Is Squarespace good for SEO? Why I moved my own site off it

The short answer: yes, Squarespace is good enough for SEO for most small businesses. It handles the basics well, and I still build client sites on it. I moved Demand Beacon off it because I sell SEO and AI search visibility, and I kept bumping into settings I couldn't change. If you're not hitting those walls, don't move.

Confession time. The agency that tells you how to fix your website had its own website on Squarespace until November 2026.

It's not exactly a scandal. Squarespace is a good platform, and plenty of my clients are on it. But when I finally sat down and audited my own site, the same way I'd audit a client's, I found problems I'd been telling other people to fix. Cobbler's kids, no shoes. You get it.

What I found when I audited my own Squarespace site

None of these were disasters. Together, for an SEO agency? Embarrassing.

• My homepage told Google I was a local business with no address. Squarespace automatically added business schema (the code that describes your business to Google), and mine had an empty address. Telling Google "I'm local!" and then giving it nothing to work with is worse than saying nothing at all.
• One space character broke a link from a good website. A stray non-breaking space in a blog post title leaked into the post's URL. Another site linked to that broken version, so a perfectly good backlink was pointing at a 404 page. One invisible character.
• Leftover template pages. A page I started and abandoned still had Squarespace's sample text ("It all begins with an idea") and was still sitting in my sitemap after I unpublished it. Yikes.
• A duplicate homepage. /home and / both existed. Squarespace handled it correctly behind the scenes, but it was clutter in my sitemap that I couldn't remove.
• Page titles that targeted nothing. That one's on me, not Squarespace.

Some of this was me. Some of it was the platform making decisions for me. The second kind is why I moved.

Why I moved

1. I couldn't control the code that talks to Google and AI

Squarespace writes your schema, sitemap and robots.txt file for you. Great, right up until you need them to say something specific.

I sell AEO, which means getting businesses cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers. So I wanted to decide exactly what my site tells those systems: which AI crawlers get in, how my services and prices are described, and how every page ties back to the business behind it.

Now my robots.txt welcomes the AI search crawlers by name, and every service page tells Google what the service is and what it costs. Try doing that from a Squarespace settings menu.

2. Speed

On Squarespace, Google's mobile speed test took 15.5 seconds to show the biggest thing on my homepage. Fifteen and a half seconds. Most people are gone long before that.

On the new site, the same test shows 2.0 seconds. Almost eight times faster, on the exact same slow-phone test. Overall performance score: 98 out of 100.

And it wasn't 2.0 on day one. The first test after launch said 4.0 seconds. The test told me exactly why: my headshot was set to load last, the design files made the browser wait before drawing anything, and the cookie pop-up covered half the phone screen. One afternoon of fixes later: 2.0. That's the part I love about owning the code. When a test tells you what's wrong, you can actually fix it.

Real visitors on real phones and laptops see the biggest element in about a third of a second (368 milliseconds), according to Cloudflare's visitor data. The slow-phone test is the worst case, and the worst case is now in Google's "good" range.

Website builders load the code for every feature they offer, whether you use it or not. A site built for one business only loads what that business actually needs.

3. I wanted to practice what I preach

I tell clients their site should be readable by AI, fast on phones and built around what buyers actually search for. That's a hard sell from a template I couldn't fully control.

4. I'm about to build these for clients

Starting January 1, I'm building more websites for clients. Two of them have sites that were built by somebody's friend's cousin. You know the kind. Nobody can edit them.

Before I put a client on this setup, I wanted to put myself on it first. I wouldn't trust a chef who won't eat their own cooking, and I don't expect you to trust an agency whose own website runs on workarounds.

Honestly, I did most of the work during the Broncos-Panthers game and while my son and husband were at the skatepark. So yes, this was a weekend project with a side of football.

What I moved to

The new site is a custom build hosted on Cloudflare, the company that already sits in front of a huge share of the internet's websites. In plain English:

• The pages are built ahead of time. No database to wait on when someone visits, so it's fast everywhere.
• Hosting costs $5 a month. Squarespace was $39 a month, or $468 a year, and it was about to renew on November 19. Good timing. (Funny enough, my domain is still registered through Squarespace. Please don't penalize me, Squarespace. I still love you, and I still use you for the clients you're best for.)
• I can still edit it myself. I update copy and publish blog posts in a simple editor called Keystatic. No code needed. And yes, I built both sites myself. The Squarespace version took me a week. This one took about four hours, or roughly one Broncos game.
• I own every line. If I want to change how Google reads a page, I change it. No support ticket, no workaround, no "sorry, that's not supported."

What moving cost me

Migrating a site is the most common way businesses lose their search traffic overnight. Old URLs that used to rank start throwing errors, and Google drops them. So before launch, I mapped every old Squarespace URL to its new home.

And it still wasn't perfect. A post-launch audit caught that every page on the new site was telling Google its "real" address ended in .html, and that address then redirected somewhere else. Tiny mistake. Exactly the kind that quietly holds a site back for months if nobody looks. I fixed it the same afternoon.

Lesson: check your technical SEO after launch, not just before. Yes, even if you're the SEO agency. Especially if you're the SEO agency.

When I'd still choose Squarespace

Every client is different, and so is what they need. Some need WordPress, some need Squarespace, some need Wix, and some need a custom build on Cloudflare. For a lot of businesses, Squarespace is the right call, and I'll happily build you one. Stay put if:

• You want to update everything yourself, design included, without calling anyone technical.
• Your site is basically a brochure: a few service pages, a contact form, maybe a blog.
• Most of your customers find you through Google Maps, referrals or social media.
• You'd rather pay a monthly fee than ever think about hosting.

Look at something else if:

• You sell visibility in AI search, or you need full control of your schema.
• You need serious SEO across lots of locations or hundreds of pages.
• Your site is slow, especially on phones, and it's costing you.
• You keep paying for plugins, features or workarounds to do things the platform just doesn't support.

Squarespace SEO: fix these before you think about moving

On Squarespace? Fix these first. Every one of them is doable on the platform:

1. Write a real page title and description for every page. Use your service and your town, not "Home" or "Services."
2. Fill in your business information in the settings, so the schema Squarespace generates actually includes your address and phone.
3. Delete pages you aren't using. Don't just disable them, or they hang around in your sitemap.
4. Check your URLs for weird characters or "-1" duplicates, and add 301 redirects under URL Mappings whenever you change one.
5. Connect Google Search Console and check the Pages report for errors once a month.

Not sure if your problem is the platform or the setup? Run our free SEO and AEO audit. It takes about 15 seconds. Thinking about a rebuild? Here's how we approach website builds, including when we'll tell you not to rebuild.

FAQ

Is Squarespace good for SEO?

Yes, for most small businesses. It handles the technical basics: mobile-friendly pages, sitemaps, clean URLs and secure hosting. The limits show up when you need full control of your schema, AI crawler settings or page speed.

Is Squarespace bad for AI search visibility?

Not by default. AI crawlers can read Squarespace pages just fine. What you can't do is fully control the structured data and crawler settings that help AI systems understand and cite your business.

Will moving off Squarespace hurt my SEO?

It can, if old URLs aren't redirected. Map every old URL to its new page with a 301 redirect before launch, then check Search Console for errors in the weeks after.

What's a good Squarespace alternative for SEO?

WordPress if you want flexibility and a huge ecosystem, Webflow if design control matters most, or a custom build if speed and full technical control matter most. The right answer depends on who's going to update the site.