Hidden SEO features in Squarespace most site owners never use

Squarespace has more SEO control than most owners realize, but the useful settings are spread across several panels. The ones worth your time are the site-wide title formats, the SEO tab on every page and collection item, URL mappings for 301 redirects, the Hide page from search results toggle, the Search keywords panel that connects Google Search Console, AI-generated alt text and descriptions, social sharing images, the Crawlers setting for AI bots, and code injection for custom schema on Core plans and up. Here is where each one lives and why it matters, based on Squarespace's help center as of late 2026.

Our Squarespace for small business post covers whether the platform fits you. This one is for owners already on it, like our Yoast SEO hidden features post for WordPress. Paths are for version 7.1 sites on a computer.

Start in the SEO/AI Visibility panel

Where: the SEO/AI Visibility panel in your site dashboard (on version 7.0, SEO settings sit under Marketing).

This panel holds SEO Settings, where you control titles and the homepage description, plus an SEO Score section that flags missing SEO descriptions and alt text. Squarespace's SEO checklist calls this the SEO report tool.

Title formats: fix every title at once

Where: SEO/AI Visibility panel, then SEO Settings, then the Home, Pages or Items tab under Search appearance.

Each tab has an SEO Title Format field built from variables: %s is your site title, %p is the page's SEO title (or page title if none is set), and %i is the SEO title of a collection item such as a blog post, product or event. You can also add custom text after a separator.

Why it matters: the format controls the title tag for every page, plus browser tabs and social shares. Put the page name first and the brand last so the words people search for lead the result.

The SEO tab on every page and item

Where: Pages panel, hover over a page, click the gear icon, then the SEO tab. For blog posts and events, open the item and use its SEO tab (on 7.1, click the gear icon after Edit). For products, double-click the product and use the SEO tab.

Here you set a custom SEO title and description and see a search preview. The homepage has neither field; it uses the SEO site description from SEO Settings.

Squarespace recommends 50 to 300 characters for descriptions and notes that search engines usually cut them around 160. One lesser-known detail: if a blog post or event has no SEO description, search engines fall back to the excerpt, and products fall back to the product description. So a sloppy excerpt can become your meta description without you noticing.

URL slugs, post URL format and URL mappings

Where: URL slug is in the General tab of page settings. Blog post URLs are in the post's Settings, Content tab. The site-wide Post URL format is in the Blog preferences panel. Redirects live in Developer tools, then URL mappings.

Set the blog's Post URL format to use the post title rather than dates or random strings.

The part most owners miss: Squarespace does not redirect a URL when you change its slug. Old links simply break. Add a line in URL mappings for every change:

/old-url -> /new-url 301

Use 302 for temporary moves. The field holds about 2,500 lines, runs top to bottom, and cannot redirect the homepage, image or file URLs, or most URLs with ?, & or #. A 301 redirect sends visitors and ranking signals to the new page, which is the key step in redesigning a website without losing SEO.

Hide pages from search the right way

Where: page settings, SEO tab, Hide page from search results.

This toggle adds a noindex tag and removes the page from your sitemap while keeping it public. Use it for thank-you pages and thin utility pages. Hiding a collection page also hides every item in it.

Homepages and individual collection items have no toggle, so you cannot hide one blog post or one product without hiding the whole collection. On Core plans and up you can add a robots noindex meta tag through the page's header code injection instead, but that version leaves the page in the sitemap. Blog tag and category pages are visible to search by default, and the blog page's SEO tab lets you hide them.

Your sitemap and robots.txt are automatic, and fixed

Where: yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. There is no settings screen for it.

Squarespace builds and updates your XML sitemap on its own, usually within an hour of a change. It leaves out disabled, hidden and password-protected pages. You cannot edit it.

The robots.txt file is shared by all Squarespace sites and cannot be edited either. It blocks internal and duplicate URL patterns such as /search, ?format= and ?tag=. If Search Console warns that some URLs are blocked by robots.txt, Squarespace says that is normal.

Connect Search Console from the Analytics panel

Where: Analytics panel, then Search keywords, then Connect.

This links your site to Google Search Console and fills the Search keywords panel with the queries that bring visitors in. Data takes about 72 hours to appear. Connecting does not submit your sitemap, so open Sitemaps in Search Console and submit it yourself. Verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools too. If pages still are not showing up, see why your website doesn't rank.

Squarespace's AI SEO tools

Where: SEO/AI Visibility panel, SEO Score section (Add metadata, Add alt text) and AI Visibility.

