Does moving your blog to Substack hurt your SEO?

Are you working on small business SEO and wondering if Substack might also be a good marketing channel for your business? If so, you're not alone. A lot of my students and clients are finding they love Substack. I wanted to take a bit to explain what you want to think through strategically if you're looking at building out a Substack. It can help or hurt your business depending on how you set it up and what you do with your website and blog content. 

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Hey there, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, I wanna talk to you about Substack. Now, I know you may absolutely love Substack. You may be using it and having fun with it and playing around and building your followers and building your Substack and all of that. Or you may be listening to this and wondering, "What exactly is it? I keep hearing people talk about it, but I'm not sure if it's really something I should use." So let's talk about it because what I'm seeing from some of my students and some of my clients is that some of them love Substack, and they wanna go all in on it. And I don't wanna say don't go all in on something because if there is a marketing channel that you love, that you wanna go all in on, that you wanna use to help you build your business, I am all for that. What I wanna say is understand how Substack plays in your overall marketing ecosystem before making a decision to, like, completely move your blog over to Substack because there are some really good things about it. There are some really not so great things about it when it comes to your marketing and your SEO. So let's talk about that today and just kind of understand what is it, why do we wanna look at it, and ultimately, what's the right decision for your business? So I get it. Substack can be really appealing. I know especially for some of my students and clients who are not big fans of social media, they found they really enjoy Substack because it feels like an alternative. You're able to build your- A following, you're able to build your little network, you can grow your business, people can follow you. I know you have an option of being able to monetize your Substack and have free subscribers and paid subscribers and all of that. You don't feel like you have to chase the algorithm the same way that you do on, say, Instagram or Facebook. You're able to write content that's interesting to you, that's exciting. You can get your readers to your newsletter. You can import them into your actual email list and send them your Substack email, and there's all sorts of things. And i- in concept, it's great because anything that you can do to help build your presence somewhere, build your presence online, build visibility with your brand, with the right people, is great. So being there is not the concern at all. Like, if you love Substack or you're curious about it, you wanna learn, you wanna be on there, go for it. Absolutely, it will not hurt you in the long run. However, what I wanna talk to you about is moving your entire blog over to Substack. So this is something that I'm seeing happen and I'm getting questions about quite regularly, and I've had to help people who made the move completely to Substack without asking me and then realized, "Oh, I sh- probably shouldn't have done this." I've had to help them figure out what to bring back and how to change it because we don't wanna move everything off your website over to Substack, especially right now with this shift to AI-based search. Yes, you may have a bigger chance of being found on Substack. It may feel like it's easier to get visibility or it's easier to get people to find you there. However, if you move all of your content over there, then what are the search engines and the AI engines... Like, what are they gonna find on your site? How are they going to know who to attribute that content to or where to send people? So when you're moving everything over to Substack, what you're doing is building their credibility and their resource information for AI and for Google. So they're not... You're not building your own name at that point, you're building the name on Substack, or you're helping Substack show that they have all this great insight and this great information, which is good, but it doesn't help you. Another thing that we're seeing is that Because if you have it on your site and you have, like, let's say you have the same blog post, your site versus your substack, then you run into an issue of it's now what Google considers duplicate content because there's a really easy way that this could be avoided, but Substack doesn't allow you to do it. So you don't have what's called a canonical tag that you can put in place on your substack to say, "The blog post on my website is the original one. This is the duplicate. I'm aware it's a duplicate. Please go index the one on my website." It's a little technical term. It's called a s- a canonical tag. It's not something that we're able to do on Substack. They don't allow us to do that. So now, if you post the same blog post to your substack as your blog, Google doesn't know which one's the original. And because Substack is a more authoritative website, it's more likely your substack is gonna show up versus your blog. And you may be thinking, "Cool, I don't really care, Rachel, 'cause either way I showed up." The problem is