Day 9: Turn Your Top Pages Into Growth Opportunities (Substack SEO Challenge)

Your best-performing content holds valuable clues. Here’s how to use it for more traffic and subscribers.

Welcome to Day 9 of the Substack SEO Challenge.

Here’ what we covered so far:

• Day 1: How Substack SEO Works and Why It Matters

• Day 2: Keyword Research: Find What Your Readers Search For

• Day 3: Optimize Your Substack Posts for More Visibility

• Day 4: How Internal Linking Helps Your Substack Grow

• Day 5: Turn Your Substack Images Into SEO Assets

• Day 6: Build Trust with an SEO-Friendly About Page

• Day 7: Optimize for AI SEO and Get Cited by AI

• Day 8: Add FAQs to Your Substack Posts for More AI Visibility

Today, I’ll ask you to open Google Search Console and look at some data there. There are many different uses of the tool, but I’ll focus on just one now to keep things simple.

This is for when you’ve been posting content for some time, have given Google Analytics and GSC the chance to collect data, and are getting some views from search engines already.

We’ll now take a look at our top-ranking pages and leverage them for more growth.

In Google Search Console, go to: Performance → Search results → Pages

And when you click on any URL, you get the exact queries.

Here are my top pages:

I already knew the one on Notes vs Articles was ranking for multiple keyword terms, and I’ve been seeing engagement on the one on merging my 2 Substack publications. These are old articles and I don’t think anything is coming from the Substack network anymore, it’s solely from search engines (unless you type that specific term in the search tab here).

The one on Substack is Not Collapsing surprised me, though.

I then saw people started googling things like ‘Substack collapse’, probably as a result of the viral post on the topic.

These are the results I’m getting from it:

The point here is that this gives me valuable information.

When you go to your top pages, you can look for patterns. Maybe they are all tutorials, or opinion pieces, or interviews. That tells you a lot.

You might find something surprising. You may want to cover another angle of the same topic that’s already getting clicks.

And here’s something even better:

Update your top pages.

Here’s what you can do:

• If you released a product since then, link to it;

• Include some internal links so new visitors can see more of your posts;

• Add a subscribe form (or a second one) if you haven’t already;

• Make updates to the text if anything is outdated;

• Add an FAQ section (if relevant);

• Improve the subtitle;

• Improve the formatting;

• Add an invitation to your chat if you’ve started one since publishing the post.

Small improvements can make the post even more useful, and that can lead to new subscribers.

🎯 ACTION ITEMS

#1: Identify your top 3-5 pages.

Open Google Search Console → Performance → Search results → Pages and find your top pages by clicks.

Analyze them. Look for patterns and opportunities.

#2: Choose one top page to update.

Using the strategies above, update one (or all). Add relevant internal links, a CTA (call to action), an FAQ, updated information, or anything else that would make it more valuable.

Tip: Don’t try to update everything at once. Pick one page, improve it, and see what happens.

Once you do, let me know how that goes!

Share the link to your top page once you update it.

Want to work work with me?

The Substack Growth Audit is the best place to start.

I’ll take a look at your publication and give you personalized recommendations to help you grow, improve your positioning, and monetize your content.

Founding members get the audit as a bonus 🎁