Is Squarespace Bad for SEO? An Honest Answer From 5 Platforms
I have built sites on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and Webflow, and my own site now lives in code. The platform is rarely why a local business does not rank. Here is what Squarespace actually limits, how the five compare on the controls that matter, what moving into code changed for me, and why the move itself is the real risk.
People ask me this more than any other website question, and this summer the searches for moving off Squarespace doubled. I have built and managed sites on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and Webflow over ten years, and this site now lives in a code repository. So I can answer from all five, and the answer is not the one Squarespace's competitors would like.
The short answer
No. Squarespace is not bad for SEO. A local business on Squarespace can rank for the searches it should rank for, and plenty do.
What Squarespace does is limit control. There are a handful of technical levers it does not let you touch, and if you ever need one of them, you will feel it. Most owners never do. The rest of this post is about which levers those are, which platforms give them to you, and what they actually cost.
What decides whether a local business ranks
Before the platform question, the honest ranking question. For a local business, the things that decide whether you show up are, roughly in order:
- Your Google Business Profile: the category, the hours, the photos, and whether the details match everywhere else.
- Reviews: the rating, how recently they came in, and whether you reply.
- Pages that answer the questions people actually type, with the service and the place in plain words.
- Speed on a phone.
- Whether the phone calls and form fills get tracked, so you know which of the above is working.
The platform touches number four directly and number three a little. It does not touch one, two or five at all. Google's own John Mueller put it plainly about Wix back in 2021, on Reddit: "Wix is fine for SEO. A few years back it was pretty bad in terms of SEO, but they've made fantastic progress, and are now a fine platform for businesses" (Search Engine Journal). The same is true of Squarespace. When a site on either one does not rank, I have never once found the platform to be the reason.
Speed is the one place where the platform shows up in the data, and the data does not say what most people expect.
- Wix81%
- Squarespace72%
- Webflow71%
- WordPress49%
Nearly three Squarespace sites in four pass Google's speed and stability test on a phone. Fewer than half of WordPress sites do. That is not a statement about WordPress the software, which can be made as fast as anything. It is a statement about what happens to the average WordPress site over a few years of themes, plugins and cheap hosting. A builder takes those decisions away from you, and on speed, that mostly helps.
Five platforms, side by side
Here is how the five I have worked on compare on the questions that matter to an owner: who does the editing, what you control, and what it costs you.
What you controlPage titles and descriptions, redirects, a noindex switch per page, and custom code on Business plans and up. You change it yourself, in a visual editor.
What it costs youNo access to robots.txt, the sitemap or response headers. A partial export if you leave. The annual Core plan is $29 a month after this year's increase.
What you controlMore than Squarespace: robots.txt, up to 5,000 redirects, editable structured data and canonicals, and an llms.txt it writes for you.
What it costs youThe sitemap is automatic only, and there is no way to set response headers. Moving a Wix site elsewhere is a rebuild.
What you controlEverything, through plugins and your host: robots.txt, sitemap, redirects, headers, any file at the root. You can edit pages yourself once it is set up.
What it costs youHosting, updates, plugin conflicts and security are yours. Half of WordPress sites fail Core Web Vitals, and that is why.
What you controlrobots.txt, the sitemap, redirects with wildcards, custom code, and a code export. Owners can edit content in the CMS; layout changes go back to the designer.
What it costs youCustom response headers only on Enterprise plans, and only from a fixed list. Higher plan prices than the builders above.
What you controlAll of it. Redirects, headers, the sitemap and any root file are lines in a configuration you own, and every change is recorded and reversible.
What it costs youA person, or an arrangement with one. There is no drag-and-drop editor for the owner. Hosting itself is cheap or free at small-business scale.
The technical levers, one by one. These are the things people mean when they say a platform is "bad for SEO," and here is who actually gives you each one.
| Control | Squarespace | Wix | WordPress | Webflow | Code on Vercel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit robots.txt | No, two on-off switches | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 301 redirects | Yes, about 2,500 | Yes, up to 5,000 | Yes, via plugin | Yes, with wildcards | Yes, one file |
| Custom response headers | No | No | Yes, via host | Enterprise only | Yes |
| Edit the sitemap | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Publish llms.txt | Yes, on 7.1 sites | Yes, written for you | Yes, via plugin | Workaround only | Yes |
| Take your content with you | Partly, as WordPress XML | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Sources for the platform rows: Squarespace's help pages on URL mappings, exporting and llms.txt, Wix's on robots.txt and llms.txt, and Webflow's on custom security headers. All three platforms change these often, so check the page before you rely on a row.
