Steven Van, the product marketer at beehiiv, recently shared how they’ve been growing beehiiv using newsletter SEO.

No hardcoded websites and SEO plugins. 

Just turning newsletters into web posts.

It’s a new way of doing SEO, which works! Your newsletters can show up in organic search results and bring in traffic. Pretty cool, right?

In this SEO case study, I’ll walk you through beehiiv’s SEO strategy and how it helps them get more organic traffic. I’ll share which platforms are best for blogging and SEO today. (Hint: WordPress might not be the easiest choice anymore.)

I’ll also compare Substack, Medium, and beehiiv so you can see the pros and cons of each. Plus, I’ll share some of my SEO tips and real experience you won’t find anywhere else.

You’re about to get a bunch of practical SEO advice and learn about the importance of doing SEO for blogs.

Why Trust Me? 

I’m an SEO specialist and content writer. I help B2B and SaaS brands get found through organic search results. I’ve also grown my own blog, Self Made Millennials, to over 15,000 visits with roughly 100 indexed pages.

Table of Contents

• TL;DR:  Lessons from beehiiv’s Blog SEO Case Study

  • Increased Organic Traffic

  • Improved Engagement Metrics 

  • Boost in Conversion Rates 

• 4 Reasons Why beehiiv is Good for Blog SEO

  • Built-in SEO Optimization Tools 

  • Enhanced User Experience Features 

  • Community and Networking Opportunities 

• What’s Best for SEO: beehiiv vs. Substack vs. Medium

  • SEO Capabilities 

  • Content Ownership and Control 

  • Monetization Strategies 

• 5 Essential SEO Strategies That Work

  • Conduct Keyword Research 

  • Create High-Quality Content 

  • Build Backlinks From Relevant Sites

  • Promote Your Content to Drive Engagement 

  • Analyze the Performance and Update Content Regularly

• Avoid These Common SEO Mistakes 

  • Not Doing Keyword Research 

  • Having Issues With Indexability 

  • Overlooking Google’s E-E-A-T Requirements 

• 3 Steps to Implement SEO Strategies Using beehiiv

  • Setting Up Your Blog for Success

  • Utilizing beehiiv’s SEO Tools

  • Tracking and Measuring Results 

• FAQ

  • What’s Blog SEO?

  • Are Blogs Good for SEO? 

  • How Can You Optimize a Blog for SEO?

  • Which Blogging Platform Is Best for SEO?

TL;DR:  Lessons from beehiiv’s Blog SEO Case Study

beehiiv has been building its online presence since 2021. That’s when I first came across beehiiv and started paying attention to the incredible all-in-one newsletter platform for creators. 

For this article, I looked into how sticking to proven SEO strategies has helped them grow.

Increased Organic Traffic

The screenshot below shows that beehiiv’s SEO game is paying off since they’ve been getting steady organic traffic from organic search results for years. 

Notice the traffic dip around June 2024? That’s when Google rolled out its June 2024 spam update that affected many sites. Nevertheless, beehiiv doubles down on its SEO blog strategy.

Improved Engagement Metrics 

SEO success has helped beehiiv attract more visitors to their blog through organic search results, which means more eyeballs on their platform.

Getting more traffic usually means more clicks, more signups, and better overall engagement.

From Steven’s GSC screenshot, you can see that the average organic click-through rate (CTR) across all 900+ beehiiv’s posts is 1.1%. It means that out of over 1 million impressions (organic views), over 1% of users clicked on beehiiv’s search results. It's impressive! 

Boost in Conversion Rates 

Tyler Denk, beehiiv’s CEO and co-founder, proudly noted that in Q1 2025, beehiiv added almost $260k in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from subscriptions using their blog and other marketing channels. 

It’s excellent proof that their strategy works! 

4 Reasons Why beehiiv is Good for Blog SEO

When I first started using beehiiv, I was mainly interested in its features for growing and monetizing a newsletter. I honestly didn’t expect a newsletter platform to have powerful built-in SEO features. But with beehiiv, you can build a website and optimize your newsletters for search rankings. 

