Squarespace SEO - Grow Your Interior Design Blog [31 Strategies]
If you’re looking for all the ways to promote your interior design Squarespace blog, then look no further. Whether it’s to help drive traffic to your business or the blog is the business, take a look at the tips below.
These strategies will work for any blog, so don’t hesitate to read if your blog is hosted on Wordpress. Only about 5% of the tidbits are actually Squarespace specific.
My Squarespace home and garden blog has grown tremendously in a year and a half, so I want to share the ways I’ve found success. Comb through the list to find new ideas or for a different take on an old idea that could help you out with your own blogging endeavors.
Content
Link Building
Search Engine Optimization
Imagery
Categories & Tags
Social Media
Email Marketing
Engage Your Audience
[This post contains affiliate links. Click here to read my full disclosure.]
New to Squarespace? You can sign up for a free trial, and I can even get you a discount! Use code GREENHOUSE10 to save 10% off your first year.
Content
If you’ve been blogging for your business for any length of time, you likely know that long form, quality content is what it takes to stand out in search rankings these days. Long gone are the days of hitting “publish” on a quickly produced post and seeing much traffic from it.
No my friends, there’s waaay too much competition these days. More than 7 million new blog posts are published each and every day. (Letter.ly) Kind of mind-boggling, right? So needless to say, quality content is queen. (Orbit Media Studios)
Let’s take a look at some positive outcomes from producing quality, long-form content.
Opportunities From In-Depth Content
Some bloggers’ strategy is to write short posts and publish often - daily even. I know of a successful home and garden blogger who does this, and it has clearly worked for her.
However, I honestly can hardly write a post under 2k words. I’m a girl who loves the deep dive, and what I’ve found is that by writing high quality, in-depth posts, I’ve been sought out and linked to without any additional effort, even as a new blog.
So while short, frequent posts can definitely get you there, I want to point out some additional benefits of fewer, longer posts. After all, I don’t think you end up writing any less if you’re producing short posts often versus a single, long post once every week or even every couple weeks.
Case in point - less than 4 months into blogging, I posted How to Create A Mood Board For Interior Design. I was just documenting my design process and I had to get it off my chest so to speak. Keyword research? Never heard of it (at that time).
Because it was so in depth though, Google ended up ranking it #1 for certain keywords. As a result, LinkedIn Learning found it and reached out to me, and I ended up signing on to author a mood board course for them.
Had I written a short post on creating a mood board (or three) it’s unlikely I would have been found by LinkedIn because a short post is much less likely to rank highly.
Organic Traffic Via Social Media Traffic
To drill down just a bit further on this - I suspect many bloggers had success in the past with short articles due to high Pinterest traffic.
It wasn’t uncommon for many bloggers in the design space to get 50% to 80% of their traffic via Pinterest. However, Pinterest’s algorithm has changed vastly in the last year and a half, and most bloggers’ Pinterest traffic has seen a serious drop, and has become very unreliable. For this reason, I recommend focusing on organic SEO to generate traffic.
My numbers are flipped - I get about 82% of my home and garden blog traffic via good old fashioned organic search. I had no choice really - Pinterest’s algorithm started to get wonky just as I started my blog (early 2020).
I see it as a blessing in disguise though since organic traffic is more stable and converts better than Pinterest or other social media traffic.
Why? Because when people do a deliberate search, they are actively looking for a solution to a problem. This is different from Pinterest or Instagram where if they do happen to click through, it’s more likely because they ran into something that piqued their interest but probably aren’t that serious about.
If you need help learning SEO, I highly recommend going to my Tools page and scrolling down to the Blogging & Affiliate Marketing section. Debbie Gartner’s courses are a fantastic help with blogging-related SEO. She’s an SEO expert and has a marketing MBA from U Chicago to boot, so she knows her stuff.
Content Connections
Part of creating good content involves linking to related, quality content for SEO (more on that below). It signals to Google you’re informed about your subject matter and familiar with other relevant content.
When you link, it’s a great idea to send a quick email letting the author of that post know you liked their information so much you linked to it in your post. Include a link to your own post so they can check it out if they want.
This puts you on this other blogger’s radar, and every once in a while, they will include a link back to your own site from their post, which provides additional SEO juice for you. Who knows, this could be the start of a blogging relationship, and you never know what might come of it down the road.
Link Building (a.k.a. backlinks)
Link building is a core component of search engine ranking. Search engines like Google take note of the quantity of high-quality inbound links to your site.
