The Essential Guide to Substack SEO
How to build your reputation, get indexed, and stand out within Search Results
Search Engine optimization (SEO) is one of those topics that can give techies a bad name. It is regularly depicted in a confusing way, with badly written documentation often proliferating conflicting advice. Advice that can lead many people to throw their arms in the air and simply walk away. I can’t blame them. When I started looking into this topic I had to hack through a jungle of material before things started to become clear. And don’t even start me on those self-proclaimed SEO gurus constantly circling me and trying to sell me some dubious card tricks with their hyperbolic claims.
Google themselves peddle over 1000 pages of SEO documentation online to help their ‘users’. That’s me and you, but I’m not always sure who is been used if I am honest. Google’s documentation also unfortunately assumes too much from most readers, and can be equally difficult to penetrate. This sorry situation even led me to write a book on the topic, aimed at helping regular folks approach this topic with ease. But I’m not here to sell you a book. If you are just looking to do SEO on your Substack you don’t need one. Hooray!
You see, most SEO advice is aimed at programmers, not normal humans. Substack like some other platforms out there hide those pesky bits of code from us Substackers so we can focus on the writing. That’s their sales pitch and it’s a good one! When I entered the Substack world a week ago I really liked what I saw. Looking through the comments on the Substack Office Hours you will find a peppering of questions asking ‘What about SEO?’ Knowing a thing or two about the topic I followed the leads to understand what’s what. I found the Substack approach to SEO to be minimalist.
This minimalism means I don’t need to write a book for you to get it. Instead I have put together a series of straightforward posts that provide all the information you need. I aim to update these articles periodically as things evolve out there in Search Engine land. If you find anything that doesn’t work leave a comment. Why not subscribe to my newsletter and stay informed. I intend to write about many of the ways technology impacts our lives. SEO will be a small part of that. And did I tell you? It’s free!
Why Google?
Why Google indeed. Rating agencies report that Google currently dominates about 92% of online search globally. That’s right, 92%. As I write these words this effective monopoly is been questioned in anti-trust cases around the world.
With Google’s dominance of the Search market, the advice I offer is biased towards promoting your content on Google. But much of the advice offered will apply to the other Search engines out there like Bing or DuckDuckGo. They all follow a similar approach to SEO. If you are interested I can write more about other search engines later.
The Essential Guide to Substack SEO
I have created the four part series below to take you step by step through all you need to know about SEO as a Substacker. This guide may be expanded over time if there is enough interest shown. (Hint: new subscribers = interest).
How to get on Google Part 1: Backlinks
The first post helps you understand how Google Search finds and indexes your Substack pages and what you can do about it if it doesn’t. I expand on Substack’s advice to newbies by describing how sharing links to your posts can impact your visibility on Search.
How to get on Google Part 2: Ask Google Directly
In Part 2 I introduce Search Console, a Google tool that helps you check your performance within Search itself. I will detail how you can use Search Console to directly request indexing for new and changed posts.
How to get on Google Part 3: Stand out
It is not enough to be listed on Search. Millions of sites are indexed. You need to check how you scrub up on Search and make sure your first impression counts. In this post I explain how Substack’s SEO Settings work and how you should start to think about your audience.
How to get on Google Part 4: Be creative (upcoming)
In the final part of the series I will reveal some more esoteric aspects of Search so you can start to use it differently. By using Search in more creative ways, you will learn ways to find an audience and help discover interesting things to write about.
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!
Thanks for all these great guide. Can I ask a really basic question? The 'SEO description' field on Substack settings is what should show up as the preview on Search results, right? I've just checked on one of my pages which ranked second (after following your indexing article, thanks!) but the preview was a random chunk of text from the article, not what I'd put in SEO description. Any idea why that might have been? Big thanks in advance for the help, and thanks again for the amazing guide.