Let me walk you through beehiiv’s SEO toolkit.

Built-in SEO Optimization Tools 

Here’s what you can do with beehiiv’s SEO toolkit:

• Create optimized newsletters and custom pages

• Choose whether each page or newsletter should be indexed and show up in search results 

• Turn on breadcrumbs for better navigation

• Customize the URL for each page or newsletter to make it SEO-friendly

• Customize the meta title and description

• Connect your publication to Google Search Console to keep track of its performance in organic search results 

• Customize your website’s robots.txt and sitemap if needed

From my experience, these features provide the bare minimum to control your website's indexability and content optimization. It’s like running a website on WordPress, but it’s easier.

beehiiv also takes care of the technical stuff behind the scenes, like site speed and image compression, so you can focus on the impactful part: growing your newsletter and getting discovered on Google!

If you’re new to beehiiv, here’s a quick video to walk you through the SEO setup. It covers everything you need to know to get started.

Enhanced User Experience Features 

According to Google:

As you can see, user experience matters a lot for successful site performance in organic search results. Therefore, you should keep it in mind while doing SEO. That’s where beehiiv shines. 

beehiiv’s clean and clutter-free user interface makes it easy for readers to focus on your content. Smooth scrolling and simple layouts help keep visitors on your page longer, which Google sees as a positive user experience signal. 

The built-in mobile-friendly layout is a bonus, too. People can read your posts easily on any device. 

All these opportunities with beehiiv can help you reduce bounce rates and increase time spent on site, which is essential for SEO. A better experience for your readers means better results for your blog.

Community and Networking Opportunities 

beehiiv is more than just a place to write. It's a place to connect with like-minded people! 

beehiiv’s active community on LinkedIn, Reddit, Slack, and Twitter can help you answer all your burning questions and succeed. 

With beehiiv’s webinars, creator spotlights, and Partner Program, you can meet other creators and share ideas. When others share your content, it reaches more people and helps you acquire backlinks naturally. 

Plus, being active in the beehiiv community can get your posts in front of new audiences fast. More readers mean more traffic. 

So, if you're looking to grow your blog with SEO, beehiiv’s networking and community vibes could be an opportunity.

I stay updated with the latest beehiiv initiatives on their LinkedIn page. But you can see the beehiiv team's posts everywhere since they absolutely crush it on social media. 

What’s Best for SEO: beehiiv vs. Substack vs. Medium 

I put together a table below to give you a clear picture of how the top blogging platforms compare when it comes to SEO. At first glance, they offer the same features. However, they aren’t all built the same.

I’ve used Medium, beehiiv, and Substack, and from my experience, beehiiv stands out. It gives you way more control over your SEO settings. On top of that, it automatically makes your site and content load faster.

SEO Capabilities 

I’ve been using Medium over the past four years and even grew my audience to over 21,000 followers. It’s a great platform to get started and improve your writing skills. But when it comes to SEO, Medium is pretty limited. You don’t have much control over how your content appears in Google search results or if it appears at all.

As an SEO specialist, I wouldn’t recommend doing SEO on Medium. Instead, platforms like beehiiv or Substack are much better options. They let you connect your own domain and optimize your posts for search rankings.

With beehiiv, you get even more SEO capabilities. You can choose whether each post, paid or free, should be open for indexing. 

These days, you don’t need to build a custom-coded site (like I did with WordPress) to grow and monetize your content. Platforms like beehiiv can handle it all for you.

If you’re curious, beehiiv offers a 30-day free trial to test it out and see if it aligns with your goals. 

Content Ownership and Control 

Medium says all the content you share on their platform is yours. However, they don’t guarantee your content will be indexed and ranked. 

Plus, Medium can shut down your account if they think you’ve broken their rules (even if you haven’t).

From my own experience, it’s also tough to promote or sell anything on Medium since the platform is designed to be ad-free. This can make it harder to grow your audience or make money.

On the flip side, with beehiiv, you’re in full control. You can host your content however you like, free or behind a paywall. It’s all yours, hosted on your domain. 

