Create a Blog with Notion in 5 Simple Steps

Set up a fast-loading, aesthetic Notion blog on Super without compromizing on SEO.

Notion is an excellent content management system that is useful in creating both personal and business blogs. It enables you to create shareable web pages with headings, text, images, and videos. You can also arrange them in different ways.

Create blog with Notion

However, creating a blog involves more than just creating a set of pages. Notion lacks many essential features that you need to succeed in today's competitive landscape:

Notion offers limited design capabilities, which can result in blogs that look bland.
Only users with a paid account can index pages in Notion, which means search engines have no way to know that your blog exists.
Notion lacks modern SEO features required to beat competition.
Notion pages have system-generated domain names which can prevent you from building a brand.

There are many other finer features that Notion lacks which can make a big difference.

But that does not mean you can’t create a simple and easy Notion blog. In fact, you can create a sleek, professional, lead-generating machine of a blog by coupling Notion with Super.

Super can help you circumvent all the limitations of creating a blog in Notion. It offers customizable templates, design options, integrations with your favorite tools, fast-loading pages, and other cool SEO features. With Super, you can create a visually appealing and search engine optimized Notion blog that your visitors can’t get enough of.

Here are the five steps to creating a blog with Notion:

1. Set up a master database for blog

The easiest way to set up a blog in Notion is to use one master database. There you can add all your drafted and published posts.

Follow our instructions below to set up a master database from scratch, or download our Narrative template with a ready-to-go database.

First, create a Notion page where you will store your blog by pressing the Add a page button (+) in your Notion sidebar and giving the page a title, like “My Blog”
Click on the more icon (three dots) on the top right of your Notion page and toggle Full width for more space for your blog
Add any introduction text, images, or embedded content your readers will see when they click on your blog
Under your introduction content, type /toggle and select Toggle list
Inside the toggle, type /page to create a new subpage to store your master database and title it “Blogs”
From the suggested templates, click on the Table database
Under Select data source, click on New database
Add your first entry to the database and give it a title, like "Blog One” (you can change this later)
Add any content to your first post or leave it blank while you set up your blog. You can populate the new page with any content — it can be a simple text entry, images, videos, and other Notion blocks (different headings, bulleted lists, quotes, links, embeds, and more)
In the Tags section, add your first blog post tag (you can add more than one and update them later). Add tags based on a topic or type of content, for example, "Guides” or “Featured”

Hide your master database

One advantage of using Super for your website is that you can hide your master databases and only display the content you want to show using database views. This gives you the flexibility to create different views to help people easily find the content they are looking for.

You can hide your master database by making it a subpage of the homepage you have connected to your Super site, adding it to a toggle on the page, and then adding a custom code snippet (you will need a paid Super site subscription) or the Super Theme Designer to hide the page.

Hide using brown toggles

Create a ► toggle list block in Notion (type /togglelist) and move your page(-s) inside
Set the whole toggle block to have a brown background color — click on the “hidden” toggle, and under Color, select Brown background
Add a custom code snippet below by heading into your Super site dashboard, clicking on Code, and pasting the snippet below in the CSS section

.notion-toggle.bg-brown { 
  display: none !important; 
}

Learn more…

Super will hide any brown Notion blocks on your site using this custom code snippet.

Hide using the Super theme builder:

Drag the master database page outside the toggle and delete the empty toggle
Head into your Super site dashboard
Click Design
Press either Create a new theme (if you don't have a theme set up yet) or Edit this theme if you already use one
Head into Layout
Under Notion page links, press Hide

2. Create different linked Notion database views

Using linked database views, you can use content from your master database. For a simple setup, add one large database view for all posts with cover photos and a compact one for a select few, like featured or top posts.

