How Do I Know If My Website Has Good SEO?
This is one of those questions that sounds simple but opens up fast. Because "good SEO" means different things depending on who you ask — and a lot of service business owners have been told their site is "optimized" without anyone ever explaining what that actually means or how to check.
So let's make it concrete. Here's what I actually look at when a client asks me whether their SEO is working — and what you can check yourself right now.
The Most Common Reasons It's Not Working
Before we get into the audit, it helps to know what usually goes wrong. In my experience working with service businesses across Canada, it almost always comes down to one of these:
The H1 headline — the main heading on your homepage — says something generic that could apply to any business in any industry. "Welcome" or "Let's work together" or just your business name. That heading is one of the most important signals you're sending to Google about what your page is actually about. If it doesn't include the thing people are searching for, you're making Google guess.
The SEO fields are blank. Squarespace has dedicated fields for your SEO title and meta description on every page — the text that shows up in Google search results. Most people either don't know they exist or have never touched them. Leaving them blank means Google fills them in for you, and it rarely picks the most useful thing.
Images don't have names or alt text. Every image on your site has a file name and an alt text field. Most images get uploaded with names like "IMG_4823.jpg" and no alt text at all. Those are missed opportunities to tell Google what's on your page.
Someone updated the site and broke something. This one happens more than people realize. A client decides to update a service offering — which is great — but instead of flagging it to their web designer, they go in and rewrite the page themselves. The copy changes, the heading changes, the URL might change. And all of the SEO that was quietly doing its job in the background? Gone. Broken links, rewritten headings, missing metadata — all from one well-intentioned edit.
The Quick Self-Audit: No Tools Required
You don't need a paid tool or an agency to get a basic read on where your site stands. Here's what to check first.
Your site-wide SEO title. In Squarespace, go to Marketing, then SEO, and look at your site title. This is different from your business name — it should include your main keyword. Think about what someone would actually type into Google to find a business like yours.
If you're a naturopath in Calgary, your site title shouldn't just say "Dr. Jane Smith Naturopathic." It should say something like "Calgary Naturopath — Hormonal Health and Integrative Medicine." If you're a brand photographer in Vancouver, "Vancouver Brand Photographer for Small Business Owners" tells Google something useful. Your business name alone tells it almost nothing.
Your H1 heading. Go to your homepage and look at the main headline — the largest text on the page. Does it include your main keyword? Does it describe what you do and who you do it for? Or does it say something poetic but vague?
A heading like "Your story, beautifully told" is lovely. "Victoria BC Brand Photographer for Female Entrepreneurs" is what gets you found.
Your Google Business Profile. Do you have one? Is it claimed and verified? Does it have your current services, your website link, your location, and a few photos? For any service business with a local client base — whether you're in Victoria, Toronto, Edmonton, or anywhere in between — your Google Business Profile is one of the most important local SEO tools you have, and it's free. If yours is incomplete or unclaimed, that's the first thing to fix.
Your image file names and alt text. Click on a few images on your site and check what they're called and whether they have alt text. If the answer is "IMG_5034.jpg" and nothing in the alt text field, go through your most important pages and fix that. It doesn't have to be complicated — "Calgary naturopath consultation room" or "Vancouver brand photography session in studio" is enough.
Set Up Google Search Console
If you haven't done this yet, stop and do it now. Google Search Console is free, and it's how Google learns your site exists. Once it's set up, submit your sitemap — for Squarespace sites it's always yoursite.com/sitemap.xml — and request indexing for your main pages.
Search Console also shows you what people are actually typing to find you, which is incredibly useful information. If you've been guessing at your keywords, this is where you find out what's really working.
Every time you add a new page or make a significant update to an existing one, go into Search Console and submit that URL for indexing. It speeds up the process of Google recognizing the change.
How to Find the Right Keywords Without Getting Lost in the Data
A lot of service business owners hear "keyword research" and immediately feel overwhelmed. It doesn't have to be complicated.
