Awesome Kristi. I am not super familiar with improving SEO and performance follow-ups, etc. Let's wait and see how the Search Console might open doors to me. Thank you! 🙌
I just read through this and saved it to do tomorrow since I’m trying to NOT work today LOLZ since I had a 6 day workweek. But I feel so excited to do this I just might have to do this while enjoying wine outside. 😬 🍷
Thanks Kristi for such valuable instructions. You had me right up until adding my property in GSC. Then things went awry when trying to verify via DNS record. Was initially advised to access the source code of my home page to insert a .txt record (Google generated) for my DNS provider ... and the brick wall surfaced. Backtracked and tried other verification methods: all epic failures.
Have already set up my substack in my GA4 account, so can see some data there. GTM in place too. So would have thought GSC would be a seamless extension. Not so.
It sounds like you got through the first major hoops. For this last step, when you get to add the property, select the URL prefix option (not the domain/DNS verification). Then you want to copy the full URL of your Substack. If you’ve already got GA and GTM set up and you’ve added the code in your Substack settings, it should work immediately.
Thanks Kristi. Appreciate the prompt response. And I did try the URL prefix option; several times, as per your excellent instructions. But still to no avail. It’s a mystery, given how embedded my stack is with GA4.
That is such a generous offer. Thank you. I did engage the chatbot over the weekend too, after the series of failures, but no resolution. So it promised to connect me with an actual support agent, who is meant to reach out via email. Let me see if or how that goes, before I take you up on your offer.
Will DM you Kristi if it comes to that. Thanks again.
Thank you for this! I’m confused about what to write after clicking “site maps” and it says “add site map” and ask then has my url/enter site map url. Do I enter my url again there?
I was so frustrated because the site verification option is not available on my settings. And, when I searched for an answer in Substack's support area, I was just told that the newsletters were all already indexed on all search engines.
I can tell that is not the case with mine as Google wasn't finding it at all.
Still having an issue with my sitemap, and I am wondering if it's because I have not enabled paid subscriptions or turned on Stripe for this Substack. (I have well over five posts.)
Were you able to get it to work? You shouldn’t have to enable paid subscriptions or Stripe to get your sitemap generated. The newsletters are indexed on search engines, but this is helpful if you want to have major insight into your data.
No, still no sitemap. I have heard from a few other people that they are no longer generating sitemaps for new sites. When I inquired, I received this reply from Substack's automated helpdesk:
"Substack doesn't automatically generate a sitemap for individual newsletters. Sitemaps are typically used for SEO purposes on websites to help search engines index the site's content. Since Substack is a newsletter platform, the focus is more on direct subscriber engagement rather than search engine indexing."
Super valuable Kristi. Fits perfectly to my latest posts about getting feature on Google. More and more people find me via Google and I was thinking of adding GSK. I'll bookmark this and come to it later.
Hi Kristi, your post prompted me to connect search console to my second publication, and I was surprised to hear you say you have to use tag manager.
That's incorrect (as of today, anyway). I was able to simply paste the Search Console html tag into the Google Site Verification field in publication settings.
When you paste the tag from search console, Substack automatically strips off all the extra html parts and leaves you with the raw code.
Worked first time for me today, and this publication is now connected to Search Console without having to use Tag Manager.
I have mine connected, but I definitely need some help making sense of all the reasons Google is not indexing my content--and how much of that is within my control to fix, or is a Substack issue.
(Also, the search terms that people are using to get to my site are not what I'm optimizing for, so that's been really wild-slash-frustrating to watch...)
Thanks for your helpful insight, Kristi. If we have a Google Tag Manager ID already (my GTM is with 4 numbers.) I followed your steps and received a GTM with 8 characters with numbers and letters). So, you are saying setting up an account is a more specific GTM?
The Google Console instructions didn't work for me. There was no left-hand drop down menu so I clicked 'verify' and it asked me to log into Cloudflare to verify which you don't mention. But it was the only way I could see to verify. Now Cloudflare says I'm not authorized to make changes to Substack. This is why I tend not to bother with Google, I know it's super-valuable but 30 years in and you still need a rocket science degree to connect anything to it.
I *think* it might have worked. I got a success message that doesn't look like yours and right now it says 'can't fetch' where yours says 'success'. I'll wait a day and see what it looks like. Thanks for the great article!
AFAICT it's implemented. It shows nothing but I do remember it takes like five days. I'm getting emails from Google Console that don't suggest anything's wrong so I'll just keep an eye on it. But it *seems* to be okay!
Awesome Kristi. I am not super familiar with improving SEO and performance follow-ups, etc. Let's wait and see how the Search Console might open doors to me. Thank you! 🙌
Ummmmm OMG!! Thank you SOOO MUCH!
I just read through this and saved it to do tomorrow since I’m trying to NOT work today LOLZ since I had a 6 day workweek. But I feel so excited to do this I just might have to do this while enjoying wine outside. 😬 🍷
Heck yeah!
