Solution: This is Why Google Isn’t Indexing Squarespace Blog Posts
This blog post was published on July 14, 2023
**At the very end of this blog post are links to 3 other helpful blog posts that were published after this one and that were more helpful than this solution. I suggest starting there. I have found that there is no single solution to this problem, but by implementing the strategies outlined in the blog posts listed at the end of this post, I’ve had 100% success. In particular, manually requesting indexing every time I publish a new blog post is working every time. I hope this helps you too, and good luck! Let me know how it goes.
This has been a problem for a lot of people. I’ve been hearing about it for a few months now.
I’ve scoured the Squarespace forum and Google trying to find a solution to this problem to no avail. I’ve only discovered more people having the same problem.
Then I installed the SEOSpace plug-in that examines Squarespace websites and rates them for SEO ranking, providing excellent feedback and helpful suggestions to improve SEO.
Using the FREE version no less, I discovered that I was a victim of this Google indexing issue myself.
This discovery compelled me to contact Squarespace directly. After a few back-and-forth emails, I got the answer. (Their customer service is excellent by the way).
While I’d love to be able to blame Google, I’m afraid that the fault lies elsewhere.
In this blog post, I will show you the problem that I have on my own website as well as at least two other websites (clients of a fellow web designer) that have the exact same problem.
*Disclaimer: Google indexing is multi-factorial. There are many variables involved when it comes to indexing. If you're having issues, it could be something else. But definitely follow my instructions in this tutorial so you can either fix it or rule it out.
Check These 2 Things on Your Squarespace Blog Posts
I've been hearing and seeing a lot that Squarespace blogs aren’t being indexed by Google. Until I installed the plugin by SEOSpace, I didn't realize this I was also having that problem.
I investigated and discovered that there were even more people having this issue than I realized.
I got in touch with Squarespace, but I also did a little digging on my own, and I want to share with you what I found.
Step 1: Push Blog Posts to Google Search Console
When you go into the settings for blog posts, there's a share tab. I never use this tab, so I didn't notice that there's an option here to push to Google Search Console.
So I asked Squarespace, is it necessary to push your blog posts to Google Search Console in order to get them indexed. And the answer that I got is
this:
”The feature to push blog posts to Google Search Console is not required, but it automatically reindexes your site with Google Search Console to update their search results.”
If you haven't enabled this on your blog posts, that would be step one.
The other news that I got from Squarespace is this:
“It looks like your site is affected by an issue that we're seeing where the demo content is appearing in the image captions for image blocks in your blog posts. This has been causing issues with getting blog posts indexed, this issue is what would be causing that.”
Step 2: If Google Isn’t Indexing Your Blog Posts, Do This:
Go to your site map which is yourwebsite/sitemap.xml
Select Command+F or Control+F on your keyboard and type this into the search bar that pops up: “Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
This will bring you to the portion(s) of your sitemap where this text appears on your website. The text will be highlighted. If this is what’s causing an indexing issue for you, you’ll be able to see all the places where this is occurring.
Go to your website and locate the affected blog post(s)
Go to each of the image blocks with those posts and update the layout to the poster layout and delete the image captions.
Once the captions in the poster layout are deleted, you can then change the layout back to the inline layout and save your changes.
Once you remove those captions, go back to your sitemap and refresh it.
Once the sitemap updates and the demo content disappears, you can reindex the site and it should be indexed with Google.
UPDATE: If this doesn’t do the trick, you will need to manually index each blog post one at a time. See this blog post for those instructions.
*Another disclaimer: I am currently (7/14/23) in the midst of making these corrections to my website. I cannot attest to the success of this correction. That said, it’s a thing you must do on your own website regardless of its efficacy.
Squarespace Is Working On It
Squarespace has always provided the highest level of customer support with a positive attitude, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they’ll straighten this out.
We must remember that with all the amazing advances they’ve made, there are bound to be a few kinks to work out.
The important thing is that they don’t hide their heads in the sand when something goes wrong. They face it head-on and address it.
They made it clear to me that “This is a temporary workaround rather than a permanent fix for the issue. There are many variables that we need to test against before we can make changes, and we can’t guarantee changes for this issue in the immediate future.”
Did This Help You?
Are you someone who was affected by this? Did this tutorial help you fix it? Are you having any other issues? Drop your feedback in the comments 👇
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