Hi Paplas, agree! I would love to switch the canonical links to Substack. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no way yet to actually do that. Do you have a method?
Ah yes thank you, Paplas, what I meant to ask was... do you know how to add canonical links to Substack posts? This is relevant for my B2B newsletter and website, where I prefer my website to rank above my newsletter.
I use Ghost to publish my articles and also for newsletter subscription. I optimise for search engines to receive strangers.
I republish on Medium and now experiment with Substack. The duplicate content is the reason to stop me from going into it. Too much of a commitment and a risk.
I really do like the community features (and general design) of Substack.
I came to Substack for the relationship building. I'm now building a community of family historians hooked on stories. Substack's recommendation engine help me find and nurture new members and the video features let me share and engage on the content from our recorded events. This article has been helpful to sorting through this ticklish issue and will help me think about how to use my now-dusty Medium property. Yes, I've seen how incredibly helpful their domain authority can be and will plan to leverage that.
I'm currently working out a flow so that I can support guest authors on my Substack. I found your article in my search for the question of whether Substack supported the configuration of canonical URLs. Do you have advice for the best way to do this?
I'd considered the cross-posting feature, but since my stack is set up with a very intentional set of "Sections" I can't seem to use cross-posting. There's no way (that I see) for someone else's post to be configured with my sections. Tags, maybe? Guidance?
Without cross-posting, I'm down to guest authors which, as best I can tell, means that they send me their copy, I paste it in sharing the secret link with my guests.
I actually didn't understand why you link to your Medium posts from Substack.
If I understood it correctly, then only Medium allows to set a canonical URL, so Substack is your main post and Medium has the canonical URL set to Substack link. Then, why don't you also link Medium users back to Substack, instead of linking Substack users to Medium?
This is interesting, love your strategy of building audiences and finding new subscribers! I'm curious, what happens in the event of having a blog/website separate from Substack? I've been using a WordPress website for my blog, and am thinking of starting a Substack in the New Year. I absolutely love my blog, its layout and aesthetic, and have a nice little group of loyal subscribers who look forward to my posts each month. I'm thinking of starting the Substack to grow my following and get a little more professional. I was planning on posting stories on both my WordPress and Substack moving forward, because it would break my heart to stop posting on my website's blog, and I want the content to be available for those who prefer that medium over Substack. But will doing this negatively effect SEO?
Hi Sara, I'm not an SEO expert but I'm told that the search engines can now recognise cross-posting by the same author and no longer penalise it as duplicate content. So (I'm told) it should not harm your SEO to have your content in both places.
I post the same content on Wordpress and Substack occasionally and haven't noticed anything bad so far.
If you want your Substack to rank higher than your Wordpress you can use canonical links in Wordpress to tell the search engines to favour Substack. However you can't do it the other way around.
Interesting. Have you considered doing the opposite (changing canonical links from Medium to point to Substack)? Because:
* Substack has improved SEO significantly- and Substack articles now appear first on Google results.
* Medium has silently removed the free story preview for non-members. Now, if you are not a Medium member, you can't read a metered story at all.
* Due to the recent changes on Medium MPP, the earnings of all writers have been reduced significantly.
In other words, with a metered story on Medium, your only hope is to attract only Medium members.
Hi Paplas, agree! I would love to switch the canonical links to Substack. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no way yet to actually do that. Do you have a method?
Yes. Select a Medium story, go to Settings -> Advanced Settings-> Customize canonical link
Thus, you can now have the exact duplicate story on both Substack and Medium, without SEO penalization. The Substack version will rank on Google
Ah yes thank you, Paplas, what I meant to ask was... do you know how to add canonical links to Substack posts? This is relevant for my B2B newsletter and website, where I prefer my website to rank above my newsletter.
Unfortunately, I think Substack does not allow this.
Thank you! Big time.
I use Ghost to publish my articles and also for newsletter subscription. I optimise for search engines to receive strangers.
I republish on Medium and now experiment with Substack. The duplicate content is the reason to stop me from going into it. Too much of a commitment and a risk.
I really do like the community features (and general design) of Substack.
Karen, this is tremendously helpful.
I came to Substack for the relationship building. I'm now building a community of family historians hooked on stories. Substack's recommendation engine help me find and nurture new members and the video features let me share and engage on the content from our recorded events. This article has been helpful to sorting through this ticklish issue and will help me think about how to use my now-dusty Medium property. Yes, I've seen how incredibly helpful their domain authority can be and will plan to leverage that.
I'm currently working out a flow so that I can support guest authors on my Substack. I found your article in my search for the question of whether Substack supported the configuration of canonical URLs. Do you have advice for the best way to do this?
I'd considered the cross-posting feature, but since my stack is set up with a very intentional set of "Sections" I can't seem to use cross-posting. There's no way (that I see) for someone else's post to be configured with my sections. Tags, maybe? Guidance?
Without cross-posting, I'm down to guest authors which, as best I can tell, means that they send me their copy, I paste it in sharing the secret link with my guests.
Is there a better way?
I actually didn't understand why you link to your Medium posts from Substack.
If I understood it correctly, then only Medium allows to set a canonical URL, so Substack is your main post and Medium has the canonical URL set to Substack link. Then, why don't you also link Medium users back to Substack, instead of linking Substack users to Medium?
I do send Medium readers to Substack in every article, Johannes! Medium is my main source of new readers, outside of the Substack community.
This is interesting, love your strategy of building audiences and finding new subscribers! I'm curious, what happens in the event of having a blog/website separate from Substack? I've been using a WordPress website for my blog, and am thinking of starting a Substack in the New Year. I absolutely love my blog, its layout and aesthetic, and have a nice little group of loyal subscribers who look forward to my posts each month. I'm thinking of starting the Substack to grow my following and get a little more professional. I was planning on posting stories on both my WordPress and Substack moving forward, because it would break my heart to stop posting on my website's blog, and I want the content to be available for those who prefer that medium over Substack. But will doing this negatively effect SEO?
Hi Sara, I'm not an SEO expert but I'm told that the search engines can now recognise cross-posting by the same author and no longer penalise it as duplicate content. So (I'm told) it should not harm your SEO to have your content in both places.
I post the same content on Wordpress and Substack occasionally and haven't noticed anything bad so far.
If you want your Substack to rank higher than your Wordpress you can use canonical links in Wordpress to tell the search engines to favour Substack. However you can't do it the other way around.
Oh, that's so good to know! Thank you so much!
This is helpful :) Thanks Karen
Interesting! Food for thought...