Install Google Search Console for your Substack Newsletter - 2023

And track your search rankings for your posts

Substack just added a few SEO features to help writers get their posts seen by anyone doing a Google search.

Following is a way to get Google to place your Substack posts in their search results. When you optimize these results through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) you will get more clicks and more subscribers:

The state of SEO on Substack

A guide to SEO on Substack

StackHacks - 6 Steps for More SubStack Subscribers with SEO for 2023

After reading the above, you want to then install the Google Search Console.

But…

Not all Substack writers have the search console option available as seen in the picture below. (Advertising analytics). It seems that they removed that option from the dashboard. Do this, and read the comments below:

Add Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager to your Substack Newsletter

Installing Google Search Console for your newsletter can help you track the performance of your website on Google search results pages. Here are the steps to install Google Search Console for your newsletter:

1. Go to the Google Search Console website (https://search.google.com/search-console/about) and sign in with your Google account.

2. Click on the "Add Property" button and enter the URL of your newsletter website. My property URL is https://pau1.substack.com

3. Verify ownership of your website by following the verification process provided by Google. There are several ways to verify ownership, such as adding an HTML file to your website or adding a DNS record.

4. Add the link to the HTML file to your Substack account, where it asks for Google Site Verification: Go to Dashboard > Settings > Advertising analytics:

   

   Here is where you verify your Substack site

5. Once your ownership is verified, you can start using Google Search Console to track your website's performance on Google search. You can see how many clicks and impressions your website receives, which keywords are driving traffic to your website, and more.

That's it! By following these steps, you can install Google Search Console for your newsletter and start tracking its performance on Google search. I think Substack may add this step to one of their “On Substack“ newsletters soon!

Reach out if you have any questions.

PS: Meta Descriptions are now available in the SEO dropdown in your preview section before you publish a post. Here is an article from the horses mouth (Google) on Meta tags or descriptions. If you read the whole article, it will give you some great SEO knowledge: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet#use-quality-descriptions