Monetization Strategies 

There’s no point in doing SEO unless it helps you achieve your business goals, whether it’s product sales, signups, or lead generation. 

That’s why you should also understand which blogging platform can help you make the most out of your content creation efforts. 

Take Medium, for example. You can earn money from internal views and even promote your own products or services. But to see decent results, you’ll need solid traffic.

Then there’s beehiiv and Substack. Both let you offer paid subscriptions, but Substack takes a 10% cut of your earnings. beehiiv doesn’t charge any commission. Plus, it offers more monetization opportunities like newsletter sponsorships and Boosts that pay you $1–$5 for every subscriber you refer.

Just look at Yaroslav Sobko, founder of Cyber Corsairs, who uses beehiiv’s monetization tools to pull in five figures every month.

Curious to see what beehiiv can do for you? You can try beehiiv for free for 30 days.

5 Essential SEO Strategies That Work

It turns out that SEO isn't difficult to do, but only if you know proven-to-work strategies. 

Whether you're just starting a blog SEO or trying to grow your business website, the following blog SEO checklist has proven to work for me for years.

Conduct Keyword Research 

Keyword research is all about figuring out what your audience searches for and how often. 

If you know what people are searching for, you can create content that aligns with their search intent.

As I always say, keyword research should be your step zero before creating and optimizing website content. 

Look for keywords that are relevant to your niche and have decent search volume that your website can realistically rank for. 

Create High-Quality Content 

Once you know your audience's needs, you can create content worth reading. 

In a world full of AI-generated content, being authentic, helpful, and unique is what grabs people’s attention. 

If I had relied on AI tools, I never would’ve grown my website’s traffic to over 10,000 monthly visitors with just 100 pages. It’s the helpful, well-optimized content that has kept my blog ranking on the first page of Google for years.

Here’s a quick look at my Google Analytics—75% of my total traffic comes straight from organic search. Yep, most of my visitors find me through Google!

Build Backlinks From Relevant Sites

Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your site. They used to be among Google’s top ranking factors. Even though it’s slowly shifting, Google still sees backlinks as “votes” to define the most trustworthy websites. 

Not all backlinks are created equal! 

One link from a respected site in your niche is better than ten from random sites. 

The best way to earn backlinks is to create unique content worth linking to. That’s what I’ve been doing on my website. However, you can also try guest posting, do link exchanges, and share your expert quotes to gain backlinks. These are just a few methods that have been working for my site. You can learn more about link building from this guide. 

Promote Your Content to Drive Engagement 

Hitting “Publish” isn’t the end of the road. 

To get eyeballs on your content, you need to share it. For example, you can post it on social media, send it to your email list, or drop it in relevant forums or communities. 

Even though social media signals aren’t part of the ranking factors, they can indirectly help you improve your SEO efforts. Social media activity can help establish your brand’s reputation and grow your website’s authority to rank higher in search results. 

In my recent post about AI trends for content creators, I mentioned that SEO and branding will go hand in hand from now on. That’s why you should consider doing some kind of social media activity to support your brand, like this:

Analyze the Performance and Update Content Regularly 

SEO isn’t something you can just set and forget. 

I always suggest using Google Search Console to see which pages on your site are indexed, which posts are getting traffic, and what keywords you’re ranking for.

If a page starts losing its ranking positions, I suggest experimenting with formatting and updating the content. It’s the best strategy to maintain and improve your rankings. 

For example, after I updated my "Substack alternatives" post, I saw a positive boost in traffic. You can see a screenshot from my GSC account below. 

The web changes fast, and keeping your content up to date shows Google that your site is active and relevant.

Avoid These Common SEO Mistakes 

If your blog posts aren’t getting any traffic, you're not alone. Many websites struggle to rank due to avoidable SEO mistakes. Let’s break down a few of the most common ones.

Not Doing Keyword Research 

Ahrefs’ search study revealed a shocking truth that over 95% of all pages on the web get zero organic traffic. One of the reasons Ahrefs mentions is that people target keywords with no search demand.

So, even if you write an amazing article, but no one’s searching for it, it won’t get found. That’s why keyword research is the backbone of SEO.

