Squarespace SEO for Wedding Photographers: What to Fix First
Squarespace is one of the most popular website platforms for wedding creatives. It looks stunning out of the box — clean layouts, great templates, easy to update. But there's a common assumption that trips people up: that because it looks good, it's automatically doing well on Google.
It's not.
Squarespace gives you solid foundations, but the SEO defaults are often not set up correctly. If you're a wedding photographer, videographer, florist, or planner using Squarespace and wondering why enquiries from Google are slow, the platform probably isn't the problem — but a few fixable settings almost certainly are.
Here's what to look at first.
Your Page Titles Are Likely Too Generic
Page titles are the single most important on-page SEO element. They're what Google reads first to understand what your page is about, and they're what shows up as the clickable headline in search results.
The Squarespace default pulls your site name — something like "Kheffache Studios" — and nothing else. That's fine for branding, but it tells Google nothing about what you do or where you do it.
Every page needs a unique, descriptive title. Your homepage title should include what you do and where. Something like:
Wedding Photographer in Dublin | Mary and John Photography
Your gallery pages, services pages, and blog posts all need their own titles too. Don't let Squarespace repeat your site name across every page — that's wasted signal.
Quick fix: In Squarespace, go to Pages > click the gear icon next to any page > SEO > and update the SEO Title field. Do this for every page on your site.
Your Meta Descriptions Are Either Blank or Auto-Generated
Meta descriptions are the short lines of text that appear under your title in Google results. They don't directly affect your ranking, but they massively affect whether someone clicks on your link.
Squarespace will generate them automatically if you leave the field blank — pulling in whatever text it finds on the page. This often results in something like "Gallery 1 Gallery 2 Contact" which tells a potential couple nothing.
Write your own. Keep it under 160 characters. Speak directly to the person searching. For a wedding photographer's homepage, something like:
Award-winning wedding photographer based in New York. Natural, documentary-style coverage. Serving couples across New York and the US. Enquire today.
That's what wins clicks. LumiIQ checks your meta descriptions as part of your baseline score — it's one of the quickest wins on the board.
Your Images Are Slowing You Down
Squarespace templates are image-heavy by design. That's great for a visual business like wedding photography — but it comes with a catch. Large image files are one of the biggest causes of slow load speeds, and slow pages rank lower on Google.
Wedding photographers are especially vulnerable here. You're uploading high-resolution images that can easily be 5–10MB each. Even with Squarespace's built-in image compression, that's too heavy.
Before uploading to Squarespace, resize and compress your images. Aim for files under 500KB for web use. Tools like Squoosh (free, browser-based) or TinyPNG will do this in seconds.
This applies to everyone on Squarespace — videographers with portfolio thumbnails, florists with gallery pages, planners with styled shoot imagery. Heavy files are a universal problem.
Quick fix: Download Squoosh at squoosh.app. Drag your images in, reduce the quality to around 80%, and download. Upload the compressed version to Squarespace instead.
Alt Text Is Almost Always Empty
Alt text is a short description you write for each image on your site. It serves two purposes: it helps visually impaired users who rely on screen readers, and it tells Google what's in the image.
For wedding photographers, alt text is a real opportunity. Instead of leaving the field blank, write a short, accurate description:
Bride and groom first dance at Castle Gynn, SCotland
That's it. No need to stuff it with keywords. Just describe what's actually in the image, including a location where relevant.
In Squarespace, you can add alt text by clicking any image in the editor and selecting "Edit". It takes 10 seconds per image. LumiIQ's image analysis flags pages with missing alt text so you know exactly where to focus.
You're Not Telling Google Where You Work
Local SEO is the single biggest opportunity for wedding creatives. Most couples search for suppliers in a specific area — "wedding photographer Cork", "wedding florist Edinburgh", "wedding planner Belfast". If your Squarespace site doesn't clearly mention your location, Google can't confidently show you for those searches.
This isn't about technical settings. It's about your content.
Your homepage, your about page, and your services pages should all mention where you're based and what areas you cover. Don't hide your location in the footer and assume Google will figure it out.
If you cover multiple counties or cities, consider a separate page for each main area. "Wedding Photography in Kerry" as its own page — even a short one with a few paragraphs and some relevant images — can dramatically improve your visibility for location-based searches.
LumiIQ's local SEO checks look at how clearly your location signals come through across your whole site.
One More Thing: Your H1 Heading
Every page should have exactly one H1 heading — the main title of the page. Squarespace sometimes uses your page title as the H1, and sometimes doesn't. Check each key page by looking at the first large heading on the page.
Your homepage H1 should describe your business clearly. Not just your name — something like "Wedding Photography in London" or "Natural Wedding Photographer | London & UK". The H1 is prime real estate. Use it.
Squarespace isn't broken — but it won't do the SEO work for you. These fixes are the difference between a beautiful site that nobody finds and one that actually brings in enquiries.
Want to see how your website scores across all 7 areas? Run your free baseline check at lumiiq.io — it takes 2 minutes.