A back link from a high authority site to your content signals to Google that your content must be good because this other site has linked to it. Build up enough of these back links and Google will take notice by increasing your own rankings.
Let’s take a look at some strategies for link building:
Guest Posting
Guest posting is where you write a post for another blogger’s site, ideally a blogger with a bigger reach than your own. That blogger then links to your site via the post. To be honest, I’m not a big fan.
I’ve never done it nor do I accept guest posts (so far). However, it’s been a traditional recommendation as a way to build back-links, and there are many companies who offer their clients services finding guest posting opportunities.
Many bloggers still pursue guest posting, but I say proceed with caution. It’s time consuming, so consider your ROI (return on investment).
Guest posting is a ton of extra work - you have to find a blog that even accepts guest posts, pitch to them, get it approved, and only then can you write the article.
And you get no SEO benefit other than that one backlink and any traffic that comes your way.
On top of that, the value Google places on guest-post links is in question with Google claiming they’ve devalued guest-post links for years. So guest posting can be helpful, I’d just say be mindful of the time you invest into it.
Backlinks From In-Depth Content
A more passive way of generating backlinks is through in-depth, long-form content. Longer blog posts have up to 77.2% more inbound links than shorter ones, according to 2020 blogging statistics. (Source: Backlinko)
So many bloggers bend over backwards to guest post as a means of getting backlinks. And as I said above, it’s a lot of extra work.
Instead, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover that during my home and garden blog’s first year, a handful of my posts that ranked well on Google were discovered by others who then linked to them from their own sites because they liked the content and it supported their own posts.
No extra work required!
HARO
HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out, and it’s my preferred method of actively building backlinks.
You can sign up for free to receive daily HARO inquiries. This is where journalists writing an article need expertise on a particular subject, so they post a HARO inquiry. Then industry experts (including small business owners and bloggers) can submit their responses.
If a reporter includes your response, they will cite you and include a link to your website.
This is a fantastic way to build back-links from sometimes huge, nationally-known sites and news media outlets.
It will also drive some traffic to your site.
You can also add their names to your “glory bar” :) which helps builds your own authority. (Go here for my girl Paige Brunton’s full tutorial on creating your own rotating logos bar.)
I look at HARO inquiries most days and respond to ones where I think I’m a good fit. If you look at the bottom of my home and garden landing page, you’ll see various publications listed. Almost all of them came from submitting HARO inquiries.
SEO
Good old fashioned SEO is where it’s at to drive quality traffic that converts. SEO is constantly changing, but in my opinion, SEO done well offers the best return on investment for your efforts.
While SEO is a massive topic unto itself, we’re going to touch on some highlights here, beginning with a couple points for consideration:
Not All Traffic Is Created Equal
To reiterate what I wrote above re short blog posts and Pinterest, traffic to your site via organic search converts better than social media traffic. Those who are searching for specific information are deliberately doing so rather than bumping into your information because it happened to cross their social feed.
More to the point, search on desktop converts better than mobile searches. Again, this is a deliberate “sit-down” attempt to seek out information. Therefore, if the searcher finds what they’re looking for, you have a higher % chance of converting them into a subscriber, customer etc. than if they’re searching via mobile.
Again, for top-notch SEO strategy, check out Debbie Gartner’s SEO courses.
My aim here is to encourage you to consider these points when thinking about how best to allocate your time.
SEO Basics - Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
SSL - Secure Sockets Layer, is the global standard in security technology that enables encrypted communication between a web browser and a web server.
It authenticates the identity of the website (this guarantees visitors that they’re not on a bogus site)
It encrypts the data that’s being transmitted, which means your visitors have a secure connection throughout your website.
Google shows preference to secure sites in rankings, and some browsers (like Google) warn users when they try to enter a non-secure website.
Fortunately, SSL is automatic with Squarespace (unlike Wordpress):
“All domains correctly added to your Squarespace site are automatically protected with free SSL certificates to improve security. SSL secures connections and prevents hackers from impersonating you or stealing visitors' information.” - Squarespace
Submit Your Sitemap To Google
What’s a sitemap you ask? It’s basically a list of list of all of the pages on your site, their URLs, and their last updates. This helps Google because it allows it to find and index every page on your site, get an understanding of how often pages are updated, and figure out how often they should check back for changes.
