Why Independence From Substack Matters
And how to gain more of it
My Medium friends can read this story over there as well.
Substack is a platform like any other. Nothing really special, just good writer-centric marketing.
It can boost us. It can also quickly deprioritize us. Or pivot. Or decide tomorrow that something we do no longer fits their “vibe”.
The goal is not to leave Substack. I love Substack. It’s a great place for online writing.
The goal is optionality.
Optionality means we can stay because we want to, not because we have to.
Two levers give us most of that power. The URL and search traffic.
Let’s talk about those two today.
1. Connect a custom domain
To me, this is non-negotiable. If you do one thing from this article, this is it.
By default, Substack gives us something like: ourname.substack.com
That looks harmless. It’s not.
That URL belongs to Substack. Not us.
What a custom domain actually gives us
When we connect a custom domain, for example: ournewsletter.com, a few important things happen:
We own the URL
Google associates all SEO value with our domain
We can move platforms later without breaking links
Subscribers barely notice if we migrate
This can make a huge difference.
Substack thankfully makes connecting a custom domain pretty easy. We buy a domain (for a few bucks a month). We go into Substack settings. We point the DNS records. Done.
Takes maybe 30 minutes. The payoff lasts years. It does cost a one-off $50, but that’s totally worth it, in my eyes.
The SEO benefit
Every post we publish builds authority for the domain it lives on.
If that domain is substack.com, we’re helping Substack’s SEO more than our own.
If it’s our domain, every article compounds. Every backlink compounds. Every Google ranking sticks with us.
If we ever move to Ghost, WordPress, a custom setup, whatever, we take the entire SEO footprint with us.
That’s independence.
Therefore, the second part is crucial too.
2. Get Substack SEO right
Substack SEO has a bad reputation. Mostly because people don’t do it right (or at all).
They write like it’s email. No structure. No intent. No keywords. But Substack is not a newsletter platform. It’s a website that happens to come with email. I’ve said that many times in the past.
Substack is better for SEO than people think
Under the hood, Substack pages are fast, clean, and index well. If we put in a little bit of effort.
Google has no problem crawling Substacks. The problem is usually the content strategy.
SEO on Substack is not about gaming Google. Or “hacking”. Or any SEO crap that makes writing normal stuff unbearable.
It’s about a few little things that go a long way.
The right tool. Analysis. Clear topics. Clear headlines. Clear structure.
The basics
A few things that matter way more than people think:
Connecting the Google Search Console
Analyzing the data
Writing with that data in mind
One clear topic per post
Headlines that say what the article is about
Subheadings that Google can understand
Internal links between related posts
Consistent publishing around a theme
We don’t need to write for SEO. We just need to stop sabotaging it.
Email first, search second is the wrong order
Good SEO writing is good writing, in my eyes. Emphasis on good.
Clear writing. Focused writing.
If a post is understandable to Google, it’s usually more understandable to humans, too.
Search traffic becomes the long tail that keeps working while we sleep.
Subscribers come and go. Rankings compound.
Substack SEO
I wrote a full, practical guide on Substack SEO. No fluff. No crazy SEO “hack”. Just the simple steps to get more search traffic and turn that into subscribers.
With that guide, I turned search traffic into my number of growth source on Substack.
It covers:
Google Search Console
Analytics
Writing with data points
Finding search traffic content
and a lot more
You can find that guide here.
Independence is built in layers
None of this requires leaving Substack. That’s the point.
We use Substack for distribution, payments, and ease. We use our domain and SEO for ownership.
Together, that’s a strong setup.
The Bottom Line
Substack is a great place to publish. It’s a risky place to be dependent.
Connecting a custom domain gives us more ownership and future proofing.
Getting SEO right turns posts into long term assets, not just emails that die in inboxes.
Independence is boring, technical, and incredibly powerful over time.
Great post, I am already on Substack with publications…can I shift to a personal domain after I have an active publication?
Great read, and tips.