Get your Substack on Google Part 1: Create backlinks

Being findable on Google is crucial if you want your Substack to grow. Read on to learn how Google discovers your work.

Substack encourages new writers to promote their content as far and wide as their network goes. One important way to find new eyeballs is through Google Search. If you want to learn how your Substack gets indexed by Google and what you can do if it isn’t, you’ve come to the right place.

Google fishing for newsletters - Image from Google Search

The Substack void

We might create our first Substack newsletter with great anticipation. Excitement even. This is it. Finally I'll get the audience and recognition I deserve. Yes please! So I press the publish button. Let's go! Then I wait. And wait. Hours pass. Days even...nothing happens. Not a whisper. Nada. Did I miss the memo? No views. No fanfare. WTF?

Lesson One:
You need to actively promote your content to gain traction on this platform.

If you didn't bring any initial subscribers along with you, and you don't have an audience on social media to promote your content to, your precious writings might end up in what I have heard quite ominously being referred to as the Substack Void.

How to check if your Substack is on Google.

If you hop over to Google Search you can quickly see if you are findable by performing a site: search. A site: search asks Google to return a list of pages already indexed by them. So when my first subscriber

Vanda

asked about search engines I did a quick check for her and entered the following search term in Google Search:

The format is site:sitename with no spaces. You replace sitename with your own Substack address.

Pro tip:
You can do a similar site: Search on bing.com
to see if Microsoft are indexing your pages.

The results for Vanda came out as follows:

As the picture above shows, Vanda's Substack is indeed indexed and her friends can easily find her on Google. Check on Google with your own Substack address. If it returns any results congratulations! You’ve been indexed.

But maybe it looked different for you, like it did for me. This is what Google produced when I tried:

Did you see that? About 0 results it said. Such precision. It took less than the blink of an eye to decide I was a zero. Charming. My newsletter is well and truly stuck in the Substack Void.

How the hell do we get out of the void?

If you wish to exit the void, the first step is understanding how Google finds your content.

Google has an army of automated programs called Googlebots that are constantly crawling the web to find new content to index. They work from lists of known websites that they crawl through to check for updates and to discover new content. This process helps Google keep all those Search results up to date.

Googlebots are also known as crawlers, bots, ants, or spiders

When you create your newsletter on Substack, Google's crawlers will not know about it so it won't be indexed.

There are two ways to fix this:

1. Get backlinks from sites already on Google so the crawlers can discover you.

2. Ask Google directly to crawl and index your pages.

In this post we'll be looking at the first option: getting backlinks.

We'll go through the more technical option: contacting Google in Part 2: Ask Google directly.

OK let’s get some backlinks!

When another website links to your Substack it is giving you a backlink. A backlink works like a recommendation from the referring website. Having backlinks will eventually improve your ranking on Search. Some of that site's prestige will rub off on you. If the recommending website is already on Google this backlink will be picked up by a crawler and Google's algorithm will eventually add it to their lists for indexing.

When you first start a newsletter, the Substack team encourages you to actively promote it on social media, on your website, or through your network. They know that by doing this you will get backlinks and as your traffic grows you will start showing up on Google and other search engines.

Unfortunately Substack won't do any of this work for you, unless of course you are a VIP that they are actively promoting. In that case, you wouldn’t even be reading this…your majesty.

So how does this work exactly?

Here's three things you can do:

1. If you already have a website that is showing up on Google, post about your Substack there. Add links and highlights from your Substack posts to promote it. Do the same on social media if you are on it. Make some noise.

2. Do guest posts on other people's websites or newsletters. Don't forget to include links there that point back to your Substack pages.

3. Request people to review your writing on their established sites or platforms.

What won't work

• Don't pay for a link
  (many websites flag paid links so Google won't crawl them)

• Don't add links to comments
  (most sites, including Substack, add a no-follow directive to comments so crawlers will ignore them). For sure share links that are useful for other readers, but don’t expect them to show up on Google because of it.

Problems with this method

Getting good backlinks takes time. It is easier if you have a community to support you. Waiting for Google to find a link to your Substack takes time. After they find one, the indexing process can take a while too. Google state that it can take anything from a few days to a few weeks for indexing to happen.

If you are a patient type it’s good practice to generate as many backlinks as you can and continue focusing on your writing. In the long run this will help improve your future rankings within Search results. I encourage you to engage with the community here on Substack. In my few days here, it has really been a pleasure. Your efforts will eventually pay off.

If this post has helped you in any way, click on subscribe below and I’ll keep you informed with more useful hacks and other interesting thoughts about how technology impacts our lives. It’s free!

If the thought of asking for backlinks fills your stomach with dread, don’t worry, there is another option. This will also help if you just can’t stand waiting around for things to happen by themselves. If you really want fast results and are happy to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with some technical instructions then click over to Part 2: Setup Search Console. I’ll see you there.