Search engine optimization (SEO) is a big part of my life. Making a few small changes to your website here and there can result in a significant and real boost in website traffic. And even though Squarespace goes a long way to address many of these factors, there are still a few settings in Squarespace that can affect your search engine rankings. Today we’ll take a look at the greatest single opportunity to boost your SEO efforts on Squarespace.

What’s the single greatest SEO change you can make to your Squarespace blog? In short, it’s the Optimize Title Ordering setting within your Squarespace website settings. Simply navigate to Website Management -> Website Settings -> Search/Indexing. Scroll down to the Search Engine Parameters section and check the box in the Optimize Title Ordering option. Mission accomplished. Read on to see why this simple change was so important.

Why are Page Titles so Important?

There are over 200 individual factors that search engines such as Google look at when they’re deciding which page should appear in the coveted #1 spot in the search results. The meta page title is generally recognized as the strongest opportunity on a given page to influence where the page shows up on in the results. Let’s take a closer look at this important field.

Your meta page title is the text that makes up the blue links in the search results. It's also the text you see in each web browser tab. Much like a title of a document or a file, the meta page title tells Google what it can expect to find on each page of your website. As a result, it plays a big part in the search engine optimization process.

The Effect of Optimizing Page Titles

In general, search engines only look at the first ~60 characters of the page title. When your page titles are not optimized, your brand name ends up taking up a large portion of your page title. This can fail to send the appropriate signals to Google regarding the topic of your page.

This brand takes up the first third of the page title in the search results.

In addition, Google bolds instances of keywords in the search results when they match a user's search query. People tend to click on results that are bolded more than results that aren't.

Bolded search results increase clicks to your web pages.

Optimizing your page title places the individual page's title prior to your brand's name, giving your keyword-rich page titles a chance to tell search engines what your page is all about. This setting also increases the chances that parts of your page title will be bolded for users. It's clear that the Optimize Page Titles is a great setting to utilize within Squarespace's website management settings.

It's nice that most of the on-page factors of SEO are addressed by Squarespace, but it's also good to change a setting here and there if it can make a big difference in traffic. What easy SEO tips have you discovered on Squarespace? If you use a platform other that Squarespace, are there non-platform-specific SEO tips you can suggest?