How To Rank Your Medium Articles On Google Each Time. Step By Step Tutorial
Wondering how to rank Your Medium Articles On Google each time you hit publish then this is the right tutorial for you.
I will walk you through everything you need to know about Medium SEO and best practices to have in your Medium blogging arsenal.
I think Blogging on Medium is one of the best ways to get free traffic, connect with different readers, and get your ideas out to the world.
Why Publish On Medium?
Medium has a huge audience of over 210–300 million monthly visitors or readers. So what you should you know this.
Simple Medium is a great platform where readers come to relax, read about their favorite topics and ideas. So this can be you the author and a quarter of those 210 million could be reading your content.
You don’t need to even own your website though it is recommended. The main reason why bloggers like Medium is that it ranks extremely so well for even the hardest keywords you can ever think of…
But it is important to use the platform right and stay compliant to the golden sweet Medium Rules. Many new bloggers always want to get in and get quick results but that will cost you at a moment in time if you don’t comply with the medium rules.
You can break these rules and think you are okay but all your hard time written content will suffer. If you had 30 articles written and some had some sweet spots on Google then they will all lose those spots.
So take the time and read those rules. Have them by heart if possible, just kidding!🤣
The other reason why you should Publish on Medium is that it makes SEO learning so easy. You don’t need to submit your sitemap to search engines, do backlink building, and all that complicated stuff.
Most bloggers spend months and months doing outreach for their websites asking for guest posts, sending cold emails to other websites. All this is not necessary when you choose to do your blogging on Medium.
This is the main reason why I think Medium is the best blogging platform in the present decade and many decades to come. It keeps SEO basic and straightforward.
Is Medium Good For SEO?
Medium is a powerful blogging site that has proven itself a number of times.
According to Ahrefs Medium is one of the most authoritative sites on the Internet with a Domain Rating of 94 and overall the 70th largest website on the planet.
Wow, Imagine having your own website with that rating. You can rank for many keywords with ease. But you don’t need to because you can get a piece of the pie by writing for Medium.
You can read more on their help center how you can get started with Writing for Medium.
SO this means Medium is 100% good for SEO if you set up everything right and you have a good SEO strategy you can always follow. This brings us to the most important part of this guide. Medium SEO!
Medium SEO. Rank Your Medium article in Google and Bing.
Medium will rank better in the search engines but if your overall/primary purpose is to rank in the search engines and you are writing spammy articles then your success is short-lived.
Medium stated in their rules that this is against their rules and terms of service. You should think about ranking in search engines but think of the medium readers first.
I recommend you use Google as a tool to generate articles or content to write about later on.
I think the Medium readers should be your main concern, create content that will help, inspire and bring happiness to another person. That is how you create good content for a Medium reader.
This is the blueprint to ranking your Medium articles on Google, Bing, and other search engines.
This Medium SEO strategy will always work for you each and every time you hit publish on your articles so let’s get it.
Write content people are searching for! If you write an article about how you and your cat or dog slept for 8 hours without eating food then it won’t rank. You are not telling Google and other search engines who it should show your content to.
Think of a keyword as a community that unites people interested in a hobby, or having a similar problem.
You can get internal readers from Medium who will find your articles via the Medium digest email, or home page but it is not long-term. These types of articles work for people with a following on Medium.
If you are a beginner nobody is following your blog yet so it means you are going to see nobody read your content after you hit publish.
You can find these keywords using free tools like Google auto-complete, Google Trends. No need to buy any keyword tools. Use Google to find out what people are searching for and write articles about those topics.
Add your keywords in the Title. Medium is a blogging platform and this makes it no different from other blogging platforms like WordPress, blogger, and so on. You should add your keyword that will attract your community of interested readers via the search engines to your content.
Say for example you are interested in cats or dogs and you create a Medium blog about pets then you can have an article talking about. The top 10 cute cats or dog breeds.
This is a keyword people type in Google and other search engines that they need some information about and you can give it to them. They may be interested in getting a cat or dog so this gives you another topic idea you can write about.
The most adorable and affordable cat or dog breeds to have… The keywords you have are adorable and affordable, then cat or dog breeds which are our community of pet lovers... Hope you now get the idea.
Add your target keyword in the very first sentence or paragraph and a few variations similar to the keyword you have chosen. This will tell the search engines that.
