What Is Substack and How Does It Work? A Guide for SEO and Growth

This guide is for writers, consultants and business owners deciding whether to start a Substack, and for SEOs who want to know how much search value a Substack can actually carry. You will learn how the platform works from sign-up to payout, what it costs, what SEO control you get, and how I would combine it with a website you own so the newsletter builds your business rather than only Substack’s.

What is Substack?

Substack launched in 2017 as a way for independent writers to run paid email newsletters without stitching together a blog, an email service and a payment processor. It has since grown into four things in one account:

• A newsletter tool: every post can be emailed to your list.
• A website: every post also lives at a public URL, on yourname.substack.com or your own domain.
• A subscription business: readers can pay monthly or yearly through Stripe.
• A social network: the Substack app, Notes (short posts), comments, chat and recommendations between publications help readers discover new writers.

Besides written posts you can publish podcasts, video and live video, which is why many journalists, analysts and niche experts use it as their main channel.

How Substack works, step by step

1. Create an account and a publication. Choose a name, a short description of what readers will get and how often, and a logo. Your publication gets a substack.com subdomain straight away.
2. Import an existing list if you have one. You can upload email subscribers from another tool, which is how many people move over without starting from zero.
3. Write in the editor. Posts support headings, images, embeds, buttons, footnotes, audio and video. Each post has settings for email, web, paywall position and SEO.
4. Publish. You choose whether a post goes to everyone, only paid subscribers, or only the web. Subscribers get it by email and in the app; everyone else can read the public web version.
5. Grow. Recommendations from other Substacks, Notes, cross-posts, referrals, social sharing and search bring in new subscribers.
6. Get paid (optional). Connect Stripe, set prices and decide what sits behind the paywall. Payouts go to your Stripe account.

What Substack costs

According to Substack’s own pricing page, publishing is free no matter how many subscribers you have. If you turn on paid subscriptions, Substack keeps 10% of subscription revenue. Stripe then charges its own fees, which for US cards are 2.9% plus $0.30 per payment, plus 0.7% for recurring billing. Connecting a custom domain is a one-time $50 fee. Card fees vary for other countries and payment methods, so check Stripe’s rates for your account.

For writers in Pakistan

Payouts depend on having a Stripe account in a supported country, and at the time of writing Stripe does not support businesses registered in Pakistan. Writers here usually publish free newsletters, or use a company registered in a supported country. Check Substack’s and Stripe’s current country lists before planning a paid newsletter, as this changes.

Substack and SEO: what you control and what you do not

Public Substack posts are ordinary web pages, so Google can crawl and index them and rank them. Paywalled posts show only the free part to visitors, so only that part can realistically compete in search. Substack’s own guide to SEO on Substack lists the controls you get per post: an SEO title (the title tag), an SEO description (the meta description), an editable URL slug before publishing, and a social preview image. You can also use a custom domain instead of the substack.com subdomain.

The real limitation is not the title tag, it is architecture. You cannot build the kind of service pages, topic hubs and internal linking that help a business site rank, which I cover in my guide to site architecture for SEO. A Substack works as a stream of posts. For a comparison of platforms built for search, see my best CMS for SEO guide.

Subdomain or custom domain?

If you publish on yourname.substack.com, any links and reputation the newsletter earns sit on Substack’s domain. If you ever leave, you can export your posts and subscriber list, but old URLs on the subdomain stay with Substack. A custom domain such as newsletter.yourbrand.com keeps the address yours. If your newsletter matters to your business, I would pay the $50 from day one.

How to optimise a Substack post for search

• Write the SEO title separately from the email subject. The subject line can be playful; the SEO title should say plainly what the post answers. My guide to writing title tags covers length and wording.
• Fill in the SEO description. One or two sentences that promise a specific payoff. See how to write meta descriptions.
• Set the slug before you hit publish. Short and descriptive, because it cannot be changed safely afterwards.
• Answer one clear question per post. Newsletter issues that cover five unrelated news items rarely rank for anything. Match the post to what searchers want, as I explain in search intent.
• Use headings and short paragraphs. They help email readers scan and help search engines understand the structure. The same habits apply to SEO-friendly blog posts.
• Put the paywall below the useful part. If the visible portion answers nothing, the post has little chance in search.
• Link to your own site where it helps the reader. A newsletter is a good route back to your service pages and detailed guides.

The mistake I see most: duplicate posts on Substack and the main site

When I audit consultants’ and agencies’ content, a common pattern is the same article published in full on their website and on their Substack on the same day. Google then picks one version to show, and it is not always the one on the business site. Google’s documentation on consolidating duplicate URLs explains that it chooses a canonical from duplicate pages, and rel=”canonical” is the preferred way to signal your choice, but Substack does not give you a canonical setting for each post. In practice I recommend one of these instead:

• Publish the full guide on your site and send a shorter newsletter version with your take and a link to the full article.
• Keep newsletter-only content (commentary, news analysis, behind-the-scenes) on Substack and evergreen guides on your site.
• If you must republish in full, wait until the original is indexed and add a clear “originally published at” link.

My guide to avoiding duplicate content goes into more detail.

Substack vs Ghost vs Medium vs your own site

Should you use Substack?

Use it if your main goal is a direct relationship with readers, you write regularly with a clear point of view, and you value Substack’s discovery network more than SEO control. It is weaker as the only home for a business that needs organic search leads, because you cannot build service pages or a proper site structure there. For most consultants and small businesses I suggest the hybrid: a website you control for search, a newsletter for loyalty, with the newsletter regularly pointing readers to the site. Over time the site builds topical authority while the newsletter builds trust. If you are still deciding what to write about, my keyword research guide helps you find topics people actually search for.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Substack Support, “How much does Substack cost?” (accessed 2026).
• Substack, “A guide to SEO on Substack” (2023).
• Search Engine Land, “Substack user and revenue statistics (2026)” (updated 2026).
• Google Search Central, “How to specify a canonical URL with rel=”canonical” and other methods” (updated 2026).

If you are weighing up a newsletter against investing in your own site’s content, my on-page optimisation service can help you plan both so they support each other, or you can ask me a question first.