
Squarespace has always been a complicated platform for bloggers—that’s just the reality. In fact, my woefully out of date series about building a Squarespace blog is still one the most popular pieces of content on this site.
But what does Squarespace’s new 7.1 platform mean for bloggers?
What do we mean by blogging with Squarespace 7.1?
The reason I set these types of sites aside as a distinctive category is that the website goals are different than someone who’s blogging for their business, which is a different situation. The infrastructure needs are different. The blog is a critical part of that type of site, but it’s not THE site. It’s a subtle, but important, delineation.
If your primary website purpose is blogging, will Squarespace 7.1 work for you?
Squarespace 7.1 has made some fantastics strides in terms of layout for blogs. I’d say that unless you need a very customized, granular layout (and in that case WordPress is likely a better solution), you’ll be much happier with the out of the box options on 7.1 versus the old Brine template layouts available in 7.0. They just look slicker and more modern. Check out a couple of screenshots from recent 7.1 Design in my portfolio projects’ blog landing pages:
Are you worried about speed and blogging with Squarespace 7.1?
How does Squarespace 7.1 work with Schema?
I consistently see that more TLC is needed on Squarespace sites, including embedding manual schema into posts in order for it to be scanned correctly by Google. This isn’t a deal-breaker, but it may frustrate you if you’re less technical. (Which is totally fine!)
If I use Squarespace 7.1 for my blog, what tactics should I use?
- Integrate a tool like Missinglettr to make it easier to redistribute your content on social channels.
- If you’re a food blogger, you need proper recipe formatting. My friend Heather discovered the Recipe Format Generator which seems like just the ticket. I’ve not had the chance to test its schema functionality, but will update this post when I do.
- If you’re a travel or photo blogger, be sure to optimize each and every image with a tool like ShortPixel (this link gives you bonus credits). I cannot stress how important this is. Create proper image captions as well to try to have your images shown in Google image search.
- Keep your posts simple in structure and layout but substantial in content. Aim for at least 600 words per post and I’d like to see more.
- Use proper headings and remember that your header 1 is the post title so don’t use that in your text!
- Ensure you’ve enabled AMP on your Squarespace blog.
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