Many SEO experts call these LSI keywords you can use Google itself to find these variations and related keywords. You can find these in the People also ask box or at the bottom under searches related to your keyword.
So for example my target keyword being “Ranking Medium on search engines” I can add other variations such as;
Medium SEO.
Medium best practices.
Medium SEO settings.
Medium blogging alternatives.
Medium SEO strategy
And I was able all these are available on Google under the related searches at the bottom of my target keyword. hopefully, you get the idea so far.
Always ensure you add those keywords that are relevant to your topic.
Add images and videos if necessary. A clear example is the article you are reading now. I add images to show you a visual representation of what I mean and videos to help you see the entire process in action.
Videos are helpful in SEO because they send positive signals to the search engines that people love your content and are spending some decent time on your page.
Even though you have a relatively short article but people watch the video you embed in your content it will still rank high in the search engines. It is important to add a video in each article you write be it at the top, middle, or end of your article.
It would do you good if the video is from Youtube by a channel you own. That is more watch time and another signal sent to the Youtube algorithm that your content needs an extra push because people outside the platform are watching it longer.
That is a strategy you can use to get your channel off the ground, get more watch time, and even subscribers hopefully later on. Promote other people’s good content as well to avoid sparking off the spam signals.
Don’t forget to add Alt text to your images as it also helps in Image SEO and overall SEO of your articles.
That is the purpose of the Internet, sharing good content.
Add your target keyword in the conclusion or that last paragraph as you sign off. This will completely tell these awesome Search engines that the article is really about that topic.
In total your target keyword should appear 3 times maximum in the entire article, the rest should be the so-called LSI keywords or variations as I call them.
Link to other helpful resources. This is what the internet is all about sharing other people’s resources as they share yours as well. So link to others and other bloggers that find your content will also link to yours or share it.
Update the SEO settings in your target keyword-rich articles. These are the Medium SEO settings. I basically don’t update these because I let the search engines do all the great work. I don’t limit the search engines to what I want them to show my potential readers.
You can win a featured snippet easily if you have an answer target in your first few paragraphs. An answer target is a direct complete answer that answers the question you have in your headline.
This is how you can win featured snippets the smart way. You can also use the featured snippet theft method which means you can take over the featured snippet by simply making it better and have a better answer target.
Keep in mind, you should always click through to the website to see where their answer target lies and do the same. If it is in the first paragraph then write it in the first paragraph making it even better and straight to the point.
You should ensure you don’t add words like it depends or unclear answers. Ensure you bold it if at all you want it to stand out.
To update the Medium SEO settings simply, publish your article and once you are done click on your published article and you should see three dots beside the headline.
Click on that and you should see a simple menu that allows you to check the story settings. Under story settings, you should see the SEO settings in the left menu.
You can add a custom title, a description similar to WordPress, and tags. You can remove the tags, add new ones, and then don’t forget to save all your changes.
How To promote Medium Articles.
Once you have your awesome amazing content ready to go you can share it on social media with friends that find interest in the topics you write about.
You can choose to share your articles on Facebook on your personal profile, Facebook groups, and even messages if it is worth it.
Medium allows you to integrate your Twitter, Facebook, and some other socials like Gmail, Linkedin.
You can also copy a link to your posts and share it via Reddit to niche-related subreddits that allow links. You can check out one of my previous guides on How to get traffic from Reddit the right way…
You can also share your article link on Quora by answering a few questions each day and adding the article link in 1 of every 5 questions you answer. That is it…
Ideas For Medium Articles.
If you are looking for endless ideas for Medium articles then you should use Google auto-complete, Google trends. All you need to do is simply input a keyword in your niche in the Google search bar and see what Google suggests for you.
If you see some results that are related to the YMYL category. Then stay away from those keywords. These are keywords that have a direct impact on a reader’s health, finances, safety, and, ultimately, their happiness.
You shouldn’t 100% stay away from these keywords because they are difficult to rank for even on Medium if you are not a health official then stay away from them.
Find keywords that are not in the category mentioned.
You can rank for all keywords besides these provided no other Medium article already ranks for that keyword. To prove that no other articles rank for that keyword do a Google search using this text…
[ site: medium.com “your target keyword here” ]
The keywords you find should be fair in competition and these can be keywords where huge sites like Forbes or any popular website in your niche are not ranking in the top 10.
How do you prove the competition is fair, low, and even inexistent. Simple.
Check if the ranking sites for your target keyword
Have short content. 600 words or less.