Start simple: type into Google what you think a potential client would type to find you. See what comes up. Look at the "People also ask" section — those are real questions real people are searching for, and they're often perfect blog post topics or page heading ideas.
Then start typing your service and location and see what Google autocompletes. That's live data on what people are actually searching.
Once you have a few ideas, search them yourself and look at who's showing up on the first page. Study the top three to five results. What do their headings say? How do they describe their services? What words keep coming up? That's your competitive landscape, and it tells you a lot about how to position your own pages.
If you have Google Search Console or Google Ads running, you already have data on what people are typing to find you. Start there before you look anywhere else.
Do You Actually Need a Blog for Good SEO?
Yes. I'm a big advocate for blogging, and here's why: your service pages can only say so much. They cover what you do, who it's for, and how to hire you. A blog covers every question, concern, and search term that lives around that core offering.
Every blog post is a new page Google can index. It signals that your site is active. It gives you a natural place to answer the questions your ideal clients are already searching — which means you can show up in search for terms your service pages would never rank for.
A blog post that answers a real question, written in plain language for a specific reader, does more SEO work than a beautifully written service page that no one outside your existing network ever finds.
The posts that work hardest aren't the ones that announce your services. They're the ones that answer the question someone typed into Google at 10pm on a Wednesday.
What About AI Search?
AI tools — Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity — are now answering questions before people click anything. If you've been wondering whether that changes everything you know about SEO, the honest answer is: not as much as you might think.
AI search still follows the same core principles as regular SEO. Clear, specific, well-structured content about a defined topic for a defined audience. What I've started doing — and recommending to clients — is adding a short summary section at the top of blog posts that gives AI tools a clean, citable version of the key points. Something structured and scannable that can be pulled into an AI overview without losing context.
It's a small addition that makes a meaningful difference in whether your content gets cited or skipped.
The Part That Breaks More Often Than People Realize
I want to come back to this because it's one of the most common things I see: someone updates their website without realizing they've undone months of SEO work.
It usually looks like this: a service offering changes, so the page gets rewritten. The heading changes. Maybe the URL gets updated too. New copy goes in. It looks great. But the keyword the page was ranking for is now gone from the heading. The URL change created a broken link from somewhere else on the site. The meta description still says something about the old service.
If you're going to make updates to your site — especially to pages that are getting traffic — it's worth either flagging it to whoever built your site or at minimum checking the SEO settings on that page before and after you make changes.
WANT HELP WITH THIS?
If you went through this post and realized there's more going on with your SEO than you thought, that's a good starting point.
I offer a standalone SEO audit for $67. I go through your website, identify what's working, what's broken, and what's missing, and give you a clear picture of where to focus first. No jargon, no overwhelming report — just a practical read on where your site actually stands.
If you want to talk through what a full project would look like, book a discovery call. That's always free.
RELATED POSTS
If your SEO foundations are in decent shape but you're not sure your copy is doing its job, this post on writing website copy that ranks covers what actually makes the difference.
Wondering if your website is actually working for your business at a bigger level? Here's what excellent web design actually means for a service business — SEO is part of it, but not all of it.
And if the copy on your homepage is the thing that keeps nagging at you, here's why some websites feel trustworthy instantly — and what to do about it.
ABOUT ERIN
About Erin Clayton
Erin Clayton is a Squarespace web designer, strategist, and copywriter based in Victoria, BC and a Squarespace Circle Partner.
Before web design, she built a career across corporate communications, banking, big tech, regulatory marketing, and energy — which is where she learned how to take someone's expertise and translate it into language that actually lands. That skill is now the backbone of how she builds websites.
She also runs a photography business which means she's not theorizing about what it takes to market a service-based business online. She's doing it. She learned firsthand what a strong web presence actually equates to: more of the right clients, fewer explanations, and a site that does the convincing before you're ever in the room.
She works with service-based business owners across Canada — coaches, consultants, wellness practitioners, and creative professionals — who are ready for a website that earns their rate before a prospect ever reaches out.