Again, Squarespace makes this easy because Squarespace automatically generates a sitemap for you (Wordpress does not). However, you do need to submit the sitemap to Google, and I’d recommend doing the same for Bing.
To do this, you’ll first need to connect your Google Search Console account. You’ll want to do this anyway so you can see your Google Analytics at the click of a button from your site. Again, Squarespace makes this oh so easy!
In the Home Menu, click Analytics.
Click Search Keywords.
Click Connect in the panel's pop-up, log into the Google account you want to connect to your site, click Allow.
To submit your Sitemap:
In your Google Search Console, click Search Keywords,
Then click “Add a new sitemap”, enter your sitemap URL, and click Submit.
And voila - Google will index your site! (Read more about Squarespace & sitemaps)
Outbound Links (a.k.a. external links)
In the Content Connection section, I mentioned how you need to include relevant outbound links (also called external links) in every post to signal to Google that you’ve done your research.
Why is this important? Think about it, any any kind of research (even term papers) you need to cite your sources. And not just cite your sources, in scientific research, you have to demonstrate you’ve read the other relevant peer-reviewed work and therefore aren’t working in a knowledge vacuum.
It’s the same concept with outbound links. They’re relevant for many blog posts (there are exceptions - a DIY post for example). So outbound links help build your authority, strengthen your knowledge base, and build trust.
Try to include 3 or more in every post.
Read more about outbound links here. (See how I did that? :)
Imagery
Let’s exit the tech weeds now and move on to something more fun - imagery! Images are great for SEO because they provide your readers with a richer, visual experience. This encourages visitors to linger on your page longer which tells Google “this is a quality post”.
Images also provide opportunity for what’s called “Alt Text.” Alt-text is the description that appears either below your image or appears if the image is unable to load. Alt text is used by accessibility screen-reading tools to describe images to visually impaired readers.
Alt text is important for SEO because it allows search engines to better crawl and rank your website
Based on your alt text, Google might also display your images under Google’s “Images” category for a search, which is yet another way of getting your content discovered.
This is especially important if you work in a visual niche like, ahem, design. People often search via Images rather than regular search.
Be sure to add your alt text to every image you post! Image | Greenhouse Studio
Categories & Tags
Categories and tags are a means of organizing your site content. They’re used for blog posts. They help Google understand what your content is about.
Categories refer to your site’s broad, main topics. Generally, have no more than about 6 categories for your entire site. Use no more than 1 or two per post.
Tags can be a lot more specific and numerous.
If you had a home and garden website and created a post on Growing Christmas Cactus, you could create a category called “Indoor Plants” and tags of “Succulents” and even “Holiday.”
While categories and tags don’t play a major role in SEO, every little bit helps, and according to this interview with Google, they can be a way to help Google discover more web pages about similar topics on your site.
Social Media
I’m sure this isn’t news to you, but repurposing your blog content for social media is where it’s at. It’s a must-do to promote your blog and grow your reach. Let’s look at a few specifics:
Your Social Links Placement
Make sure your social links are prominent on your site. I can’t tell you how often I’m looking for someone’s socials and I can’t easily find them.
No excuses here because again, Squarespace makes linking your social accounts a snap. Just connect them with a click and then add the Social Block wherever you want to place them on your site.
They’re auto-populated in your header (top navigation).
Place them in your footer with the social links block.
Facebook Auto-Post
Since Squarespace allows you to auto-post to Facebook when you publish, be sure to press that button! I always get a handful of views and engagements that way. Squarespace also allows you to insert a separate Facebook-sized image if you want.
This is a great ROI since it takes 1 second to hit that auto-post button from your Squarespace Blog Page panel.
Facebook Groups
If you haven’t done so, join Facebook groups related to your blog. Then participate in a genuinely helpful way when people have questions about an area of your expertise.
If it’s allowed in the group, you can send a link to a post when appropriate. For example, I’m in numerous house plant groups. When someone has a question about fiddle leaf figs, I jump in and share what I know, and I’ll finish with a helpful link to one of my fiddle leaf fig posts.
Pinterest is a prized source of traffic for many bloggers, depending on your niche. Many in the home, garden, crafting space etc. rely heavily on it for traffic, sometimes prioritizing it over SEO.
While Pinterest has been a verrrry fickle friend the past year and half with algorithm quirks galore, (serious understatement) it’s still important to pin when you publish a new post, at the very least.
