Make Your Substack Visible to Google Analytics and Google Search

... an easy guide for non-techie Substack authors

Image created with the assistance of DALL·E 2!

I’m new to Substack, with only single post so far. I’ve never thought of myself as having that much to share that would be worthy of a read, but the response to The Atypical Truth About Tesla(s) has somewhat changed that and energized me! It makes me wonder why Substack has generated more interest than anything I’ve posted on other social platforms. I think it’s because Substack’s basic format is soothing and uncluttered, harkening back to respected printed publications of the past. It also feels like an escape from the real-time intensity of those other platforms. They each certainly have their place, and Substack fills a need in its own way. Its empowering of authors, making it easy to set up paid subscriptions of which content creators keep 90%, is a fantastic example of technology that can truly make a difference in economic self-sufficiency. Anyway, thanks to all you (free) subscribers for helping open this new door! For me, it’s a perfect new complement to writing code, designing apps, and taking long road trips in our Tesla Model 3.

You really should consider Substack as a platform to share your own thoughts. It costs absolutely nothing to start publishing. But once you’ve got things up and running, if you’re like me, you might start wondering whether your newsletter has any chance of appearing in Google Search. Or, you might to know if it can be somehow connected to Google Analytics in order to see reader statistics in greater detail than what Substack itself provides. If you’re not a techie, you might not even realize that these are issues you should think about in order to get as much “reach” for your newsletter as possible. That’s why I feel it’s worth discussing in a post.

(Time Saver: If you’re not a Substack author and have no interest in becoming one, there’s probably no reason to keep reading this post. No offense taken. See you in the next Mumblings!)

I had these search and analytics (SEO) questions a few days ago, so I visited a few websites, posts, and YouTube videos hoping to get quick answers. Unfortunately, most of the procedures no longer worked for whatever reason, so I resorted to a lot of trial and error before getting it all right. Substack itself has a procedure attached to the Google Tag Manager ID field in Settings>Analytics, but there’s a lot of YouTube watching involved, and it’s not super clear.

Here’s the simplest procedure I could come up with. I hope you’ll find it helpful. If you have suggestions or corrections, please leave them in Comments!

A. Make sure you have a Google account

You’ll be using three Google services (Google Tag Manager, Google Search Console and Google Analytics) to make your Substack content available to Google Search and to get detailed, anonymous statistics on visitors — way beyond what Substack itself provides. These services are totally free but they do require a Google account. If you don’t have one, create a Google account now, before moving on to the next section. Also, make sure you do everything in a web browser, not a Google app (e.g. Google Analytics), since new accounts can’t always be set up on the apps.

B. Get a Google Tag Manager ID for your Substack

A Google Tag is a snippet of computer code that monitors particular webpage (newsletter) user events and sends them to your Google Analytics and/or Google Ads accounts. Once you provide your newsletter settings with a Google Tag Manager ID and a Google Analytics Measurement ID, Substack activates the necessary snippets of code.

1. Go to Google Tag Manager and log in if necessary. I suggest you do this on a desktop or laptop browser.

2. On the Tag Manager screen, tap on Create Account to bring up the Add a New Account screen.

3. For Account Name, enter something like My Substack Newsletter 1. For Container name, enter yournewslettername.substack.com, the web address of your newsletter. For Target platform, choose Web. Tap Create.

4. The Service Agreement pops up. Tap Yes.

5. The Install Google Tag Manager window pops up. Close it — not needed.

6. Your newsletter should now be on the Tag Manager accounts list, with yournewslettername.substack.com as a Container. Copy its Container ID.

7. Go to the Settings tab of your Substack newsletter dashboard. Find the Analytics section. Paste the Container ID into the field called Google Tag Manager ID. Tap Save.

C. Set up a Google Analytics account for Substack

Google Analytics can collect and analyze data from any website, including your Substack newsletter if set up properly. You then have access to lots of anonymous statistics, beyond what Substack itself provides. Your newsletter or website sends data to Google Analytics via the Google Tag you created in Section B.

Don’t give up when you see the number of steps here! They’re easy if you follow them exactly as written.

1. Go to Google Analytics and log in if necessary. I suggest you do this on a desktop or laptop browser.

2. On the Google Analytics window, click on the All accounts drop-down box. You may already have accounts set up because of other websites or newsletters that you manage. The objective now is to add your Substack newsletter to this list as a new account.

3. Tap Admin (gear icon) at the bottom of the main menu and then tap the Create Account button. Create an account pops up.

4. For Account name, enter Substack. Read about the options and check/uncheck as needed. Tap Next, and Create a property pops up.

5. For Property name, enter the name of your newsletter. Also select Reporting time zone to set the zone used in Analytics reports and displays. Tap Next and Describe your business pops up.
   
   (Note that if you have more than one Substack newsletter, you can add additional properties under your Analytics Substack account after creating the first one. You can then track them all individually.)

