Sections, tags, and oh what a mess
What you need to know to set up your Substack
I have had a non-zero amount of conversations recently with Substack writers to clear up their confusion about sections, tags, and site organization. I’ve got some answers.
I’m in a good position to explain this, because I am both a librarian (M.L.I.S., 2012) and someone who has spent literally decades building and managing websites. A good chunk of my life has been devoted to explaining web/internet concepts to non-techie folk. So let’s go!
It’s simple, though, so don’t worry. The tl;dr:
Sections are categories and are used for site organization.
Tags are labels and are used for searching/discoverability.
Sections
Confusingly, Substack refers to sections as both sections and newsletters. If you look at the URL for my section guide, Bibliotheca, you’ll see that it ends in /newsletters. Why Substack did not call it, say, “categories” or “index” or anything that doesn’t go around confusing people as to what, exactly, a “newsletter” is, I have no idea. Is a newsletter your primary publication? Yes. Is a newsletter one of the sections in that publication? Yes. What a MESS.
But here we are.
Instead of getting into the weeds on that, remember that sections are an organizational feature. Think of them as library shelves where some content goes on one shelf, and some content goes on another. They are all exist in the same place (your primary newsletter) but they are simply collections of similar content.
Again using my Bibliotheca, you can see that my shelves are separated out by topic: technology (Storytelling in the Machine Age), personal productivity (Task Mistress), and my current fiction stories (The Queen’s Aerie, Transmigrated Teri). I’ll probably create more later on (as I write more stories!), but it’s all contained within my primary newsletter.
Sections are both for your sanity, in simplifying the organizing your site, and so that readers who come directly to your site can easily find the specific thing they are looking for.
Tags
Tags are labels that describe what your content is about. So, for example, if someone types “personal productivity” in the Substack search bar, several of my Task Mistress articles will show up (hopefully!).
When you are thinking about tags to add to your post, think about what someone needs to search for to find it.
For example, if you are posting horror fiction then your tags might look like:
Writing, creative writing, fiction writing, horror, horror short story, body horror, surprise twist, monster horror, ambiguous ending, character death, nightmares
Tags are for people who are not on your site. They are looking for “body horror” short stories but have never heard of you before, or can’t find your posts in the main Substack feed. Tags are critical for discoverability!
Wrap Up
If you were to pay me to help you set up your site, I would definitely make sure that you are using both sections and tags as much as possible.
That said, once you get over ten sections (remember, they are categories) it might get difficult for people who visit your site to figure out where to go. While I personally love wandering around library shelves just to see what’s there, it is not a great experience if I am looking for something specific. Don’t leave your readers standing confused in the middle of a bunch of shelves!
For example, while I cover a lot of topics related to productivity, I’m not parsing them out into a dozen different sections. They all go under my Task Mistress section, whether they are about time management, project management, or productivity mindset. I use the tags to slice and dice the specific topic, so if someone wants to search for articles about the Eisenhower Matrix, they will find mine.
And that’s a wrap! See, I told you it would be simple!
Please let me know if this helped you, and share it around to help out other stackers who might be confused!
Hey @kimboo, I enjoyed your breakdown about best practices for how to use sections and tags. In the article, you wrote, "...Confusingly, Substack refers to sections as both sections and newsletters. If you look at the URL for my section guide, Bibliotheca, you’ll see that it ends in /newsletters..."
I believe the reason Substack refers to sections as /newsletters is because you can set them up so readers are able to unsubscribe from them. For example, say you create a section devoted to extremist political screeds of the incendiary variety, but you also post sonnets devoted to extolling the beauty of nature. Say I don't want to read one or the other of those-- or maybe I don't want to read either of them, but I want to remain subscribed to your main newsletters, then I can unsubscribe from those sections. I believe it might even be possible to be unsubscribed from your main newsletter, but only one of your sections.