If they have very bad designs that make you want to exit them immediately.
No social media presence. You can determine this by searching for their Facebook fan pages, Pinterest accounts, and Twitter accounts.
If there is none then it's a winner keyword. Go for it. Huge sites never write on some low competition keywords because they want bigger fish, they also never write short content.
If the ranking content checks all the factors stated above you have a good keyword.
That is how you find the endless topics to write about on Medium.
Does Medium Allow Free Users?
Medium allows free users and you can sign up for free using your personal email address, Facebook account profile, Twitter.
You don’t need to upgrade your account if you are a writer. Free readers can only get access to a few pieces of content (3 only) monthly and there is a paywall if you choose to read content written by a Medium Partner.
How Can You Make Money Online Using Medium?
There are a number of ways you can make money online Using medium and these are some of the few that stand out.
Writing for Medium. You can make money on Medium by writing content for the platform all you need is to submit your tax information and a few other details and wait for approval then you should be in. Results are not guaranteed to be huge or large earnings but if you do the keyword research as I told you earlier you should see this as a no-brainer.
Doing Affiliate Marketing. You can do affiliate marketing on Medium and it is 100% allowed but you need a disclaimer in your article telling your readers that you are getting paid for writing that post or article. You can watch a video I did on how you can do affiliate marketing right on Medium.
You can use any affiliate network from Digistore24, ClickBank, Jvzoo, Warrior Plus, Maxbounty, Maxweb, Affiliaxe, Matrix, and even Shareasale. The formula remains the same.
Ensure in any type of monetization you do on Medium you are compliant and not spammy. Give people Value and Medium will be okay with you selling your products, affiliate links as well.
That is the best as I know when it comes to making money online with Medium.
Can You Build An Email List Using Medium?
Yes, Medium allows you to build an email list. You can attach a form at the end of your articles and ask your readers to join your newsletter as you would do on a normal blog.
That is all there is to it. You are not limited but ensure you stay compliant with the Medium rules even though you are building an email list. Try to be ethical and tell people what they should expect from your newsletter.
Does Medium Own Your Content?
NO, Medium doesn’t own your content, you retain all the copyright and rights to all the content you publish on the Medium platform including images, graphics, and videos provided you are the original creator.
You are only required to be compliant with the Medium rules, Terms of Service and you should be okay.
You retain your rights to any content you submit, post or display on or through the Services.
Unless otherwise agreed in writing, by submitting, posting, or displaying content on or through the Services, you grant Medium a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid, and sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your content in all media formats and distribution methods now known or later developed on the Services.
Medium needs this license because you own your content and Medium therefore can’t display it across its various surfaces (i.e., mobile, web) without your permission.
This type of license also is needed to distribute your content across our Services. For example, you post a story on Medium. It is reproduced as versions on both our website and app, and distributed to multiple places within Medium, such as the homepage or reading lists. A modification might be that we show a snippet of your work (and not the full post) in a preview, with attribution to you. A derivative work might be a list of top authors or quotes on Medium that uses portions of your content, again with full attribution. This license applies to our Services only, and does not grant us any permissions outside of our Services.
So long as you comply with these Terms, Medium gives you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, and non-assignable license to access and use our Services.
The Services are protected by copyright, trademark, and other US and foreign laws. These Terms don’t grant you any right, title or interest in the Services, other users’ content on the Services, or Medium trademarks, logos or other brand features.
Best Medium Alternatives.
There are a ton of alternatives each with its own benefits, pros, and cons. YOu can try these blogging platforms out all and see how they work out for you.
Blogger.
WordPress.
Google sites.
Hubspot.
I recommend Blogger, and WordPress if you want to make money with your blog via Google Adsense and affiliate marketing. You can also build up an email list easily using those blogging platforms.
Google Sites is a good platform for simple portfolio sites, short projects but can also be used as a blogging platform. Google sites rank in Google preferably well compared to a new WordPress website.
You can watch the video attached below that proves that you can generate revenue blogging on Blogger.
And as I close this chapter out. You should be now a Medium SEO expert, and some of these skills will work on those other blogging platforms mentioned above.
Final Quote!
Hopefully, this was helpful. Good luck
Stay Updated with Medium Policies and other helpful tips by following the Medium official blog as well…
I am sure you will find some of those tips helpful if you are just starting or have been publishing on Medium for a while.