Index your Square Online site with search engines
About search engine optimization
With search engine optimization (SEO), you can optimize your items and categories for search engine results, but you can also add SEO information to your Square Online site to help it rank better. With Square Online, you can edit the SEO settings for both your entire site and the individual pages that make up your site.
Before you begin
You can index your site from your Square Dashboard.
Since search engines aren't updated in real time, search results won't immediately display any recent changes you made to the SEO title and description of your Square Online site. Changes to search engine results can take between a few days and several weeks to show up. For more information, review our Ultimate SEO Guide.
Hiding your website or individual pages from Google and other public search engines does not actually unpublish your site. Not including the page in your navigation menu doesn’t hide it from search results either, but removes the link to the page from your site’s navigation. Anyone with the URL to your site can see it. Learn how to password protect your Square Online site.
Set up SEO
You can set up SEO for your entire site and for individual pages.
SEO settings for your entire website correspond to your website’s homepage.
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Sales channels > Online > Website > SEO.
- Under “Search Engine Optimization (SEO),” select Update SEO.
- Add your SEO details and select Save when finished.
- Publish your site to see the changes live.
SEO settings for each webpage are located in your site editor within the settings panel for each page.
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Sales channels > Online > Website > Edit site.
- Open the page you want to index.
- Select the gear icon in the editing panel and select View page settings.
- Select SEO in the pop-up window to add your SEO details and select Save when finished.
- Publish your site to see the changes live.
Image descriptions, commonly known as alt text, help search engines explain what images are about. This is especially useful when the image doesn’t load or a site visitor can’t see it.
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Sales channels > Online > Website > Edit site.
- Open a page containing non-background images, or add a new section with images if you don’t already have one.
- Select the section that contains images, and select an image to open up the image menu in the editing panel.
- Add your alt text into the text box to describe the image.
- Publish your site to see the changes live.
Note: Web accessibility is an important aspect of designing a website that’s accessible to as many people as possible, particularly those with disabilities or impairments. Learn more about web accessibility for Square Online sites for more tips on managing your images.
Hide your site from search engines
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Sales channels > Online > Website > SEO.
- In the SEO section, find Search engine visibility and select Hidden from search engine results.
- Publish your site to see the changes live.
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Sales channels > Online > Website > Edit site.
- Select a page.
- Select the gear icon in the editing panel and select View page settings.
- Select SEO in the pop-up window.
- For Search visibility, select Hidden from search engine results.
- Select Save when finished and publish your site to see the changes live.
Enable site search
Your website also has a search feature that indexes your site's content. The site search feature allows your customers to search content and items found on your Square Online site.
Sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Sales channels > Online > Website > Edit site.
Select your website's navigation menu.
In the editing panel, go to Content > Icons and select Search icon.
Select Save when finished and publish your site to see the changes live.