you're building that credibility for Substack and you're not building that visibility and that credibility for your own website. So what we wanna do is make sure that we're creating really great content on your website that is really focused on helping your ideal customer and helping Google and now especially our AI bots understand what your website is about. So if you wanna use Substack and you're like, "Okay, how do I do this? Like, what do I do? I know I shouldn't duplicate it. Like, how do I do it?" So this is where we wanna really think about our strategy. You want your website to have the content that is designed to help the search engines understand who, pardon me, who you help. How you help them. So your website needs to have the core piece that you're creating, whether it's for Google and it's got specific keywords that you're going after, or if it's for AI-based search and you're answering specific questions that your ideal customer is asking. The reality is, in today's world, you should be doing both. You should have keywords that you're targeting for Google along with the AI-based question in there and make sure you're optimizing it all. That belongs on your blog, okay? So that belongs on your website because we want to train Google and ultimately our AI search engines that our website is a great place to find information like this, and we want them to be able to learn and understand who we help and how we help so they know who to show our information to. So that's the first and foremost. Put your most important information on your site. Next, if you want to build your Substack, use it as behind-the-scenes. Share something extra that you didn't put into your blog post, or share a picture or an image or a little anecdote or a story. Link over to the full post on your blog if you want. But have it be supplemental, have fun with it, enjoy it, but keep that content that you're really creating that is helping your ideal customer, that's answering their questions. Like anything that you're really creating to help boost the visibility of your business, bring in the right leads, generate conversions, all of that content belongs on your website. The extras, the behind-the-scenes, the fun, all of that belongs on Substack if you want to do Substack. I think that strategy will help you. So what we want to look at-- 'cause there's a couple really good benefits I'm gonna explain, so we're gonna get a tiny little bit technical here for just a second. So one of the things that's beneficial to you from a Substack standpoint is that Substack gives you what's called a dofollow link. Now, you understand if you've been listening here for a while, link building is an important part of traditional SEO. It's an important part of what we've done for Google for many years. A dofollow link is important. It's the kind of link that tells Googlebot or another search engine, "Go over here and follow this. We like this. We trust this. This is a link to another website that you should look at." So there are two types of links. There's a dofollow and a nofollow So a no-follow link will not give you the same boost of authority and credit or endorsement that a do-follow link does. I know it sounds really weird, doesn't it? Do-follow, no-follow. Right, I know. So a no-follow link, which is what we often get from PR, especially if you're doing link... Like, if you're doing a link building campaign and you're buying links, there's a really good chance that what you're getting are no-follow links, which really do not benefit you at all unfortunately. So you're paying for them and there's no benefit. A no-follow link tells Google or another search engine, "Hey, yeah, I know this is over here, but just ignore it, okay? Don't go over there and crawl it." So think of it that way. "Hey, this is this party that I want to invite you to," versus that's a follow link, versus, "Yeah, I know there's a party over there, but we don't wanna go. We don't wanna play with them. We don't wanna be part of that party." If that helps you, that's the no-follow link. So with Substack, the benefit is it gives you a do-follow link. A do-follow link helps to build your website's domain authority, and we've talked about that before. That's that score that helps you kind of see how authoritative your site is in Google's eyes. The more authoritative your site is, um, thought to be generally impacts what type keywords that you can rank for, all of that. So it's building that. And the other thing that's great is that Substack is one of those platforms that the AI tools seem to like to cite. So being active over there can help you not only have the content that they're looking for on Google, on your website, so that Google and the AI search engines can find all of your prime content over there, but they're also looking at citing Substack. So if you are there and you're active, you have citations on your Substack, people are talking about you, they're referring back to you, all of that, that can impact you. That can help you as well. So it's not just about, like- Substack versus your website versus SEO. What I want you to understand is when you're hearing about different marketing channels, it's really important to understand the nuances of the channels and how they fit in so that when you're making a decision about your business, you don't hurt yourself. So I had a student who did this, and she didn't realize she inadvertently