Squarespace SEO Best Practices & Issues - FAQs Answered

Optimising images on Squarespace can be frustrating at times - in this article, I'll explain the most common image issues and how to solve them.

Before we get started, here is the standard we recommend for Squarespace websites to follow:

Every expert agrees that alt tags should be added to images—unless they're purely for decoration.

The standard for image size is slightly debated. Squarespace says to keep images below 500kb; however, most SEO experts (SEJ, Backlinko, and many more) recommend keeping images under 100kb.

Based upon testing 21,327 Squarespace websites and actively helping 4,000+ more, we've found that <250kb is the optimal size - it's as close as possible to the 100kb other experts recommend while also being achievable on Squarespace, which has its limitations as discussed below.

Given Squarespace doesn't have the best page speed and has some SEO limitations, doing everything in your power, such as compressing images <250kb, is what we recommend.

Of course, if high-quality, super sharp images are vital to your business and if compressing <250kb isn't possible on Squarespace, go for <500kb.

These are best practices, not laws - do your absolute best to follow them across the board, but consistency is better than intensity, so don't burn yourself out over one area of SEO.

Squarespace has limitations regarding image SEO - I'll cover these individually below.

Are you frustrated that SEOSpace is telling you your images are bigger than what you compressed them to?

This isn't a problem/bug with SEOSpace.

When you upload an image to Squarespace, it renders/displays a "different" image back to you based upon the screen size - meaning, if you compress an image to 230kb, when displayed by Squarespace, that image might be bigger (260kb, for example).

To test this, manually download the image from your live website, inspect it and take a look at its size on the computer - 95% of the time, the size SEOSpace shows will be correct.

I think this is part of the reason Squarespace set the standard of 500kb - SQSP's image hosting/display functionality isn't great, so it can be hard to get lower at times.

That being said, compressing images <250kb is 100% possible (otherwise, we wouldn't suggest it!) - watch the video below to learn more:

Sometimes, it's physically impossible to add alt tags to images on Squarespace - SEOSpace can often flag images as not having alt tags, which might have you thinking, "I can't add alt tags to that image!".

Examples include:

As a result, we ignore some image types in our suggestions - while technically, they don't follow SEO best practices and should be flagged, we only want to provide recommendations that are possible in Squarespace.

For images that we don't automatically "ignore" which you can't add alt tags to, we added the ability to "manually resolve" images (discussed below), which allows you to skip suggestions.

To learn more about adding alt tags to images, watch the video below:

We've set the bar high for optimising images on Squarespace - not as far as other SEO experts go, but as high as Squarespace allows.

In cases where you don't want to or can't compress images <250kb (due to image quality reasons, for example - photographers will be nodding here!) or physically cannot add alt tags to an image, you can now "manually resolve" the suggestion.

This tells SEOSpace to ignore that image for that specific image check - ensuring your SEO score isn't held back.

To learn more about this, please watch the video below and let me know if you have any questions.