The Getting Started Guide FOR THERAPISTS AND COACHES LAUNCHING A SQUARESPACE WEBSITE Copyright Stuff Copyright © 2021 by Emily Whitish. All rights reserved. You are welcome to print a copy of this document for your personal use. Other than that, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. Requests to the author and publisher for permission should be addressed to the following email: [email protected]. Limitation of liability/disclaimer of warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this guide and workbook, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this document and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, promoters, or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. How to Take Ownership of Your Website Once you have paid for your website, I will transfer ownership of the website to you and Squarespace will send you an email notification. You will click the link on the email to be taken to Squarespace where you will create an account. Once you have an account, you can accept the “Administrator” privileges on your site and it will show up on your dashboard. At this point, I will transfer ownership. If you already have a Squarespace account, you’ll skip the registration and just log in to your account to accept “Administrator” privileges. How to Upgrade Your Squarespace Plan All new Squarespace sites are private by default. Your website will come to you as a “trial” site. When you upgrade, you can make your site public to all visitors and search engines. You’ll need to upgrade to a paid service in order to make your site live. Click Upgrade Now in the banner at the bottom of the browser window. When you upgrade, you'll see options for Website and Commerce plans. (To learn more, visit Choosing the right Squarespace plan.) After selecting a plan, select a billing cycle. Paying in advance for a year of service comes with a free eligible domain for the first year of service. Enter and then review payment details. Then click Confirm And Purchase to subscribe. After you have completed this step, I recommend setting up a site-wide password while you’re customizing your site so that you can share it but so it remains hidden from public view while under construction. Empowering our clients How to Get a Domain Once you have a Squarespace account and you’re a paid member of Squarespace, you can get a domain. Squarespace offers a free domain the first year when you pay for a year of hosting, so be sure to upgrade your Squarespace account first, then add the domain next. Go to Settings > Domains > Get a Domain. In the Get a Domain box, enter the domain name you want, then click Search. A list of suggested available domains will display. Hover over the domain(s) you want, and click Add to add them to your cart. Scroll down, and click Proceed to Checkout. Follow the prompts to complete. You'll receive an email within 24 hours with the subject line "Please verify your domain name(s) as soon as possible." The email will be sent to the address you entered at registration. Click the link in this email to validate your contact information for the domain. Here is more information about Squarespace domains. If you have a domain already and you’d like to transfer it to Squarespace, following these instructions. How to Get HIPAA-Secure Email HIPAA-secure email is offered through Google Workspace. To get Google Workspace, you must have at least one custom domain connected and pointing to your site. The domain you choose must be set as your primary domain. Set your site to Public from the Site Visibility Panel. You can set it back to Private or Password Protected once the G-Suite setup is complete. In the Home Menu, click Settings, and then click Email & G-Suite. Select the billing plan. In the Create Account panel, complete the required fields. Under Contact Information, replace [email protected] with an email address you already use. Click Continue. Review the order summary that appears. Click Purchase. A Purchase Receipt will appear confirming the account creation. Click Done to close it and continue setup. To complete setup, use THIS guide. How to Learn Squarespace so You Can Customize Your Site Starting a new website and a new platform can be daunting at first, so Squarespace has created short videos to show you simple things you can do to get your web presence up and running. The series will walk you through starting a site, adding content, designing it, and signing up for paid service. SQUARESPACE VIDEO GUIDES If you're new to Squarespace, bookmark the page for future reference while you create your site. How to Create a HIPAA-Secure Contact Form This is totally optional, but therapists and others who must abide by HIPAA confidentiality laws should consider adding a HIPAA- secure form to their website if using a contact form for new client inquiries. Squarespace forms at not HIPAA-compliant. You’ll need a Google Workspace account with a BAA to create a HIPAA-secure contact form for your website. From forms.google.com, click Blank. Name your form: In the top-left corner, click Untitled form or the template form name and enter a new name. If you’d like, Add a description, a header and/or change the theme and background color, or font style. Click "Untitled question" and enter your question. Add response options (if applicable for your question type). To specify if people must answer the question, click Required. To add a new question, click "Add question." When you’re done adding questions, you can choose your form's settings and preview your changes. At the top right, click Send. Then click Embed. You can specify inline frame dimensions. Click Copy. Login to your Squarespace site and paste the HTML into your website using the “Embed” block. → For more information about Google Forms. → For more information about Embedding html into a Squarespace website. How to Make Your Site Live To change your site’s visibility: In the Home Menu, click Settings. Click Site Visibility. Select Public. Click Save. Celebrate! Bonus Content Search Engine Optimization Content Best Practices How to Start Driving Traffic to Your Website SEO, or search engine optimization, can be done in several different ways. There are countless SEO guides out there on the internet so it's hard to know what you should focus your attention on. I have compiled a short "starter" SEO list for you here. These things should be done around the same time that you launch your site. You can get dive into more SEO strategies later. Add a site title - Even if you're using a logo you should add a site title, as the text may be indexed by search engines. Add a site description - Add a short (50-300 characters), relevant, readable description of your site to your SEO site description. This text may appear below your site title in search results, depending on what your visitors search for. Add your location - Your site has a better chance of appearing in searches for your area if Google and your customers can see your location. If you have a business with a physical location, create a Contact page with your address and a map. Alternately, in some templates, your business information can display on your site. Add SEO descriptions - Ensure each page on your site has a unique SEO description. The text should be short and readable (50-300 characters), and describe the content of the page. You can also add SEO descriptions to individual blog posts, products, and events. Verify your site with Google Search Console - After you've verified your site with Google, you can manage your site’s presence in Google search results and see how visitors find you. Continue updating and adding content - Updating your site frequently helps search engines see your site as an active site. One way to regularly add content to your site is to start blogging. Adapted from Squarespace SEO Checklist Content Best Practices As you build your site, keep in mind: Use keywords strategically - Include text on your site (including page titles and descriptions) that matches the search terms people will use to find sites like yours. Structure your content - Structure your pages with headings to keep your text skim-friendly and help search engines navigate your content. Add alt text to images - In addition to increasing accessibility for visitors who use assistive screen readers, alt text also helps search engines identify the content of a page. Give your images readable file names - Image file names may also be used as alt text. Follow our best practices when creating your image file names. Add tags and categories - Organize your blog posts, products, gallery images, and other content with tags and categories to help visitors navigate your site. Link to your site's content - Where it's relevant, use content links to connect the pages on your site to each other.