Free read on jacking Substack to get more unique visitors and external traffic and engagement strategies.
Don't pay the AI Guru for his prompted Substack help, It is free right here
What we are looking at here, is back to the Google doc separator/organizer I use. This is a template I have spent a bit of time assembling, and am building as I add posts to my Substack.
Now, what I am doing here, as you can see I have hyperlinks labeled- these are easy cut & paste in links for locations within my site I add buttons to direct traffic and there is a great use for this I will explain.
Overall, below is the unique visitors graph showing how many people outside the Substack ecosystem these recent articles are attracting.
What we are paying attention here particularly is the green is direct to app while the grey is direct and the red are exposure within Substack. Let’s take a second and define the difference in “direct” and “direct to app.
Grey: The direct traffic means a reader landed on the web browser version of your article however, Substack couldn’t track a specific website (ie:FB, Instagram, X, etc) as the source.
This happens when someone has your page bookmarked or types it directly into their browser, or they clicked a link within a privacy based web browser like Google Incognito or Safari or Brave and had their tracking protection turned on.
This also happens from an email carrier that blocks tracking cookies- you know that annoying pop-up you get asking if you want to allow cookies? Well this means the dood that clicked ‘NO’ is likely looking at your isht. 😜
Green: The Direct to app traffic means someone clicked a link outside Substack and rather than going in through the webpage, they directly linked into the Substack app (a hint this viewer already has substack- let’s hope they are a paying purveyor and not another creator lol.
This happens usually when someone openly shares your link on another platform, it would also give a hint that they are accessing your page from a mobile device over a terminal- they could have a chromebook or be using something like Bluestacks Android emulator in which they have Substack already installed on.
So that explained, pretty easy to understand. Let’s explain the tag setting which is hyper important in catching those unique off Substack visitors. We went over the SEO options before and tags too but this is a deeper look.
If you’re like many here, myself included- you do not write just 1 article on a topic, you likely have a series going, especially considering Substack has a quota cutoff for email length before you get compressed (you can alway increase and beautify the article after the initial release for the after email traffic).
So we have 1 topic and 5 articles let’s say- I have 11 sofar in my current in showing in my Google doc. We will do an example with 5:
Conger Article #1- Martyr. : inserenity literary, wang conger, white lotus, qing dynasty, history
Conger #2: inserenity literary, wang conger, female warrior, rebel commander, martial arts
Conger #3: inserenity literary, wang conger, ghost general, peasant revolt, xiangyang
Conger #4: inserenity literary, wang conger, guerrilla warfare, hubei province, religious uprising
Conger #5: inserenity literary, wang conger, military tactics, qing army, battle strategy
If you notice the pattern, what I have put in bold: the repeating 2 primary tags of my story I anticipate could get entered into a search. These I am placing in all related article posts however, notice how on all 5 not 1 repeat of the same tag is used in the subsequent articles..
This might seem a big OCD, but- if you have 5 articles and they all have the same 5 keyword- you only have 5 keywords out there total for what can be a massive story.
This puts 3 new and related keywords to each article, so instead of 5 tags for the whole series, we have 18 keywords.
Now, in stating this. I assume we know the downside of jacking in too many tags- you should have NO MORE than 5 or 6 tags PER ARTICLE. Even 6 is pushing it.
Google treats content with too many tags as low quality. Google, Substack, they do not care the quality of your content, they do care when you start abusing their search engines to the point their scrubbers just don’t bring you back in search returns- you get stigmatized by the engine AI as a …. SPAMMER! lol- how ironic right? The bot calling YOU spam😜
I’m not gonna drop the proof on that one, you can just ask google what happens if you put too many tags in content posts, Google itself can tell you 🤣
So as you’re looking at what you read below, again the function of the scap doc there, I have all my links preloaded for by buttons which you can also just straight cut and paste off your other completed pages. Remember again, we are trying to proc engagement so .. I am probably overdoing it 🤪, but I think it is good to link pages of same or a similar topic. Just a 1 button click that directs your viewer somewhere back into your page.
A note on this- with your actual “COMMENT” button. If you cut and paste this off another article- it will take you the THAT article, so your comment buttons need to be set to that particular article so the comment does not goto where you cut and pasted from.
One final thing we will cover here to close this up. There is a Secret Draft Link in this page below:
Secret page?!?! This can be used for reasons other than just storing your drafts- let’s be creative. Hidden content.. Easter Eggs.. I’ve got all kinds of ideas already but I will share one humorous one I did with this to try to play on people’s curiousity on “DO NOT ENTER” or RESTRICTED..
lol, come one, people love peeking where they are not supposed to!
So, I put all these fun little No Access, or Private or whatever, and I have a secret draft link setup so my peeping toms can go here :
You could also find some creative ways to use this as another pay wall, there content you release is paid view only or certain links to this page maybe as something you offer outside your regular subscription. Whatever, we find ideas.
I will continue updating and dropping helpful tips I come across as I find these 3:14am writing times a good time to get some actual writing done.🤪 I need to go back to my story writing!
Leave a comment or critique on this release below:
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InSerenity Literary (ISL): Solo and Independently run.
Boston, MA 2026
Insights on independent publishing, literature, creative strategies/design, and local Boston writer & artist initiatives: writing, art, music, science, mathematics.