SEO is dead + beta testing titles and Notes categories and engagement

Thank you

Debbie Weil

,

David Roseberry

,

Celia Chen

,

Barri Grant

,

Mary Thoma

, and many others for being there!

Here’s what’s exciting on Substack right now:

Google SEO is kinda dead

• Google SEO is dead. (00:04:09)

• It’s all about AI SEO. (00:04:56)

Here’s why:

• AI Overviews now appear above traditional search results, reducing the importance of the top “10 blue links” of the coveted first page of Google Search Results. (Google had already personalized our results to such a degree that there is no one first page of Google search results; it’s customized to you. You don’t see what others see and vice versa.)

• Google crawls (I love this word) results and produces AI-generated summaries at the top of search results.

• Google is coming out with its own AI Mode, which means it’s even more AI-centered.

• This means that our old way of thinking about SEO needs to change. What’s nice is that you don’t have to stuff your posts with keywords and instead can think about provding “quality” information (what quality means is another post).

Which is why (in my opinion) we can use AI to create our SEO elements on Substack (!). Why not let AI talk to AI? (Someone might have an answer for this.) (00:07:11)

SEO on Substack

The only SEO control on Substack is through the SEO options: title, description, and URL, which you’ll find on your posts under Settings. (00:08:14)

I use Claude for AI headlines because, well, if it’s all about AI SEO, why not let AI talk to AI? I prefer Claude to ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI tools because I like Anthropic as a company because the people who work their seem to have spines, am terrified of what Open AI is doing, and like my AI with a hefty dose of morality (Claude was trained on the Human Rights Accord and more).

If you hate AI, skip this.

I like to come up with a headline and then go to Claude with it. Claude is wonderful. He’s polite and never in a bad mood. He admits his mistakes and apologizes. He just wants to do a good job.

Here’s how I use Claude:

1. Take either a summary of your post or the full post (whichever you’re comfortable with) and put it into Claude.

2. Ask it specifically: “Give me an AI optimized SEO title, 160-character description, and URL.”

3. Add the instruction: “Search the web for best practices” if you want it to; otherwise Claude just pulls from what he’s been trained on and that data isn’t typically up to date.

4. Input what Claude gives you in the SEO settings section of your Substack post (found under Settings > SEO when editing a post).

5. Always ask any Claude to double-check his responses because he hallucinates (I love that term).

Beta Testing Titles