Squarespace AI can draft SEO descriptions and image alt text for you, then you review, edit or regenerate before saving. It only works in Fluid Engine on version 7.1, and you need a Brand Identity set up first. Squarespace itself warns that the output may not be accurate, so treat it as a first draft.

The AI Visibility tool checks how often ChatGPT and Gemini mention your site for prompts you choose. It needs version 7.1, works in English only, and uses AI credits that vary by plan.

The Crawlers setting

Where: Settings panel, then Crawlers.

The Block known artificial intelligence crawlers box is unchecked by default. Checking it updates your robots.txt with rules for 26 named AI bots, including GPTBot and ClaudeBot. Leave it unchecked if you want to be cited in AI answers. We cover the tradeoffs and related files in llms.txt, schema and Open Graph.

Alt text and file names

Where: for image blocks, edit the block, Content tab, Image alt text. Product images use Edit metadata. Gallery blocks use the image title.

Alt text helps screen readers and image search. The hidden detail: in most places, missing alt text falls back to the file name, so IMG_4021.jpg becomes your alt text. Rename files before uploading, or in the Asset library. Squarespace's checklist also suggests keeping images under 500 KB, which ties into improving website speed.

Social sharing images

Where: the Social Sharing panel for the site-wide logo, and the Social tab in page, post, product and event settings for per-item images.

Without a per-page image, shares show the site-wide social sharing logo. Set specific images on your most shared pages and posts.

Structured data and code injection

Where: automatic for built-in types. Custom code goes in the Code Injection panel (site-wide header and footer) or page settings, Advanced, Page Header Code Injection.

Squarespace automatically generates six schema markup types: Blog post, Event, Local business, Organization, Product and Website. You cannot edit or remove them. To add something else, such as FAQ or Service markup, you paste JSON-LD into code injection. That needs a Core, Plus or Advanced plan (or some legacy plans). Basic and Personal plans cannot use it. Test it in Google's Rich Results Test.

Small settings people forget

• Custom 404 page: Pages panel, System Pages, 404 Page. Create a page in the Not linked section and select it.
• Heading tags: Heading 1 through 4 map to H1 through H4. Use them in order, not for styling.
• Business Information: Settings, Selling, Business Information holds phone, email, location and hours. It only displays on some 7.0 templates, so also build a contact page with your address and a map, as Squarespace's checklist recommends, and keep it matching your Google Business Profile. See NAP+W consistency for local SEO.
• Language and region: sets built-in text language and date and currency formats. For multilingual sites, Squarespace points to its Weglot integration.
• SSL: confirm the SSL panel is set to Secure. Squarespace warns that sites without it may rank lower.
• Canonical tags: Squarespace sets these itself, for example telling Google to index example.com rather than example.com/home, and pointing tag and category pages to their static URLs. The help center does not document a per-page canonical tag override.

What about AMP?

Squarespace's discontinued features list shows Accelerated Mobile Pages were removed in February 2025, so ignore older guides that say to turn AMP on.

Quick reference

What Squarespace still can't do well

You cannot edit robots.txt or the sitemap. You cannot noindex or hide a single blog post or product. There is no documented canonical override, and the built-in schema cannot be edited. Changed slugs never redirect on their own, so redirects depend on you remembering. Custom schema needs a Core plan or higher. The help center does not document a way to publish an llms.txt file. And you have little control over how scripts load, which limits speed tuning. For sites where these gaps matter, see how the platforms compare in WordPress vs Squarespace vs Wix.

The short version

Set your title formats, fill in SEO descriptions and alt text, add a URL mapping whenever a slug changes, hide thin pages, connect Search Console and submit your sitemap. Want a second set of eyes on your site? Start with a free website audit.

Sources

All from the Squarespace Help Center:

• SEO checklist
• Change how page titles appear in search engines, browser tabs, and social shares
• Page settings
• Adding SEO descriptions
• URL slugs
• URL mappings
• Hiding your site from search results
• How blog tags and categories appear in search
• View your site map
• Understanding Google SEO emails and console errors
• Verifying your site with Google Search Console
• Using Squarespace AI
• Optimize your site for AI-powered search engines
• Request that AI models exclude your site
• Add alt text to images for accessibility and SEO
• Add social sharing images
• How does Squarespace optimize my site for search results?
• Customize parts of your site with code injection
• Creating a custom 404 page
• Heading tags and Squarespace
• Business Information settings
• Language and region settings
• Discontinued features