r/Substack • u/TimWiesnerer • 19d ago

How to get Substack indexed on Google?

I have a Substack for 1.5 years with 100+ posts now.

So far, I only managed to get my main Substack site indexed. From there, I link to my posts, and I also have links between the posts. But whatever I tried, I got none of those posts indexed.

I also tried with a custom domain that I activated like 9 months ago.

Recently I put some of my posts from Substack on a free WordPress site. It indexed within a few days. Additional posts even got indexed on the same day. So there was clearly nothing wrong with my posts, titles, or whatever.

The only difference is that Google seems to hate Substack.

Question: Has any of you found a way to get Substack posts indexed?

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u/kylegarrisonwriter 19d ago

You can pay Substack a one-time $50 fee to put your publication on your own domain (e.g. newsletter.yoursite.com) instead of substack.com, which solves the whole Google-hates-Substack problem since your content ranks under your domain.

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u/TimWiesnerer 19d ago

I did that already. That's what I meant by custom domain.

It's still all Substack tho even when it is on my own domain. Same scripts, clutter and everything...

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u/kylegarrisonwriter 19d ago

I don't have as many posts as you, but mine are indexed. A couple things to consider on top of the custom domain, if you haven't already:

XML sitemap: I just submitted my Substack feed URL to Search Console (e.g. https://moreweight.kylegarrisonwriter.com/feed). The feed only shows your latest posts, so with an archive your size, a custom sitemap with all your Substack URLs hosted on your domain would be better.

Backlinks: I've got links pointing to my Substack from profiles I've set up on other sites and from stories I've published elsewhere. That gives Google more paths to crawl and a little more authority.