Thanks Kristi for such valuable instructions. You had me right up until adding my property in GSC. Then things went awry when trying to verify via DNS record. Was initially advised to access the source code of my home page to insert a .txt record (Google generated) for my DNS provider ... and the brick wall surfaced. Backtracked and tried other verification methods: all epic failures.
Have already set up my substack in my GA4 account, so can see some data there. GTM in place too. So would have thought GSC would be a seamless extension. Not so.
I shall try again tomorrow.
Hey Grant,
It sounds like you got through the first major hoops. For this last step, when you get to add the property, select the URL prefix option (not the domain/DNS verification). Then you want to copy the full URL of your Substack. If you’ve already got GA and GTM set up and you’ve added the code in your Substack settings, it should work immediately.
Let me know if it doesn’t work.
Thanks Kristi. Appreciate the prompt response. And I did try the URL prefix option; several times, as per your excellent instructions. But still to no avail. It’s a mystery, given how embedded my stack is with GA4.
If you’re open to it, I could hop on zoom and troubleshoot with you soon.
That is such a generous offer. Thank you. I did engage the chatbot over the weekend too, after the series of failures, but no resolution. So it promised to connect me with an actual support agent, who is meant to reach out via email. Let me see if or how that goes, before I take you up on your offer.
Will DM you Kristi if it comes to that. Thanks again.
Thank you for this! I’m confused about what to write after clicking “site maps” and it says “add site map” and ask then has my url/enter site map url. Do I enter my url again there?
Thank you so much for writing this!
I was so frustrated because the site verification option is not available on my settings. And, when I searched for an answer in Substack's support area, I was just told that the newsletters were all already indexed on all search engines.
I can tell that is not the case with mine as Google wasn't finding it at all.
Still having an issue with my sitemap, and I am wondering if it's because I have not enabled paid subscriptions or turned on Stripe for this Substack. (I have well over five posts.)
Were you able to get it to work? You shouldn’t have to enable paid subscriptions or Stripe to get your sitemap generated. The newsletters are indexed on search engines, but this is helpful if you want to have major insight into your data.
No, still no sitemap. I have heard from a few other people that they are no longer generating sitemaps for new sites. When I inquired, I received this reply from Substack's automated helpdesk:
"Substack doesn't automatically generate a sitemap for individual newsletters. Sitemaps are typically used for SEO purposes on websites to help search engines index the site's content. Since Substack is a newsletter platform, the focus is more on direct subscriber engagement rather than search engine indexing."
Super valuable Kristi. Fits perfectly to my latest posts about getting feature on Google. More and more people find me via Google and I was thinking of adding GSK. I'll bookmark this and come to it later.
Thanks for letting me know, Kristina. I'm glad to hear you're getting more readers from Google!
Hi Kristi, your post prompted me to connect search console to my second publication, and I was surprised to hear you say you have to use tag manager.
That's incorrect (as of today, anyway). I was able to simply paste the Search Console html tag into the Google Site Verification field in publication settings.
When you paste the tag from search console, Substack automatically strips off all the extra html parts and leaves you with the raw code.
Worked first time for me today, and this publication is now connected to Search Console without having to use Tag Manager.
Some people don’t have that field. My old newsletter does. This one doesn’t. It just depends on what is available to you.
Oh wow that's weird. And annoying. Thanks for letting me know.
You're welcome.
I have mine connected, but I definitely need some help making sense of all the reasons Google is not indexing my content--and how much of that is within my control to fix, or is a Substack issue.
(Also, the search terms that people are using to get to my site are not what I'm optimizing for, so that's been really wild-slash-frustrating to watch...)
I’m happy to help you with that.
OK great! Let's discuss at next meet-up. I'd be happy to volunteer my stats as a test case you can share w/ readers.
Oh, that would be great!
Thanks for your helpful insight, Kristi. If we have a Google Tag Manager ID already (my GTM is with 4 numbers.) I followed your steps and received a GTM with 8 characters with numbers and letters). So, you are saying setting up an account is a more specific GTM?
The Google Console instructions didn't work for me. There was no left-hand drop down menu so I clicked 'verify' and it asked me to log into Cloudflare to verify which you don't mention. But it was the only way I could see to verify. Now Cloudflare says I'm not authorized to make changes to Substack. This is why I tend not to bother with Google, I know it's super-valuable but 30 years in and you still need a rocket science degree to connect anything to it.
I *think* it might have worked. I got a success message that doesn't look like yours and right now it says 'can't fetch' where yours says 'success'. I'll wait a day and see what it looks like. Thanks for the great article!
Let me know how it goes.
AFAICT it's implemented. It shows nothing but I do remember it takes like five days. I'm getting emails from Google Console that don't suggest anything's wrong so I'll just keep an eye on it. But it *seems* to be okay!