One-day SEO fix on Squarespace

I created a new sitemap which meant creating a page for each core service.

That way, each service can easily be found, indexed, and linked to.

Before, the services were spread out and not always clearly labelled - e.g. it wasn’t obvious she offered general chiropractic care alongside pediatric and animal chiropractic, as it wasn’t explictly mentioned.

With the new outline in place, I built or rebuilt each page using her existing images and copy (and adding headings throughout for structure).

I made sure each page had all the necessary elements: H1 heading, meta description, clean URL, speed, accessiblity, responsiveness, etc.

I also included “common sense” keywords in headings and text - e.g., “chiropractor for horses” on the equine chiropractic care page.

Optimising and restructuring the pages this way helps search engines and AI tools better understand what’s on each page, and helps visitors skim the page and find the information they need more easily.

I created a new About page that gave Jessi space to share her background and approach, using her own words and photos of her working with animals and children to match the rest of the site.

I also built a new Contact page with directions, a map, and info for getting in touch or booking an appointment.

"Standard" pages like these are useful for visitors who want to learn more about the practice - and they play a big role in how search engines and AI tools understand and include a website in their results.

An About page builds trust and signals that there's a real person or company behind the site. A Contact page improves how it shows up in local search results.

Squarespace’s SEO tool flags missing elements like alt text and meta descriptions for the whole website in seconds - it's brilliant to ensure all pages have basic optimisation.

The built-in AI generator even suggests copy to fill in the blanks, but these are often too generic; I used the tool to identify which images still needed alt text, but then rewrote each one to be more accurate.

E.g. instead of “woman wearing a blue blouse and petting a brown horse,” the alt text on an image would now say “Dr. Jessi Brown giving chiropractic care to a brown horse in the field.”

Accurate and descriptive alt text is necessary for accessibility (for visitors who use screen readers or voice tools). It also helps search engines to index those images and take them into account when people search for related words or topics.

Although the service is called “Done-For-You Day”, I often like to break it into two half-days: I’d do the bulk of the work on the first they, then I get to sleep on it… Then on the next day I finalise the work, create instructions or record videos if relevant, and wrap it all up with a bow.

In this case, Dr. Jessi was able to hop on a call with me at the end of day one to check out what I’d been doing.

We walked through the changes and I applied some tweaks on the spot. We made sure she was happy with how the new pages looked before I’d publish them to replace the existing pages on the live site.

I also had a few small questions that she was able to answer on the spot.

The next day, I published the new pages and removed the old ones from the site.

I also set up redirects so that any visitors landing on old URLs would automatically be taken to the correct new version, avoiding broken links and lost traffic.

While I was doing that, a team member also performed a quick check to confirm I hadn’t missed anything big - like broken links or other obvious technical issues.

While the existing issues were now fixed, SEO isn’t a one-time effort - it happens over time.

I shared instructions and recommendations not to turn Jessi into an SEO expert, but to make sure she’d be able to continue putting in consistent efforts, keep the website optimised and up to date, and become more visible in search over the long term.

These instructions included:

• A couple of videos showing how to create new pages in the future - with headings, a good URL, meta descriptions, and optimised images (naming, resizing, converting to JPG, adding alt text, etc.)

• Some practical long-term SEO tips, e.g. signing up for Google Search Console, posting content (e.g, answering client questions or sharing updates from her practice), and how to build backlinks over time.