Again, just like Facebook, Squarespace allows you to auto-post to Pinterest. Either do it then or create a pin from Pinterest directly as I do. Don’t have time to make pins? I recommend Canva's free ready-made templates.
The first and last image in all of my posts is a Pinterest image with the post title. This makes it easy for anyone to pin, and I even include a CTA (Call To Action) at the bottom inviting them to pin it.
Squarespace allows some social accounts to be auto-posted when you publish your posts. Just hit the button and go!
Pinterest for “Non-Pinterest” Niches
Even if you aren’t in a niche you consider to be of interest to Pinterest users, you should consider creating a pin-type graphic for each of your posts.
For example, I’ve noticed that almost none of the big digital marketers create “pinnable” graphics for their posts. Yet there are soooo many creative entrepreneurs haunting Pinterest who would devour their content.
I’m always frustrated when I read one of their great posts and want to share it on Pinterest, but I have to pin some wrong-aspect ratio, no-post-title-having, random graphic.
No one will recognize it for the digital marketing gold that it is, so I’m essentially pinning it for myself. (Neil Patel, I’m looking at you.)
I recommend you create a “pinnable” graphic for each blog post using Pinterest best practices. Couple it with a CTA (call to action) to pin it.
Repost your blog posts and other content to LinkedIn. You can even post your videos automatically from YouTube.
I’m surprised by how many views I get from LinkedIn for my home and garden blog content. Honestly, I think the LinkedIn crowd is grateful to see a post on something that’s not directly related to their corporate jobs and might even be considered fun. That’s my theory anyway, and I’m sticking to it!
I think LinkedIn is an under-utilized means of promoting blog content.
You can generate multiple Instagram posts from a single blog post. Pull out key concepts and pair them with beautiful imagery or a well designed Instagram template to highlight your information.
If graphic design isn't your thing, I highly recommend Canva. It really does make it fun and easy with all of their done-for-you templates.
I post minimally on Instagram as I choose to focus my time on SEO, but I use Tailwind social scheduler to do so. Instagram posting on the fly on any kind of a regular basis just wouldn’t happen much around here. Instead I use Tailwind to batch-work posts.
Whether you post manually or through a scheduler, be sure to use ALL 30 hashtags to help grow your reach.
A peek at Tailwind’s Instagram publishing back end. Instagram is a minor part of my blogging strategy, but it wouldn’t happen much at all without Tailwind!
TikTok
So far, I’ve pushed back against my intermittent TikTok fomo, but for many, it’s a great platform. I simply don’t have the time to create a bunch of short videos - the ROI just isn’t there for me.
When I do video, it’s long and detailed, so in other words, created for Youtube. They don’t use the same aspect ratio, so I can’t really repurpose Youtube content for TikTok or Instagram.
If TikTok’s part of your strategy though, just like Instagram, you can pull out key concepts from your blog posts and shoot quick TikTok videos around them. Then you can easily repurpose them on Instagram as Reels, Stories, and Highlights since they share the same aspect ratio.
Email Marketing
OK email marketing is clearly a whole subject unto itself, but we’ll scratch the surface here. Basically, nothing converts better than your email list and nothing belongs to you but your email list and website.
For all the Instagram likes, most barely see any traffic move off of Insta onto their blog where they have a chance for a conversion or sale. Instagram (and every other platform) wants to keep you on their platform. Instagram currently requires 10k followers to be able to use affiliate links.
Plus, any algorithm change, account upset, or hack, and you can see serious traffic loss or be shut down altogether. (How many have seen that happen on Pinterest the last year and a half?!) I just heard about another design blogger who’s Insta account was hacked, and the hackers deleted all 65k of her followers. Heartbreaking.
So it’s all about the list. Your email list, that is.
Most bloggers would agree that email marketing and SEO traffic should be a blogger’s highest priority. Again, they have a higher rate of conversion and they belong to you, not some faceless corporation, so you have more control. If you’re operating a service-based business, your strategies to find clients will be somewhat different, and Instagram may be a key part of that strategy.
Email Marketing Service Providers
In case you need an email marketing service provider, I use Flodesk on my home and garden blog.
Flodesk is still in beta mode until Oct 31, 2021, so you still have a chance to sign up and only pay $19/month FOREVER, regardless of list size.
Flodesk has the most beautiful email designs out there - no other provider comes close.
For this site, I’ve decided to use ConvertKit.
ConvertKit is one of the most powerful email marketing service providers out there used by many top online entrepreneurs and bloggers.
