P. de DiosNew Release: SEO Friendly URL Shortcuts!
After announcing our updated blog importer back in September, we got a lot of positive feeback about our ability to seamlessly (301) redirect requests for existing URLs of imported content to their new home on Squarespace. This practice ensured that all the Google link juice users had acquired over time was transferred directly to their Squarespace site in a SEO friendly way. Until today, this feature only lived in the deep recesses of our back-end routing code, but we're excited to now bring this feature out of the dark, and allow our users to create their own SEO friendly shortcuts.
Before this new release, users were only able to create URL shortcuts to their site's content via a simple URL rewriting method. Unfortunately, this method made the same content show up at multiple locations, thereby splitting the page rank and other measures of link value between the URLs. From an SEO perspective, this was obviously a bad thing.
We're particularly excited about this new release because it was 100% user-driven. This feature is something our users have been requesting on the forums and in support tickets in ever-increasing numbers (you know who you are, ticket #167141!). So, in the spirit of the season: users, consider this your present from the Squarespace Santa :)
For more information on how to use this new feature as well as more technical information on 301 and 302 redirects, please see this tutorial in our manual.
Reader Comments (16)
Thank you! A much needed addition. I appreciate Squarespace's team for listening to their users on this. I have personally found that the technical support has been superb. Can't wait to see what else you have in store for Squarespace users.
Congratulations and thank you. I still have some items on my SEO wish list, but you have hereby removed the biggest barrier to migrating existing sites to Squarespace!
Ace! SS Rocks!
Good stuff. With the current software, do you have control over title tags, meta tags, alt tags and meta descriptions? I'd like to try the platform one of these days, but if that isn't doable it is a deal-breaker for me (especially because WP makes it so easy. I've not seen a SS site that takes full advantage of all these things.
Ah Dean, thanks for harshing our buzz ;)
You're 100% correct that title/meta/alt tags are not 100% customizable within Squarespace. What you're actually seeing with this 301 feature is the beginning a medium-term project to take a hard look at (and address where necessary) the SEO-friendliness of the entire product. So, expect more in coming months.
This is just too awesome! I'm new to Squarespace as of this month and I submitted a support ticket as I was migrating my blog to address 301's. I was saddened that it wasn't an option at the time and now, less than a month later, you guys come out with it. Very well executed, incredibly timely and a very smart choice for enhancements to roll out.
Just great, now how about you guys work on getting a customer support phone number??? How many companies charge $50/month and don't have a phone number?
I have started using squarespace (paid account) since this weekend and I am quite impressed so far with the posibilities! Together with a group of friends we also have a blog on blogger that I imported with the squarespace tools. However, I was under the impression that blogger would continuously start updating the blog on squarespace too but so far this is not the case. I also tried making a blog on squarespace itself, which I would prefer but I am only aloud 1 editor. Am I missing something?
Greetings from The Netherlands and all the best in 2010!
Minne
@minne--Multiple editors is a feature that requires our Advanced package. We have tons of sites that use multiple editors, including some very high-end community sites. Check out http://www.medicalspamd.com to see an example of one of our favorites :)
This is a great addition. One thing I'd like to see is the ability to put more than 15 items in a single rss feed.
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With this importer, creating SEO friendly URLs will be easier and more streamlined. The old way of making SEO friendly URL will be a thing of the past. As a freelancer in an SEO web design company, this will make my work more organized than ever.
Good thing for you Marcus and all other website designers out there! This advancement on the web will certainly give a good learning for various corporate website designers, a href="http://www.webbizideas.com/services/web-design/ecommerce.html">ecommerce web site designers, and even those designers for social networking sites who aim at social networking development. I myself is benefited too of this new learning now that I'm working on my own corporate web design.
@ Reva25Hester:
So certainly this new learning works better for commerce purposes and should be known of makers of an ecommerce web site design.
Wow, It really very good explanation about SEO. It tells a lot SEO tips.
I think every SEO professional have a look at this.
Thanks you guys, keep it up.
Thanx for sharing!!! really nice.