6. Choose a Category and Size and tap Next. Choose your business objectives pops up.

7. Choose at least one objective and tap Create. Start collecting data pops up.

8. In Choose a platform, tap Web (the two other selections are only for apps you’ve published!). Set up data stream pops up.

9. In Website URL, choose https:// and enter the URL of your newsletter (yournewslettername.substack.com). For Stream name, enter Substack: Your Newsletter Name. Tap Create. Web stream details then pops up for the created stream. Ignore and close any other windows that might appear.

10. This new data stream is the channel through which Google Analytics will receive event data from your Substack newsletter. Note that at this point, the Data collection isn’t active for your website message appears. After things start working, this should change to Data collection is active in the past 48 hours.

11. Copy Measurement ID from Web stream details. Go to the Settings tab of your Substack newsletter dashboard. Find the Analytics section. Paste the Measurement ID into the field called Google Analytics Measurement ID. Tap Save.

12. Back in Web stream details, scroll to the next to the bottom line and tap Manage connected site tags. The Connected Tags window pops up.

13. In Enter ID of tag to connect, paste the Measurement ID again. Give it the name Substack: Your Newsletter Name. Finally, tap the Connect button, which appears only if the Measurement ID is valid. That should complete the Google Analytics process.

14. Before leaving Google Analytics, you should tap Admin again (Analytics main menu, bottom) and select Substack, your new account, in the drop-down Account selector (just under Create Account). A window of items for Substack and your newsletter should appear. If you have more than one newsletter, you can select one with the Property selector (just under Create Property). Explore the menu items to confirm what you’ve set up. This will also give you a feeling for other Google Analytics features you might want to play around with. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

D. Make your Substack visible to Google Search

A new page or newsletter that you upload to Substack (or to any server) isn’t automatically visible to Google Search. That’s because Google has no idea it exists until it’s discovered by Google web crawlers, special automated software bots that continuously check every website in its gigantic database. If new content is found, it gets indexed and added to the database, so that it’s available to be shown in Search results. If you’re of an older generation, think of a librarian adding a new card to a catalog drawer after typing a title, description, and a Dewey decimal number. Not much difference, except it’s digital and there’s much more data.

It can take many months before your newsletters are discovered and indexed. However, there are proactive steps you can take to notify Google Search much sooner that your newsletters exist, way before a web crawler discovers them.

1. There’s an easy way to see whether your newsletter (or website) has in fact been indexed by Google. Do a search for site:https://yournewslettername.substack.com in your browserletter name). If it returns anything, your newsletter has been indexed and is available for search results. As an example of a fully indexed newsletter, search for Alexandra Merz’s Substack (she’s an excellent financial analyst and Tesla expert!) by entering site:https://alexandramerz.substack.com. Note the extensive list of results. Your newsletter will initially show a blank page. Even after the steps below, it will take quite a while for your newsletter to start appearing, but it should be much sooner than waiting for discovery by web crawler.

2. Go to Google Search Console and tap Start now. Log in if necessary. I suggest you do this on a desktop or laptop browser.

3. You’ll need to add your Substack newsletter as a new property. In the drop-down box just under the Google Search Console title, select Add property. The Select property type window pops up.

4. Use the URL prefix option and enter https://yournewslettername.substack.com as the URL. Tap Continue. The Verify ownership window pops up.

5. This is where you provide proof to Google that you indeed are the owner of your Substack newsletter, a critical step. A number of ways to do this are suggested. Select Google Tag Manager and tap Verify.

6. Google now communicates with your Substack newsletter site. Seeing it has the necessary, authentic Google Tag Manager ID (entered in B7), a Successful Verification window should pop up.

7. You’re now ready to ask Google to index your newsletter (website). First make sure it’s in the drop-down Property selector and is selected. Then tap Sitemaps. The Add a new sitemap window pops up.

8. A sitemap is a file that lists the URLs of all the important pages on a website as well as their file contents (pages, videos, images, etc.). It’s basically an outline of your site that a web crawler can follow. In Enter sitemap URL, enter sitemap.xml and tap Submit. This is Substack’s sitemap file for your newsletter.

9. The Sitemap submitted successfully window should pop up. Note that you can resubmit your sitemap (Step 8) any time you want. It’s probably a good habit to do it after every new newsletter posting.

10. Finally, tap on URL inspection in the main menu. This brings up a powerful tool that lets you test the indexing status of any URL within your newsletter. Use it after you submit the original sitemap.xml to see if indexing was performed. Enter the URL you want to check in the URL inspection search bar. For example, you can see whether your latest post has been indexed by entering the URL of the post. If you’ve edited your post, you can also request that it be re-indexed here, by tapping Request Indexing.

11. As with Google Analytics, make sure you explore all the menu items on Google Search Console to see what else you can do.