Planning a Squarespace Site Redesign: Your Actionable Guide to a Successful Content Audit

A successful Squarespace site redesign starts with understanding your existing content. A strategic content audit not only preserves your top-performing pages but also paves the way for a more engaging, user-friendly site. In this guide, I share actionable strategies drawn from my experience managing large-scale, multinational projects—handling hundreds of thousands of pages across 18 language variations and multiple sub-sites.

Why You Need a Content Audit

A content audit is essential because it helps you:

• Preserve High-Performing Pages: Ensure that pages driving traffic and conversions remain intact.

• Enhance User Experience: Identify and remove outdated or cluttered content that confuses visitors.

• Maintain SEO Value: Optimize content to sustain or improve your search rankings.

Taking these steps allows you to focus your redesign efforts on improvements that truly matter.

Real-World Experience: Conquering Content Overload

In one multinational project I managed, the scale was staggering: 18 language variations, multiple sub-sites, and hundreds of thousands of pages updated daily. Instead of auditing every single page, I:

• Audited a Representative Sample: Focused on the English language content to capture major content types.

• Collaborated with Local Teams: Each country’s web production team validated the findings, ensuring consistency across regions.

This strategic approach allowed us to concentrate on content that truly impacted user experience and business outcomes—without getting overwhelmed by volume.

Define a Framework: Categorize Your Content Efficiently

When time is short, having a clear framework makes all the difference. Start by grouping your content into three categories:

1. Horrible Stuff:
   Definition: Content locked in legacy systems or outdated formats that can’t be easily reorganized.
   Action: Design your new site to work around these pages, and plan a future project to update them.

2. Boring Stuff:
   Definition: Time-sensitive or low-value content that doesn’t warrant extensive rework.
   Action: Archive these pages with minimal changes, preserving them without diverting too many resources.

3. Important Stuff:
   Definition: Content that drives engagement or serves as the backbone of your site.
   Action: Prioritize these pages for in-depth review, rewriting, and reclassification in the new design.

This simple categorization enables you to quickly identify where to focus your efforts.

Quick Evaluation Methods: Making Decisions with Data

To justify your decisions and streamline the audit process, combine your framework with these quick evaluation methods:

Readability and Usability Analysis

• Readability:
  Use the Gunning Fog Index to assess if your content is overly complex. For example, text scoring 17+ (suggesting a need for a PhD to understand it) should be flagged for rewriting. This metric provides a snapshot of content accessibility.

• Usability:
  Perform a rapid 10-second review to simulate a user’s first impression. Check if the layout is intuitive, if headings are clear, and if navigation makes sense. Rate each page on a simple scale (e.g., 1-5) to quickly gauge usability.

Findability and Cullability

• Findability:
  Test how easily users can locate key information by examining your site’s search and navigation. Ensure that content is organized in a way that makes sense to your audience.

• Cullability:
  Use analytics data to identify low-performing pages. Pages with little to no traffic or few inbound links can be candidates for removal or archiving, keeping your site lean and focused.

By combining these metrics, you create a data-driven process that justifies every decision you make—making it easier to get buy-in from colleagues and managers.

Dealing with Outdated Content

Old content can drag down your site’s performance and confuse visitors. Here’s how to manage it:

Low-Traffic, Low-Value Content

• Action: Delete pages that receive little search traffic or lack inbound links.

• Implementation: Use a 301 redirect to point the old URL to a more relevant, updated page. This preserves any residual link equity while guiding users to current content.

Content Still Gaining Inbound Traffic

• Action: Rather than deleting these pages, remove them from your main site structure and place them in an archive.

• Implementation:

  • Set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new archive URL.

  • At the top of each archived page, include a prominent message directing visitors to the most up-to-date content.

  • In a previous project, this approach resulted in a 75% to 85% click-through rate—turning archived pages into effective landing pages that guide users to new information.

This dual strategy ensures your site stays current while preserving valuable SEO signals and providing clear navigation for your users.

Leveraging Analytics to Justify Your Strategy

Using concrete data is key to making a compelling case for your content decisions:

• Google Analytics Insights:

  • Top Landing Pages: Identify pages that attract the most traffic, and ensure they’re optimized and preserved.

  • Rewrite Prioritization: Target high-traffic pages with poor readability or usability for immediate updates.

  • Content Cull: Highlight pages with minimal engagement to justify their removal or archiving.

Aligning these data points with your content audit framework builds a strong, data-driven case for your redesign strategy.

Action Steps for Your Squarespace Redesign

Ready to get started? Follow these actionable steps to conduct your content audit and drive your redesign:

1. Generate a Complete Content List:
   Use Squarespace’s built-in tools or export your site data to capture every page.

2. Categorize Your Content:
   Divide your pages into the three categories—Horrible, Boring, and Important—using your defined framework.

3. Apply Quick Evaluation Metrics:
   Evaluate each page using readability, usability, findability, and cullability metrics to identify priorities.

4. Analyze Data:
   Pull six months of analytics to confirm your categorizations. Identify top-performing pages and those that should be removed or archived.

5. Deal with Outdated Content:

   • Delete low-traffic pages and redirect them to updated content.

   • Archive pages still gaining inbound traffic, ensuring each has a clear signpost directing visitors to current information.

6. Collaborate with Teams:
   If your site spans multiple regions or languages, work with local teams to validate and refine your audit.

7. Plan Migration and Redirection:
   Set up 301 redirects for any archived or removed pages to maintain SEO value and ensure smooth user navigation.

8. Implement Changes:
   Begin your redesign with a focus on important content, ensuring that your new Squarespace site is user-friendly and optimized for search engines.

Conclusion

A successful Squarespace site redesign hinges on an effective, data-driven content audit. By defining a clear framework—categorizing your content into Horrible, Boring, and Important—and employing quick evaluation methods like readability and usability tests, you can make the most of your limited time. Leveraging site analytics further justifies your decisions, ensuring that every change enhances both user experience and SEO performance.

Additionally, managing outdated content through strategic deletion, archiving, and clear redirection keeps your site current and user-friendly. Follow these actionable steps to transform your site into a streamlined, engaging, and high-performing platform.