Look at that table with a local business in mind. A restaurant, a contractor, a dental office. Which of those rows will they ever need? Redirects, if they change a page address. Possibly a noindex on a thank-you page. Squarespace has both. The rows Squarespace fails are the ones that matter to a site with thousands of pages, a private section, or someone actively tuning how crawlers read it. That is not most businesses, and it is not most of my clients.
What moving into code changed for me
This month I moved pfendermarketing.com off Webflow and into a code repository that publishes through Vercel. I wrote about the why in I Used to Say ChatGPT Was Useless. Here is what it changed on the SEO side specifically, because it is a fair test of what "full control" is worth.
Redirects, response headers and the sitemap became lines in files I own. When I wanted a page to send a "do not index" instruction to search engines in the response itself, not just in the page, I added it. When I wanted a set of pages served with no caching and no referrer, I added that. The sitemap is built from the pages that exist, so it cannot drift. And llms.txt, the plain-text file that tells AI assistants what the site is, is a file next to the pages. I can open it, change a line, and it is live in a minute.
Every one of those changes is recorded as its own entry that I can read line by line and undo. On a builder, a change is whatever the editor says it is now.
What it cost me: there is no drag-and-drop editor. If I want a new page, I write it or direct an AI tool to write it, and I review the result before it goes live. That suits how I work. It would not suit an owner who wants to change the hours on the homepage at 10 PM without calling anyone, and that owner is exactly who a builder is for.
- Old addresses checked before the switch
- 77
- Redirects written, in one file
- 30
- Changes shipped on launch day
- 33
- Files the site's rules live in
- 1
The real risk is the move, not the platform
Here is the part the "Squarespace is bad for SEO" threads leave out. Sites do not lose rankings because they are on Squarespace. They lose rankings when they move.
A migration changes addresses, and every old address that is not redirected to its replacement is a page Google indexed that now returns nothing. It changes page titles, which is how Google labels you. It changes the structured data, the internal links, the image addresses, and often the speed. Any one of those, done carelessly, costs more visibility than a year on the "wrong" platform ever did.
Before this site's domain switched over, I checked all 77 addresses I could find for the old site, wrote a redirect for every one that had a replacement, and confirmed each one landed. That is the job. It is the same job on any platform, in either direction, and it is where I have seen businesses hurt themselves.
If you are looking at moving because of Squarespace's price increase, which raised annual Core plans from $23 to $29 a month and Plus from $39 to $49, do the arithmetic. The increase is $72 to $120 a year. A migration done badly costs more than that in one lost month of leads, and a migration done well costs more than that in someone's time.
Should you switch? A short checklist
Move off Squarespace if most of these are true:
- You need a control in the table above that Squarespace does not offer, and you can name the problem it would solve.
- Someone specific will manage the new site, and they have done a migration before.
- You have a list of every address on the current site, and a redirect planned for each.
- Your Google Business Profile, reviews and tracking are already in order. If they are not, fix those first; they will move the needle more than the platform.
- The new platform is faster on a phone than the current one, tested, not assumed.
- You have a reason beyond the price.
If fewer than four of those are true, stay. Spend the energy on the pages, the profile and the reviews. That is where the ranking lives.
Common questions
Is Wix bad for SEO?
No. Wix passes Core Web Vitals on 81 percent of sites on mobile, the highest of the four builders in the chart above, and it now lets you edit robots.txt, redirects, structured data and canonical tags. Google's John Mueller said in 2021 that it had made "fantastic progress" and was "a fine platform for businesses." Its limits are the same shape as Squarespace's: no sitemap editing, no response headers, and no export if you leave.
Is WordPress better than Squarespace for SEO?
It can be, and it can be worse. WordPress gives you every control in the table, and the average WordPress site fails Google's speed test more than twice as often as the average Squarespace site. WordPress is better for SEO when someone maintains it. Left alone, it is usually not.
Can I export my Squarespace site?
Partly. Squarespace exports one blog with its posts, layout pages, and text and image blocks as a WordPress-format file. It does not export store, index, album, cover, portfolio or calendar pages, product, audio or video blocks, or any of your styles. Plan a move as a rebuild with your text carried over, not a transfer.
What is Vercel?
A hosting service that publishes a website straight from a code repository. Every change to the site is a recorded entry that can be read and reversed, and the site's rules, such as redirects and response headers, live in a file you own. It is how this site is published. It is a tool for someone managing a site, not an editor for an owner.
Should a small business move its website to a code repository?
Usually not. If you update your own site and it is doing its job, a website builder like Wix or Squarespace is often the better fit, because you can change it without calling anyone. A repository makes sense when someone is actively managing the site and the platform is what is holding it back.