hurt herself. So she had a website. She was ranking, she was getting traffic, she was starting to show up in AI search, all of that, and she fell in love with Substack, and she decided to move her entire blog over to Substack, and she removed everything from her website. And her traffic very quickly dropped off, and her AI citations started to slow down, or her AI mentions. Like, she was getting fewer leads. She was making less money, and she was trying to figure out why, and she asked me one day. She's like, "Rachel, I can't figure out why my website traffic is down. I don't know why my leads are down. Like, I'm not sure what's going on." And so we talked about it, and I said, "Well, tell me what's going on. Let's look at it." And I went to look at her website. It was on one of our student calls, and I went to look at her website, and I said, "Where's your blog?" And she said, "Oh, I moved my blog all over to Substack. I am getting more visibility on Substack." Okay, but now you have no blog content on your website. So you've just removed that opportunity to be found, which was why the traffic was down, the visibility was down, the rankings were down, the leads were down. All of it was down because she had handed everything over to Substack. She had not gotten enough back from Substack in place to make up for everything that she actually lost. So she ultimately realized she needed to move everything back over to her website and really focus on having it on her site, and then using Substack a little more like a social media channel, a little behind the scene, a little extra anecdote, a little extra story, something like that, then linking back over to her website if they were interested in the full blog post or if they wanted to learn more. So I'm not saying don't do Substack. I'm saying understand how the different marketing channels that are out there can work together versus can hurt you. Because I don't want you to spend all this time trying to learn how to grow your business only to end up making a mistake because you get excited by a new marketing channel. Anybody who's been around for a while knows marketing channels kinda... They come and go. They come, uh, in and out of favor. I mean, anybody remember during the pandemic when Clubhouse was the biggest thing, and everybody was rushing over to Clubhouse? Well, sure, but also six years later, and honestly it didn't even take that long, Clubhouse, I don't know if they even still have an app Like, there are so many things that are gonna come and go, and I'm not saying Substack is gonna, is gonna go away quickly. I'm just saying keep your core content on your website Focus on building your authority and use these other channels as marketing tools. Craft a strategy that works with them, but keep people coming back to your website. The last thing I wanna say about Substack in particular is from an email standpoint, I know it's really appealing to just import your entire email list into Substack and to be s- begin sending them your Substacks, your newsletters. Please don't do that because your people did not opt in to your Substack. They opted into something on your website. They opted into your mailing list, your newsletter, your whatever, but they didn't opt into your Substack. And I've personally seen this happen to me where I've gotten emails from Substack, I've been automatically added to people's Substack newsletter, and I'm like, "I didn't sign up for this." And I find myself unsubscribing sometimes because it bothers me. It's like, no, I know you're on Substack, cool, but that's not what I signed up for. That's not what I'm looking for. So if you want to do that, you want to be on Substack, you want to send a newsletter through there, great. Give people an option to opt in. Protect your relationship with them because you don't want to spend all this time building your email list, building your business, your visibility, your foundation, your leads, and end up hurting yourself because you make a change over here and then just automatically move people to another platform. So don't do that. Protect your business. Um, hopefully, this helps you kinda understand where Substack comes into play, but more than that, like, how to look at it, what type of questions to ask to figure out, is this a good option for my business? Should I be doing this? Should I not be doing this? When you hear about a new marketing channel or a new social media channel, don't jump. Spend a little while and think about it. Ask questions. If you're one of my students, ask me. If we work together one-on-one, please ask me before you switch everything over to Substack. I'll help you figure out what the right strategy is for your business. If you're not one of my students or clients, just take a little time and, like, write out what is it you're hoping to accomplish, what do you wanna do, why do you wanna make that change, so that you can start to see and understand because sometimes it's a great thing, and sometimes it causes problems that you may not be aware of. So that's one of those situations where it helps to have somebody in your corner who understands how these things work. All right. That's it for today on please don't move your blog to Substack. Not saying don't use Substack, just please don't move your entire blog there. Let's make sure we have a strategy in place to protect you. All right. I'll see you back here next week. Bye for now.