Squarespace and Wix let a small business publish a good-looking website without hiring a developer, and both handle the basics of search better than their old reputation suggests. What neither does is decide which page should rank for which search, write titles that people want to click, or warn you when a setting is quietly working against you. This page is for UK businesses on either platform who want to know what SEO is realistic there, and who want it done inside the editor they already use.
Who this is for
The owners are usually sole traders and small firms: therapists, salons, photographers, cafés, tradespeople, independent consultants and small shops. Many built the site themselves over a weekend, or had it built, and now want it to bring in enquiries rather than simply look the part.
It suits you if you plan to stay on the platform for the foreseeable future, you can invite me into the site as a contributor, and you want more local or national enquiries rather than search traffic to thousands of products. If your site runs on WordPress, my WordPress SEO service is the better fit. If you are growing a sizeable online shop, look at SEO for Shopify stores instead.
What these platforms do well
Both host the site on infrastructure you never have to patch, issue an SSL certificate automatically, generate an XML sitemap and produce layouts that work on a phone. On both you can set a page title, meta description and URL slug for each page, add alt text to images and connect Google Search Console without touching code.
Wix gives you more levers in a few places. You can edit the robots.txt file, add structured data to individual pages, and set title and description patterns for whole page types such as blog posts or product pages. Squarespace keeps more under its own control, but its templates are tidy and its defaults are sensible, so a well-kept Squarespace site often starts from a reasonable technical position.
The practical upshot is that on a small site, most of what holds rankings back tends to be content, structure and local signals rather than the platform. That is good news, because those are the things you control on any plan.
The limits worth knowing
None of these is a reason to panic. How much each one matters depends on the size of your site and what you sell.
Less control over technical files
Squarespace manages its own robots.txt file, and neither platform gives you server access or log files. You cannot change how pages are served beyond what the settings panels allow. For a twenty-page service business this rarely matters; for a site that needs fine control over what search engines crawl, it can.
Fixed URL patterns
Blog posts, products and other collection items sit beneath a folder the platform defines. You can rename the slug at the end of a URL, but you cannot always change the structure above it. Whenever a URL changes, add a 301 redirect through Squarespace’s URL mappings or the Wix redirect manager, so links and bookmarks pointing at the old address still land somewhere useful.
Canonicals and near-duplicate pages
Both platforms add canonical tags for you, and most of the time they point to the right place. Where duplication creeps in, through tag and category archives, filtered product lists or the same item showing in two collections, your options are narrower than on a self-hosted site. The fix is often to hide or merge pages rather than rewrite the tags.
Speed you can only partly control
You cannot rewrite how either platform loads its own scripts. You can control what you add on top: oversized photos, video backgrounds, scroll animations, embedded widgets and third-party apps are the usual reasons a page struggles with Core Web Vitals. Stripping out what does not earn its place is where most of the gains come from.
Custom code depends on your plan
Adding your own code, such as extra structured data on Squarespace, needs a plan that includes code injection. I check what your plan allows before recommending anything that relies on it, so you are not asked to upgrade for a change that makes little difference.
What the work covers
One page for each thing you want to be found for
The most common pattern on small sites is a home page trying to rank for every service at once. I map each service, and each place you genuinely serve, to a single page, then decide which pages need writing, which need merging and which can go. Both editors make it easy to duplicate a page, which is how near-identical town pages appear; I would rather you had fewer pages that each say something different.
Titles, descriptions and headings
I rewrite page titles and meta descriptions so they match what people search for and say why your business is worth the click. I also check the heading structure, because templates often style ordinary text to look like a heading, or leave a page with no main heading at all. This is the same work as my on-page SEO service, carried out inside the platform’s own settings.
Local signals
For businesses serving a town or a part of London, the website and the Google Business Profile need to tell the same story: the same business name, a full UK address with postcode where you have a public address, the same phone number, and pages that match the services listed on the profile. Local SEO covers the wider work, such as reviews and citations, if you need more than the website side.
Structured data
On Wix I add business markup, and other types such as product or article markup, page by page where they describe the page accurately. On Squarespace I start with the business information the platform already outputs, and add more through code injection only where your plan supports it and the result is worth having. Larger or more complex markup projects belong with my schema markup service.
Mobile layout and indexing
Google judges your site by its mobile version, so I check that nothing important has been hidden from the mobile layout, which the classic Wix editor allows element by element. In Search Console I look for pages that should not be indexed, such as leftover template pages, test pages and thin archive pages, and for pages that should be indexed but are not.
How the engagement runs
- Access. You invite me as a contributor on Squarespace or a collaborator on Wix, and add me to Search Console and your Business Profile. You never need to share your password.
- Review. I go through the site, the platform settings, Search Console data and the profile, and note what the platform allows on your plan.
- Written plan. You receive a prioritised list split into what I change, what I need from you (photos, facts about your services, prices if you publish them) and what is not worth doing.
- Changes. I make the agreed changes in the editor, or walk you through them on a call if you would rather learn to do them yourself.
- Check and hand over. I confirm the changes are live, request indexing for the pages that changed, and leave short notes on keeping the site tidy as you add to it.
When moving is the right answer
Most small businesses do not need to leave Squarespace or Wix. I would raise the question if you need hundreds of pages built from data, a large catalogue with filtering, integrations the platform cannot support, or control over crawling that the platform will not give. It is also worth discussing when the site is due a full redesign anyway, a decision I cover in whether to fix your current website or start again.
If you do move, the risk sits in the switchover: changed URLs, missing redirects and lost page titles. Website migration SEO plans that step so the search visibility you have built comes with you. I will not recommend a move because another platform is more fashionable; a move costs money and carries risk, and the reasons have to outweigh both.
What you receive
- A written review of your site and its platform settings, with each issue explained in plain English.
- A page map showing which page targets which search, including pages to add, merge or remove.
- Rewritten page titles, meta descriptions and headings, applied in your editor.
- Redirects for any URL I change, and a list of them for your records.
- A short guide to adding new pages and blog posts without undoing the work.
Next step
Send me your web address and I will tell you what I would fix first, and whether the platform is really what is holding you back. You can request a free SEO audit with your web address and the services you most want to be found for.