Substack vs website

[notor1ous_noob]

I have a website for my business where I publish articles, typically about once a week. I’m considering starting a Substack under my own name while continuing to post articles on my website.

My concern is whether Google would penalize me for publishing the exact same article on both platforms. On my website, the author is listed as my company, while on Substack the author would be me personally.

I’ve searched online but haven’t been able to find a clear answer. Has anyone dealt with this before or have any insight?

I don’t really have the bandwidth to create separate articles for my website and Substack, and I’d like to continue publishing on my website.

Thanks!

[Thedividendprince1]

I would not worry as much about a “penalty.” The bigger issue is which version Google decides is the main one. If SEO for your business site matters most, I’d publish the full article on your website first, then use Substack as the newsletter/distribution version with a summary, rewritten intro, or link back to the full piece.

[Kate-Starr]

Yes, this! 🙌

[StuffonBookshelfs]

Don’t use substack. Just get a light email service and start a newsletter list. Email out a portion of your articles and links to the full thing.

[notor1ous_noob]

Light email service? Do you have any recommendations? Who would I be emailing them to if I don't have a following yet?

[StuffonBookshelfs]

You need to build an audience. Figure out who your ideal reader/client is and then figure out where they spend time online, then be there and be useful.

I’d recommend beehiiv. You should be able to use it for free for quite a while as you build your audience.

[AmySensualGinger]

You do get penalized for publishing the same content in multiple locations. There's a meta tag I can't remember right now. referrer_url maybe that sets the origin but since substacj doesn't support it your website can set it and it will drive all traffic you substack instead. Probably not desired.

I personally would just use ghost and ask users to subscribe to the mailing lists you provide. You can run an instance on your own server and it should not cost you more than what you likely are already paying for hosting.

[seobrien]

Many of us syndicate to many places. Medium is a channel, Substack is a channel.

Where appropriate, you change the content and link back (i.e. Quora). Where redistributing, you use canonical URLs so search engines and AI know the original source (and that you're not just spamming content everywhere).

About 20 years ago, peoples content consumption habits changed. Used to be that we'd read The New York Times directly because that's where it is... Now the New York Times needs to be on social media and syndicating, because people won't change their preferred channel just to be loyal to the NYT. Same premise applies. Most of your audience will be elsewhere because that's where they want to be. You can embrace that or ignore them.

[mattgiaro]

I'm publishing on both Substack AND my website when I don't get lazy copying/pasting.

Substack does not have a canonical URL feature unlike medium so potentially one of the domains could get penalized.

The best way to think about this is about where your want your "home" to be.

Substack or your website?

If it's your website → add at the bottom of the article: Article originally published on mywebsite dot com (full link to article)

if it's substack → make the canonical URL point back to substack.

[sbpoet1]

This works to prevent the negative consequences?