You picked Squarespace as a web publishing platform because you wanted a website that was easy to design, build, and edit. But just having a website doesn't guarantee that people will actually visit it. A few marketing tactics here and there can go a long way to bring in new business through the Internet. Here's a brief 5-step Squarespace guide on marketing your website.

Step 1: Invest in Your Website Design

Your website is now often the first thing about you people encounter, and first impressions count as much as ever. Potential customers judge the quality of your services based on the quality of your website. It sounds odd, but even for completely unrelated services such as landscaping, a more aesthetically pleasing website will usually yield more customers. Take the time to invest in the design of your Squarespace website, or get to know a great Squarespace designer.

Step 2: Take the Time to Start a Blog

According to HubSpot's 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report, 81% of businesses now indicate their blog as "useful to critical for their business." If you're not blogging at least once a week, you're missing out on a potentially big source of new business. Download our free Squarespace blogging ebook if you're looking for a good strategic Squarespace guide on blogging.

Step 3: Connect Social Media to Your Brand

People are more likely to share and interact with your business through social media if you're actively blogging and updating your social media statuses. Make it easy for people to share your website content by installing sharing widgets on your Squarespace blogs. Simply copy and paste a little custom code in most cases to install sharing widgets for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Feedburner, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and even Pinterest. 

Step 4: Earn Extra Traffic from Google with SEO

Squarespace is always very happy to share how SEO-friendly the website platform is, and how you shouldn't need to invest extra SEO efforts as a result of their fantastic infrastructure. Website platform aside, it also takes a solid content strategy, a link/social outreach plan, and plenty of other Squarespace SEO tactics to maximize your potential for search traffic to your website. Invest a little efforts in your SEO strategy for additional traffic from search engines.

Step 5: Measure Your Marketing Efforts for Free

The Internet is the most measurable marketing medium yet thanks to tools such as Squarespace's onboard analytics platform. But to unlock even greater insights, install Google Analytics on Squarespace. The free web analytics platform allows you to track form fills, blog comments, and just about anything else. Don't fly blind when you can produce detailed reports to tell you which of your efforts are most successful. 

Done right, you'll take a few major leaps forward in your online marketing success if you implement the five steps in this little marketing Squarespace guide. What questions do you have about marketing your website on Squarespace? What do you think a good strategy should contain?