The Best Way to Create a Blog Signature for Your Blog Posts
A blog post “signature” is a helpful, SEO-rich sign-off at the end of each of your blog posts.
It’s used as a way to add more information about your business and your key resources or offerings, at the opportune point at which a reader has finished your blog post and may be looking for the next step, or additional content from you.
So, it’s great real estate to include some helpful business info and links for your blog readers!
I’ve shared before about the benefit of adding a blog signature to each of your blog posts, and how to do this on a Squarespace blog.
But, I have a new, updated way of doing this that I’d recommend as an easier-in-the-long-run option!
Do I need a blog post signature on my blog posts?
You don’t need a blog post signature—you can certainly share quality blog posts without one.
But, a blog post signature can be a helpful addition for any new blog readers, and can even help boost your website’s SEO. Here’s how:
Why you should have a blog signature for your blog
Because of the content and keywords a blog post signature typically includes (more on that below!), adding a blog post signature to each of your blog posts can help to:
Provide context: The information in the signature gives first-time visitors to your website more context about who you are, the products or services you offer, and how they can get involved or learn more.
Establish authority: Your blog post signature helps make it clear who wrote the post and what your qualifications are (this can help establish trust that you’re an industry expert and have particular expertise in your blog post’s topic area).
Enhance branding: A well-designed blog signature contributes to the branding of each blog post, as well as your website overall.
Boost SEO: And, a blog signature helps with SEO, as you’re adding more strategic keywords about your business to each blog post (for example, your name, location, services, products, etc.).
What to include in your blog post signature
It’s totally up to you what you’d like to include in your blog post signature (and what your particular audience would find useful), but some common elements are:
Logo or headshot
Signature (can be added as an image)
Bio
Brief description of your business & services
Links to popular content
Button linked to list of services or online shop
Link to get in touch with you
Links to social profiles
It’s up to you which of these elements you’d like to include—just pick those that make most sense for your business purposes and how you’d like to introduce a new potential client/customer to your brand and product or service offerings.
How to add a blog signature to your Squarespace blog
There are two ways of adding a blog post signature to your Squarespace blog:
Add it to your blog post template.
Add it to your website footer.
Adding a blog post signature to your blog post template
The first way, which I’ve shared in more detail previously, is to create a blog post template and build your lovely blog post signature into that template so it can easily be duplicated for each of your future posts.
This is a pretty easy and low-tech option for adding a blog post signature to a new Squarespace website or blog.
But what about if you have an existing blog to which you’d like to add the signature, without having to manually add it to a gazillion individual blog posts?
Or, what if you need to make an update to your “signature” and find yourself having to do that manually for 100 blog posts? 😰
Adding a blog post signature to your website footer
The second option of adding a blog post signature to your Squarespace blog is to add it to your website’s footer.
The benefits of adding your blog post signature to your website footer are:
You only add the signature once and it displays on all blog posts.
If you need to make updates to your blog post signature, you can update it just once and it will be updated across all blog posts.
If you’d like to incorporate any special styling, it’s easier to do so in the footer, as you can use custom CSS to style those specific Squarespace block IDs. (This isn’t possible with individual blog signatures on each post, as those each have unique block IDs.)
Now, of course, everything in your footer appears on all pages of your website, and the blog post signature doesn’t necessarily make sense on all of those pages.
But, no worries! Below I’m sharing some code that will hide your blog post signature from the pages you don’t want it appearing on, so you can easily keep it updated on your blog.
Here’s how to create a blog post signature in your Squarespace website’s footer:
How to add a blog post signature to your website footer
The process for adding a blog post signature to your website’s footer is a little different depending which version of Squarespace you’re on—Squarespace 7.0 or 7.1.
In Squarespace 7.0, the structure of your website’s footer blocks is based on which template your site is built on. The most common and versatile (and what I recommend to my web design clients) is the Brine family of templates.
In the Brine family, you have three footer sections:
Footer Top Blocks
Footer Middle Blocks
Footer Bottom Blocks
(And, in addition to those, you also have a Footer Navigation, which falls between the Middle and Bottom blocks.)
We will use your Footer Top Blocks for your blog post signature!
This means that your blog post signature will display immediately after your blog post content and before the rest of your footer content.
(Though, if you happen to desire something else to display *above* the blog signature—perhaps a newsletter opt-in or opt-in gift form—you’d then choose the Footer Middle Blocks for your blog post signature.)
And, don’t worry, we’ll simply hide the footer section you’re using from displaying on any pages you do not want that blog post signature to display on your site.
1. Design your blog post signature in your Footer Top Blocks
The first step is to design your blog post signature as you’d like it to appear.
If your website is new and unpublished, you can go right ahead and design this in your Footer Top Blocks.
If your website is live, this is a bit more tricky, as anything you add to your website footer will automatically display across your website. Your best bet in this case is to play around with your blog signature layout and styling on an unpublished “Test” page and only add it to your footer after completing step #2 below.
→ You can review the list of ideas above for what to include as you design your blog post signature. Aim for content that’s helpful to both new and existing readers, and that adds some of your business’ primary keywords.
Here’s my blog post signature, for reference:
2. Hide your blog post signature from pages you do not want it to appear
The next step is to hide the footer section you used for your blog post signature (in most cases, Footer Top Blocks) from any pages you would not like your blog post signature to appear. That may be all other pages on your website, or just a few—your call!
For any pages you do not want your blog post signature to display, copy and paste the following code into the Header Code Injection for that particular page (Page Settings > Advanced > Header Code Injection).
<style>
.Footer-blocks--top {display: none !important;}
</style>Now you’ve got a snazzy blog post signature displaying on all of your blog posts (and easy to update down the road if you need to make any changes!)—yet it’s not displaying on other pages across your website if it doesn’t make sense to do so.
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