I made the switch from Squarespace 7 to 7.1. Here's what happened to my SEO.
One of the most debated Squarespace topics at the moment is whether you should make the switch from 7.0 to 7.1. There are a ton of blog posts out there discussing the pros and cons as well as how to make the switch.
You can check out some of them here:
Paige Brunton: Should I build my site on Squarespace version 7.0 or 7.1?
Station Seven: Should You Switch From Squarespace 7.0 to 7.1?
Big Cat Creative: How to Move from Squarespace 7.0 to Squarespace 7.1 (or back!)
Squaremuse: How to switch from Squarespace 7.0 to 7.1 version. An extensive guide.
But won’t this hurt my SEO?
This summer I was in the process of rebranding my business. I decided it might be beneficial for me to rebuild my website, so that I knew everything on my site aligned to the new brand and style. Because of this decision, it made sense for me to rebuild in Squarespace 7.1.
However, at the end of last year and the beginning of this year I had put in a lot of work on my SEO. Leading up to the rebuild, my website was finally getting some great traffic. One of my biggest fears was that the switch would set me back. I decided to do some research to see what I could do to make the impact as small as possible.
And look what happened to my SEO!
Here is a snapshot from my Google Analytics Page. See if you can guess when I made the switch. Then click to see if you were right.
Number of Users from January 1, 2020 to August 15, 2020
Number of Pageviews from January 1, 2020 to August 15, 2020
Did you guess right?
I didn’t. I had to go back and look up the exact date. This confirmed for me that the impact of the switch had little to no impact on my SEO. In fact, my overall income from sales in my shop stayed the same.
So what did you do?
There are a couple things that I did to ensure that the rebuild had little to no effect on my SEO.
1. I kept the same overall structure of my site (including URLS!!)
I made sure to rebuild the site so that the page structure was the same. This helped to ensure that my sitemap had minimal changes. The basic idea is that you want to use the same pages and URLs that you used on the 7.0 platform so that the page’s address stays the same. The layout and design can change but the page should use the same pathway as it had before. For any pages that were no longer being used or had a different URL, a 301 redirect was used.
To keep me organized and make sure I didn’t miss any pages, I created a Spreadsheet and listed all the pages I had on my Squarespace 7.0 Site. I then recorded the pathway and url used for that page, whether the page was being used on the new website, and whether I needed a redirect.
For example,
| Squarespace 7.0 | Squarespace 7.1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Page | Pathway | URL | Page Used | URL | 301 Redirect? |
| Services | Home > Services | /services | Yes | /services | No |
| Booking Page | Home > Services > Booking Page | /service-booking | Yes | /service-booking | No |
| Client Page | Home > Client Page | /client | No | NA | Yes to Contact Page |
2. I submitted a new sitemap to Google Console
Once I was all ready to go, I transferred my domain name and reconnected all my socials as well as updated Google My Business. I then re-submit a sitemap to Google Search Console (as well as Bing) and made sure I had no broken links.
3. I Made Some Noise
I created a new freebie that aligned to my brand and a new product I planned to release shortly after the launch of my new site. Psst. You can check out my freebies here and check out my new product The Encyclopedia of Code here.
Once my site had officially launched, I made a huge stink about the new site on my social channels and email list by announcing the launch and the new freebie. This gave my community a reason to check out the new site as well as drive traffic to my new website.
For good measure, I ran a Facebook Ad promoting the new freebie to build up my email list before announcing my new product.
4. Continue to Drive Traffic to Your Site
I then made sure to continually drive traffic to my website by blogging consistently, releasing a brand new product The Encyclopedia of Code as well as a couple new plugins. Each time, I made sure to announce it on all my social channels as well as to promote it to my email list.
All in All….
By keeping a similar website structure, using the same URLs, and re-submitting a sitemap to Google and Bing, I made sure that search engines were aware of any changes I had made to my site.
I then made sure to drive as much traffic to the new site as I could by using my social media, email list, and advertising to promote a new freebie and several new products.
In the end, the impact on my SEO was very minimal. In fact, my income was not affected and my pageviews and search rankings are back up and still rising.
Want to Rank #1 in Google?
If you would like to learn more about SEO and how you can improve your search engine ranking, check out my SEO Course. Inside, I show you all the strategies I use on my site to rank #1 in Google.
