How to Use Substack for SEO
Your newsletter is a website. Treat it like one.
Most Substack writers treat their publication like a newsletter. Write something, hit send, hope people open it.
That works. For a while.
But there’s a whole second growth channel that many writers completely ignore: Google.
Every Substack post lives on the open web. It has a URL. Google can crawl it, index it, and rank it. Your newsletter is a blog whether you think of it that way or not.
I’ve written about getting Substack indexed on Google before. But this is the full picture. How to structure your Substack for search traffic, from setup to strategy.
The technical setup
Three things. That’s it. (I only use two, no GA4 for me).
1. Google Search Console. This is not optional. Go to search.google.com/search-console, add your Substack URL as a property, verify it (Google Analytics verification is the easiest method), and submit your sitemap. Your sitemap lives at yourname.substack.com/sitemap.xml or yourcustomdomain.com/sitemap.xml. It takes 3–7 days for data to show up.
2. Google Analytics 4. Copy your Measurement ID (starts with G-) into Substack’s settings. Search Console tells you what people search for. Analytics tells you what they do once they land on your site. You need both.
3. Custom domain. Optional but strongly recommended. Costs $50 one-time on Substack plus the annual domain registration. Signals credibility to Google and makes your URLs look professional. Works better with the search console and GA4 as well.
That’s the foundation. Takes maybe 30 minutes. Most Substack writers never do it.
Publish daily, email weekly
This is the strategy that changed a lot for me.
When you publish on Substack, you can choose whether to send an email to your subscribers or just publish to web.
The idea: publish to web only most days. No email.
Just a post that lives on your site, gets indexed by Google, and starts building search traffic over time. Then, once a week, pick your best piece and send that one via email.
This turns Substack into a blog-first, newsletter-second platform. You’re building a library of searchable content without annoying your subscribers with daily emails.
Nobody wants daily emails.
The daily posts don’t have to be too long. A 400–1200 word answers to a specific question works. “How to add Google Analytics to Substack.” “What happens when you paywall a Substack post.”
The weekly email can be a longer deep dive if you want something new, 1,500–2,500 words, with more voice, more opinion, more personality.
Or just one of your daily posts send via email.
Writing for search
SEO writing has a bad reputation. Stuffing keywords into boring articles. Doesn’t have to be that way.
Search traffic is my #1 Substack growth metric right now, and I don’t keyword-stuff.
Things to consider though:
Titles. Be specific. Front-load the keyword if you have one. Include the year when relevant.
Depth over frequency. One 15,000-word comprehensive post beats ten 300-word posts. Google usually rewards depth. If you’re going to write about a topic, cover it properly. Answer the question completely.
Structure. Use H2 and H3 headings. Keep paragraphs short, 3–4 lines max. Add alt-text to images. Use internal links to your other posts. Keep URLs simple. These are small things that add up.
Answer real questions. Check your Search Console for queries where you rank positions 10–25. Those are the “almost winning” keywords. Write dedicated posts for them. A short, direct answer to a specific question can rank faster than a long essay.
The paywall question
Paywalled posts CAN rank on Google. Google crawls them. It doesn’t penalize paywalls in general.
But the strategy matters.
Beginner content, high-volume keyword targets, anything you want to be shareable and discoverable. These are your SEO posts. They bring people in. They should ideally not be behind paywall.
Advanced tutorials, exclusive analysis, templates, tools. These are your revenue posts. They convert the people who already found you through the free stuff. They can have a paywall.
The Medium connection
If you’re also on Medium like I am, you can use it as an SEO feeder for Substack.
Medium has a domain authority of 96+ (of 100). That’s massive. When you republish a Substack post on Medium with a canonical link pointing back to your Substack, Medium’s authority helps the content rank faster while the SEO credit flows to your Substack.
It’s not magic! But it helps in the long run.
For that strategy, it’s good to publish on Substack first. Wait until Google indexes it (check in Search Console). Then republish on Medium with the canonical link set to the Substack URL.
Content clusters
A content cluster is a group of 3–5 posts that cover the same topic from different angles, all interlinked. Plus one hub post that has everything.
Each post links to the others. The hub links to all of them. Google sees this and thinks: this person really knows about Substack growth. Topical authority. That’s what makes individual posts rank higher.
The weekly routine
SEO is not a one-time thing. It’s a habit. But it doesn’t have to take long.
10 minutes: Check Search Console. Which posts are getting impressions? Which keywords are climbing? Any posts in the 8–30 position range that could use a small update?
(5 minutes: Check Analytics. Which posts have repeat traffic? Where are visitors coming from?)
5 minutes: Check Substack dashboard. Any posts with unusually high external reads? Those are your SEO winners.
10 minutes: Take one action. Update a title. Add internal links to an old post. Write down a keyword idea for next week.
The timeline
SEO is slow.
Weeks 1–4: Setup, first data trickling in. Nothing ranking yet. That’s normal.
Months 2–3: First positions in the 30–50 range. A few hundred impressions. Maybe 5–20 clicks per week. Not exciting. But it’s starting.
Months 4–6: Positions 10–30 for some keywords. 50–100 clicks per week. Clusters forming. You start seeing “accidental keywords,” search terms you didn’t target but somehow rank for. Write dedicated posts for those.
Months 7–12: Top 10 for niche keywords. 200–500+ clicks per week. First subscribers who found you purely through search. That’s when it gets real.
Year 2+: Search becomes a top 3 traffic source. New posts rank faster because Google trusts your domain. Sustainable, compounding growth.
It takes time. Going at it for months, not weeks. But the traffic compounds. Every post you write is a potential search result forever. That’s very different from a newsletter email that gets opened once and forgotten.
Writing SEO
They think SEO means changing how they write. It doesn’t have to.
Write with your voice. Have opinions. Use contractions. Vary your sentence length. Add specific numbers. Break grammar rules for rhythm. Be a person.
Google measures reader behavior. Time on page. Bounce rate. Return visits. If your writing is engaging, Google knows. The best SEO strategy is writing that people actually want to read.
The technical stuff, Search Console, analytics, sitemaps, internal links, that’s just making sure Google can find what you already wrote. It’s logistics.
If you want the full deep dive on all of this, I put together a Substack SEO guide that covers every step in detail. Setup, keyword strategy, content clusters, the weekly routine, everything.
The Bottom Line
Your Substack is a website. Every post is a page that Google can index. That’s a growth channel that many newsletter writers completely ignore.
The setup takes 30 minutes. The weekly maintenance takes 30 minutes. The payoff compounds over months and years.
You don’t have to choose between being a newsletter writer and ranking on Google. Substack lets you do both. Publish daily to web, email weekly. Build clusters. Use Medium as a feeder. Let search do the work that social media used to do, but more reliably.