespace blog is to choose your template and create a Squarespace account (if you haven’t yet).
So, which Squarespace template should you go with?
This is totally up to you and based on your personal preferences. Any design can work. And even if you already have a template started (without a blog), you can easily add a blog page to it.
Just click into your Pages under Website from your home sidebar menu, then click on the + icon next to Main Navigation and choose Blog (under Collections).
You can start exploring the different templates from Squarespace here.
2. Set Up Your Site
Your Squarespace blog is obviously going to have more than one page. And some of these pages are important to include for SEO and legal stuff. But again, don’t worry — it’s all simple to set up.
Personally, I recommend starting with a minimal site design and only include the essentials. You can always add more pages later on as you grow.
Here’s the anatomy of a great blog:
Add the core pages
About
Contact
Privacy policy
Affiliate disclosure
Terms & conditions
Blog
Homepage
Make your site easy to navigate
Optimize for a mobile experience
Look professional — have clear and consistent branding
Use your main brand keywords
Explore more:
➤ How to Customize Your Squarespace Blog
➤ Essential Squarespace Design Tips
3. Connect to Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free web service that lets you track and monitor your keywords and blog performance.
This is an essential tool to use if you’re a blogger. You can watch your traffic and request immediate indexing for all of your new posts (which can often take Google a while to do on its own).
Luckily, Squarespace makes this whole process super easy:
From your Home menu, click on the ⚙️ icon
Click on Marketing
Click SEO Appearance
Click on Google Search Keywords
Log in to your preferred Google account
Review permission and hit Allow
Wait 72 hours for data to populate
4. Write Kick-Ass Content
The success of your blog hinges on the quality of your content. Here’s what that means:
Good writing
Good UX
And don’t worry if this is starting to sound too technical. I cover everything you need to know later.
But just try to write from genuine firsthand experience and avoid long-running paragraphs or fluff. Make things scannable, authentic and honest. The more you write and publish, the better you’ll get.
Tip: Looking for inspiration for how to write and structure your blog posts? Start reading marketing blogs for ideas. They know the best SEO moves after all.
Growing A Successful Squarespace Blog (5 key tips)
1. Keyword Research + Content Strategy
Keyword research is like the “eat your vegetables” advice of the blogging world.
And having a good blog content strategy is like crafting the perfect balance of exercise, mindfulness and fun.
Put another way, these things are pretty freaking important for a happy and healthy website.
Here’s how I do things:
Brainstorm Ideas. Explore community forums, share your journey, share your solutions, use AI, turn ideas into queries using Google’s autosuggest.
Check Search Volume and Competition. Verify monthly search volume data for free using Ahrefs Keyword Generator or Semrush. Look for keywords with low authority sites ranking or content that’s skimpy (or just sucks).
Check search intent. For example, does “travel challenges” mean struggles or gamification? When in doubt, open up the currently ranking articles to see what topics they’re covering.
Organize. Your keywords should all link to each other in a logical way. This builds your personal brand and your topical authority. First define your blog categories (broader pillars) and then your main tags (more specific subtopics). Organizing topics in this way creates topic clusters and a clear site architecture.
Tip: Don’t ignore high-competition keywords completely. They can be great pillar posts to link to, which supports a solid internal linking strategy.
2. Content Quality + UX
Your blog’s success hinges on having epic content. So what does “good” content even look like? And how can we optimize for it?
Here are some ways to make your content awesome:
Speak from experience. Use your unique experiences when writing on topics — add different perspectives to the conversation.
Have good UX. UX (user experience) means your content is scannable and enjoyable to consume.
Know your audience. Create an audience avatar and always write with them in mind.
Add value. Value is how you build trust and credibility in your niche and with your audience.
3. SEO-ify Things
SEO (search engine optimization) is how you optimize your content and website using keywords (among other things). It’s a way for search engines like Google to understand, index and rank your stuff.
Luckily, you don’t need to be a tech wizard to do it. Plus, Squarespace makes it easy.
Here’s a quick checklist for how to do SEO with Squarespace:
Use your target keyword in the right places
In your main title (towards the front)
In the first paragraph
In your meta description
In the blog post URL (keep your slugs shorter)
Optimize your blog post structures
Look at currently ranking articles for inspiration
Look to the People also ask and Related searches sections of Google for related keywords and subtopic ideas to cover
Check that everything looks good on mobile
Compress images (I aim for <500 KB)
Add alt text to your images
Explore more:
➤ SEO for Bloggers (my complete guide)
4. Consistency / Mindset
“Blogging and SEO take time. So think in years, not in months.”
Focus on milestones along the way and set realistic blog goals and timelines for yourself. For example, try working towards publishing your first 100 posts. That’s a seriously awesome achievement!
Often, blogging success is less about niche, SEO skill or writing and more about your consistency, mindset and willingness to continue showing up.
Blogging is a long game, so set your expectations and get comfortable.
Here are some tips:
Connect with other bloggers
Think in years, not in months
Cultivate a growth mindset
Never stop skill-building
Be patient
Celebrate the small wins
Explore more:
➤ My 11 Biggest Blogging Mistakes
5. Use AI (but still write)
There are probably more questions than answers when it comes to the future of blogging, but AI is definitely one of the main elephants in the room.
Tools like ChatGPT or Claude can write full blog posts in just seconds — keyword optimized and all!
But are they any good?
They totally can be! Especially if you’re good at blog prompting. But as you probably know, it can be risky to just publish an AI-written article without fact checking or editing it or adding your unique spin.
So if you’re using AI, be sure to not rely on it 100%. Add your voice — it’s what the world needs! It’s also what Google wants (via their E-E-A-T ranking guidelines).
Beside writing, AI is also great for speeding up your workflows, research and optimization. So chances are, you’ll be using it somewhere at some point. And learning it is definitely better than avoiding it.
Explore more:
➤ My Favorite Blogging Tools for Beginners
Blogging On Squarespace (faqs)
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As many as you like! There’s no limit on the number of blog posts you can have on your blog page.
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Use categories and tags to organize a blog based on topic type and audience subset. To add these details, go to a blog post’s Settings tab and find them under Options.
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Adding a blog page is quick and painless! From your home sidebar menu, click on Pages under Website. Then, click on the + icon and choose Blog (under Collections).
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General Squarespace customization is pretty simple. You can add lots of elements while inside your blog post’s editor windows. Or you can change your whole website design under Design (via the paintbrush icon in the upper righthand corner of the editor window). Finally, there are lots of third-party plugins you can buy to customize things further. Check out my page of the top Squarespace tools and resources to know.
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Squarespace does have a collection of native SEO and blogging tools. For example, you have keyword analytics, advanced SEO settings and can easily connect with Google Search Console. Although, I also use my own tools.
You can read my full list of blogging tools here.
But if you’re just starting out, Squarespace gives you everything you need.
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There are cheaper options, but Squarespace makes things pretty affordable. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial. After that, their basic Personal plan starts at $25/month. But you can save by purchasing an annual plan, which would work out to just $16/month.
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Absolutely! Making money from blogging is less about the platform and more about strategy and content. Some ways to make money from blogging on Squarespace (or any platform) include:
Affiliate marketing
Sponsored posts
Selling your services
Ad placements
Creating a membership portal
Selling digital products