Having Issues With Indexability 

If web crawlers, like Google Bot, can’t crawl and index your site properly, your content won’t show up in search results, no matter how good it is. That’s why monitoring the indexing status of your important pages is essential.

You can see which pages of your site are indexed or not indexed and the reasons in your GSC account.

Overlooking Google’s E-E-A-T Requirements 

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s basically a framework used by Google to assess the content quality on websites.

In simple terms, Google wants to know: Are you the right person to create content on a particular topic? Do you have the knowledge and credibility to talk about your topic of interest? 

In my experience, aligning content with Google’s E-E-A-T is essential for SEO blog success and also helps stand out from competitors who often publish faceless content. 

3 Steps to Implement SEO Strategies Using beehiiv

If you host your newsletter on beehiiv and you’re ready to get more eyes on it through SEO, let me break it down for you. 

Setting Up Your Blog for Success

Before implementing SEO on your blog, you’ve got to set the foundation.

beehiiv lets you create a proper website and customize the layout with its drag-and-drop Website Builder.

Unlike many existing blogging platforms, beehiiv lets you create your custom look and feel for your website: 

• Build custom web pages for your site.

• Add menu items and dropdowns to the navigation menu.

• Select featured posts to highlight.

• Add custom background images and text to the hero section.

• Choose the pattern and colors used for the archive.

• Add testimonials and FAQs to the Upgrade Page.

• Highlight your latest posts for visitors on the Subscribe Page.

• And so much more…

​​You can see how beehiiv’s CEO, Tyler Denk, uses beehiiv’s robust Website Builder to build and host his own website on beehiiv in this video:

Utilizing beehiiv’s SEO Tools

With beehiiv’s SEO tools, you can send newsletters to your subscribers and publish their search-friendly version on your website. This way, you can grow your email list and organic traffic.

The SEO toolkit is built right into the newsletter scheduling flow. So, you can easily customize the meta title, description, and URL slug —all in one place.

I came across an awesome comment from a Reddit user about doing SEO on beehiiv. It proves that beehiiv’s SEO tools work well for others, too.

Tracking and Measuring Results 

beehiiv has a powerful 3D Analytics tool. This feature gives content creators a deep dive into their newsletter performance with three key reports:

• Subscribers report: Understand your audience growth

• Post report: See how your content performs

• Clicks report: Track engagement through link clicks

With this data, you can clearly see what works and double down on the channels that bring you the most engaged and valuable subscribers.

FAQ

What’s Blog SEO?

Blog SEO is about optimizing your posts to make them discoverable in organic search results. 

The ultimate goal is to get more people to find and read your content organically. It is a long game, but when done right, it can bring consistent traffic to your website for years. 

Are Blogs Good for SEO? 

Absolutely! If you want to boost your organic visibility and drive more traffic to your website, keeping an active blog is a smart strategy. 

I recommend making sure your posts are helpful, easy to read, and optimized for rankings. In my experience, quality always beats quantity when it comes to SEO blogging.

How Can You Optimize a Blog for SEO?

If you’re doing SEO for your blog, here are the main things to focus on:

• Discover keywords with decent search traffic that your website can realistically rank for

• Write helpful content that outperforms competitors

• Apply on-page optimization strategies

• Get quality backlinks from websites in your niche to help build your domain authority.

There’s an awesome guide on blogging frequency and SEO tips. 

Which Blogging Platform Is Best for SEO?

The answer to this question depends on your business goals and capabilities. 

WordPress is a classic choice with tons of SEO plugins and flexibility. However, in my experience, you’ll likely have to deal with technical SEO issues and custom code.

Medium is great for online blogging, but it isn’t suitable for SEO. 

If you want a simple solution for growth, beehiiv is worth checking out. beehiiv lets you publish newsletters as posts, which are indexed and ranked in organic search results. 

It's fast, and you don’t need to deal with a bunch of plugins or tech headaches. 

So if you’re just starting out or want something more modern and easy to manage, join beehiiv’s 30-day free trial. You might be surprised at how well it works for both SEO and growing your brand.