ConvertKit has everything you need for growing a large, conversion-driven subscriber list.
An image from one of my Flodesk emails. Flodesk has the most visually rich emails of any email marketing provider.
Lead Magnet Idea #1 - downloadable PDF
Why would someone sign up for your email list you ask? They probably won’t unless you offer something in exchange.
Literally no one wakes up saying “Today, I’d love to give away my email address because my inbox is looking kind of sparse!” You need to give them a compelling reason to do so. The most popular way is the lead magnet, where in exchange for providing their email address, they receive something helpful related to your blog.
Good design is always important, I don’t care what industry or niche you’re in, so if this isn’t your forte, again, check out Canva's free and easy-to-use templates.
If you’d like to check out my lead magnet for this blog, click here. For my home and garden blog, click here.
A peek at part of my home and garden lead magnet pdf.
Lead Magnet Idea #2 - Resource Library
Another popular idea you can build upon over time is access to a resource library. This is where you create a password-protected page where your subscribers have exclusive access to resources you’ve compiled just for them.
Fortunately, it’s super easy to create a resource library in Squarespace.
Lead Magnet Idea #3 - Quizzes
Another popular lead magnet is a quiz. People enjoy quizzes if it gives them insight about a subject they’re interested in or helps solve a problem.
The double duty of a well crafted quiz is then you have data from your subscriber list about what their concerns and interests are. Take this data and funnel it into your content.
If you want to create a quiz, I recommend Cindy Bidar's short course Money-Making Quiz Funnels . It's to-the-point, actionable, and reasonably priced.
Pop-Ups
You’ve created your lead magnet, so now it’s time to start your email list. This means you need to add strategically placed sign-up forms:
Embed at least one sign-up form in each blog post.
Place another on your home page, ideally above the fold
Embed a pop-up form.
A note on pop-up forms - they can sometimes be controversial. The best ones are “exit upon intent” which means as you’re about to leave a page, then the form appears. These are the least annoying. I don’t like it when I land on a page and a pop-up immediately appears asking for my email before I’ve even had a chance to check out the site.
ConvertKit provides “exit-upon-intent” pop-ups.
Flodesk doesn’t yet offer “exit-upon-intent,” but does have time delay settings.
For the record - I get 80% of my email sign-ups from my pop-up forms.
A Flodesk pop-up form on the Greenhouse Studio home and garden blog.
Nurture Sequence
What the heck’s a nurture sequence? A nurture sequence is a set of automated emails a subscriber receives after opting in to your email list.
It’s purpose is to build trust. Once a reader signs up for your list, take them through a nurture sequence to facilitate the “like, know, and trust” factor of you and your blog.
There are formulas galore for how to make the perfect nurture sequence. A general recommendation is 3 to 7 emails sent over a series of days to warm up your new subscribers and try to forge a connection with them.
Your goal is to make a positive connection with your subscribers. That way when you do try to make an offer to them, which could be during the sequence itself, you will hopefully have a better conversion rate than if someone just signed up for your freebie and never heard from you again until your next post.
One of my nurture sequence emails in Flodesk’s backend. On the right are a few of their many layout options.
Engage With Your Audience
As your blog grows, your audience will want to comment, ask questions etc. This is great! Your whole goal is to build an engaged audience, so whether it’s a blog post, social media comment, you should be engaging right back.
I respond to every comment I get. A response doesn’t have to be lengthy, but it’s important to acknowledge that they took the time to comment.
Don’t take it from me - I don’t have nearly so many comments that it’s a chore. (I’d be happy if that were the case!) Digital marketer Neil Patel on the other hand has a ginormous audience and runs a multi-million dollar agency to boot, and yet his goal is to respond to as many comments as he can.
If Neil can do it, we can do it.
Also, another great way to network with other bloggers and people in your industry is to take time to comment on their posts. And don’t just say “Great article!”, take the time to write out something thoughtful that encourages engagement back from the author.
Finally, comments add to your post word length, which can also benefit your ranking.
Blog comments are a great way to engage with your audience. I love all the questions I get. Plus, they add to your overall page length which can help your post to rank.
Conclusion
I recently heard a great saying which is, “You can’t outsource the push ups.”
Squarespace greatly simplifies blogging and website building, allowing you to spend more time on content creation and business building. But it’s up to us to do all we can to create great content and promote it. I wish we could outsource the pushups. :)
What do you think of this list? What would you add to it that’s working well for you? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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