Substack SEO: How To Rank Your Substack Posts Into Search Engines
A guide for Substack writers to optimize their posts for search engines.
When I started my blogger blog, it had a sub-domain. I read almost every review about ranking my Blogspot blog in Google, but almost all of them were pessimistic about it. So, I have that single door, and it was unfortunate that I didn’t know about Medium back then — I wish I could.
One thing I have observed working with hundreds of newsletter operators, they don’t believe in the search traffic. In one of my Fiverr gigs about Substack SEO, I have worked with a number of the best Substack newsletter operators and helped them with their SEO. If you wish to hire me on Fiverr, you can hire me on Fiverr here.
I think Substack has the very same problem unless you own a custom domain. Having a subdomain isn’t that SEO advantageous compared to writing with a custom domain, but instead of being at the low end for the search engine, I tried to write, and with some SEO tweaks, I helped my Substack blog reach over 2,000 unique audiences from Google.
In this article, I have shared all my learning and the things I did to make some Substack newsletter optimized for search engines. I also share some tips related to content marketing.
1. Setting Up a Google search console:
Setting up a Google search console is easy. Whenever someone hires me on Fiverr to make their newsletter search, the very first thing I do is to set up a Google search console for them.
Setting up a Google search console and sending a sitemap to Google is one of the first things you should ensure Google indexes your previously published and future posts automatically.
2. Writing super-long content:
If you are writing under a sub-domain and not with the custom domain, you have a disadvantage. You have an SEO disadvantage compared to a person who owns a custom domain. The best thing you could do is to write a super-long 2,000+ words article. This could help you rank on the first page if you did your homework for finding the right keywords.
There are some studies from Backlinko that show that 77.2% of long-form content gets more backlinks than any other blog post. They also stated that on top 3 positions on page 1 have more than 2,300 words on average. This means you should write long-form content in order to get the most of it from a keyword.
3. Adding sections to your newsletter:
Adding sections to your newsletter could help you with SEO as well as sorting your newsletter into easily discovered posts. A user who might be interested to know about Investment might be more interested to know about Stock market investing.
I have an article about how to add sections to your newsletter which will help you create sections in your Substack.
4. Share it on social media and make some backlinks from sites like Medium and Quora:
Writing is a powerful tool that you can use to promote your newsletter. You can write and publish twice a week and optimize your posts for the search engines. You can write about similar topics on Quora and publish unique high-quality articles on Medium. This will help you build an audience on your Substack.
Sharing your links on different writing platforms will also help you in SEO.
5. Go Niche:
The primary drive behind a newsletter is that people want to receive information about a specific topic. The main difference between a blog and a newsletter could be that a newsletter is more niche-based and personal compared to a blog.
I would never publish a post about making money online if I am running a newsletter about Investment.
6. Learn Basic SEO:
SEO changes every month with every Google update but if you learn the basics, you can start from somewhere and can get good results. Google is the №1 search engine, and that’s making it the best platform for anyone to get traffic.
The following are some of the important things for any newsletter operator who is interested in getting more search traffic.
- Before writing, do keyword research. Keyword is a combination of words most people search for. For example: Chronological order to read The Foundation books. This is a long-term keyword, and it is easy to target them.
- Then, you have to use those keywords in the title as well as in the article.
- Write a lengthy (2000+ words) newsletter.
- Use internal and external links.
- Use alt-tags for the images and add more images to your newsletter.
- Interlink your other posts with each other.
That’s sit. The most important thing you need to do for optimizing your Substack is to find a keyword and then be specific on the topic/keyword/or question you are answering. This is very important for your Substack SEO.
Why SEO is important for you as a newsletter creator?
Some writers use a specific social platform to grow their audience. Twitter is the â„–1 platform that most newsletter writers use to promote and get more email subscribers. But what if, with little tweaks, you get free traffic from Google with no ending period?
You can better introduce your newsletter to those readers from Google and let them be permanent readers.
In one of my newsletters, I got over 6K+ subscribers just because getting thousands of visitors per day and letting them subscribe to my newsletter. SEO could bring you free highly targeted traffic with good open rate.
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This article explained Substack SEO in a detailed view, and if you want to learn more about marketing your Substack, you can join our newsletter: Substack Marketing Guide