Add a Gallery view with cover images

To add a linked Gallery database view that displays a cover image alongside each post:

Go back to your "My Blog" page, and under your introduction content, type /linked and select Linked view of database
Under Select data source, click on your "Blogs" master database
Hover over the Table section on your database and click Rename. Give the current database view a title like "All" or "All posts"
Click on the more icon (three dots), and under Layout, change it to Gallery

By default, Notion shows a blank cover photo. To finish setting up cover photos:

Click on the more icon (three dots) of your database view, and under Card preview, select Page cover
Open one of your blog posts
Hover over the top section (above the post title) and click on Add cover, and after Notion has loaded a random image, click on Change cover in the same top section
Select a cover image by linking an image file URL, choosing one from Unsplash gallery, or uploading your own

Add a linked database view with a filter

In the second linked database view, you can show specific posts using a filter:

Under the first linked database view, create another one (type /linked and select Linked view of database)
Under Select data source, click on the “Blogs” master database
Go to Filter, select filter by Tags, and tick one (or more) of your blog tags to feature in this database view
Hover over the Table section on your database and click Rename. Give this database view a title like "Top posts” or “Featured”
Click on the more icon (three dots), and under Layout, change it to List for a compact view

3. Organize your database views

For an easy overview of your blog, you can drag and drop your database views alongside each other using columns:

Type /column anywhere on your newsletter site and select 2 columns
Now you can drag each linked database view in its own column
Use the vertical column separator and drag it to either side — you can drag it to make the Gallery database view bigger

4. Add headings for your database views

To finish setting up your blog page, you can add titles above each database view using headings:

First, click the more icon (three dots) next to a database title and select Hide database title — repeat this for both database views you dragged into the columns
Above the databases, add a title by typing /H1 or /H2 and name it, for example, "All posts"
Click and drag your title into the first column above the database view
Repeat the steps above for the second database view by giving a title, like "Top posts" or "Featured”

5. Publish and sync the blog to your Super site

You have two ways of publishing and syncing your newsletter content to your Super website: setting up an additional database filter or using the manual publishing feature, only available to Pro site users.

Add a filter to show only finished posts

To make sure your blog site only shows publish-ready content, you can set up an additional database filter or checkbox. Doing so will only show posts that meet all filters, like a particular tag and a ticked checkbox:

In your master database, click to add a new property (plus sign)
Select Checkbox for a simple checkbox you tick when your blog post is ready for publication
Click on the Checkbox property in your database to rename it as “Published” (or leave the default title)

To add the new filter to your linked database views:

Navigate to any linked database views on your blog site
Click on Add filter
Select Checkbox and click on Checked
Repeat the process for all linked database views on your blog site

Each linked database view will now only display posts that fit the criteria of all added filters. When your drafted content is ready for publication, you need to add the correct tags (or any other properties you use for filtering posts in each linked database view) and tick the checkbox.

Enable page properties and Database views

To show properties like the author’s name, the published date, and allow users to see the different views of your posts, you need to enable page properties and database views:

Head into your Super site dashboard and click on Options
Enable Page Properties and Database views

Add fancy view switcher buttons

You can add a custom code snippet if you want a more polished look for your property views (when readers click to filter particular categories or topics).

Follow our simple guide here. To add any custom code, you will need a paid Super subscription.

Notion Blog Templates Free and Paid

Owl

FAQs

Can you create a blog on Notion?

Notion enables you to create simple web pages where you can add text, media, and choose a suitable page layout. However, creating an SEO-optimized and well-designed blog using Notion alone is not possible. For that, you need Super, which offers custom domain names, pre-designed templates to ensure a sleek design, and custom navigation bars. Additionally, Super allows you to integrate your preferred tools with your blog.

Can you create a custom domain for your Notion blog?

Notion does not support custom domains for blogs. Instead, it creates a random domain name that may not align with your brand or niche. Fortunately, Super allows you to add a custom domain to your Notion blog, so you can create a more consistent and professional online presence that represents your brand.

How to use Notion as a Blog?

For blogging with Notion, you can start by creating a new Notion page and setting it up as a blog template. Then, customize the page to your brand while giving it an aesthetic look by using the design features offered by Super and Notion for blogger.

Additionally, you can consider adding Notion blocks, such as images, tables, databases, etc. You can add tracking codes from tools like Google Analytics to enhance your blog's functionality.