This article contains a complete Medium SEO strategy to help your content rank high in the SERPS on Google, Yahoo, and Bing for your target keywords and in the social media platform itself (Medium). The main goal of this digital marketing guide is to give you a list of proven strategies for SEO to build quality backlinks to your site or blog, increase the visibility of the content, and raise awareness for your brand on Medium and in the search engines.

These methods will also help you improve your website’s DA and PA metrics and get your content found by many Medium users on the platform.

But what is Medium SEO?

As we mentioned earlier, Medium SEO is the process of optimizing Medium content to rank higher on the Medium platform and in the search engines. Ranking high on the Medium platform can also help many users find relevant content. Remember, a good Medium SEO strategy will increase the number of quality backlinks to your site and your brand’s visibility.

Is Medium good for SEO?

Yes. Medium is suitable for search engine optimization. The reason is that Medium stories include canonical links that can help you pass link equity to a target web page on your site. Another fact why Medium is good for SEO is that adding contextual backlinks helps search engines index and crawl your content.

Knowing that the Medium platform has a high DA, publishing articles here can make them rank quickly on Google or other search engines for target keywords. This can help your business gain more search engine result page visibility. Combining the power of Medium and SEO can increase the number of people who find your content on Medium and through search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Medium SEO strategy

Optimize the SEO title for Medium stories.

The first big step in your Medium SEO strategy is optimizing your stories’ SEO titles. This step is important because it helps your Medium stories rank on search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

The SEO title on Medium is the same as the HTML meta title tag you can edit on your site. This title is not visible to the customers, but it appears as the clickable title of your listing when it ranks on the search engine results page for your target keywords.

When writing a new Medium story, this is how to get to the SEO title set:

• First, click on “Edit Story.”
• Then, click on the three Dots (⋯) in the upper right-hand corner of the page and select the “More Settings” option.
• Next, click on the “SEO Settings” tab in the left-hand sidebar menu.
• Then, edit the “SEO Title” field to include your keywords naturally (don’t go over 60 characters).

Another tip you can use is to front-load your primary SEO keyword in the title and naturally add secondary keywords (don’t repeat too many overlapping words). You have one goal; optimize the title for as many SEO keywords as possible naturally and make them click-worthy on users’ search engine results page.

Imagine that you are writing a Medium story including these three keywords: best SEO tools, top SEO software, and SEO tools list. The perfect SEO title for Medium should meet all of the above criteria and include each target keyword to be this: Best SEO Tools List or Top SEO Software Used by Experts.

1.Use keywords in the SEO Descriptions.

Another thing you can do when using Medium for SEO is to use your keywords in the SEO description field on your website– it is the same thing as the HTML meta description tag. Such descriptions appear right under the title of your listings on the search engine results page (SERPs) and attract more people to click on your URL and visit the web page. Even though the SEO description is not visible to users when they land on your page, it can be seen by web crawlers and be used for display purposes on the search engine results page.

Adding keywords into your SEO description field can improve the chances for your text to be displayed for your listings in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Remember, these search engines may or may not always show your text to users based on the search query. So, if search engines determine that a certain piece of content on your web page is of better value for searchers, they will display that snippet instead of your optimized description text.

However, it would help if you always optimized the SEO descriptions for your primary keywords, and this feature is available in the Story Settings area. Scroll down to the “SEO Description” section and add a keyword-optimized description (with more than 160 characters). That’s the best on-page SEO practice because a longer keyword description may get truncated later in the SERPs. Another good practice is to add as many keywords as possible naturally, improving the overall SEO value of this HTML field. Once you write your description, click the “Save” button to apply your changes.

Based on the keywords we mentioned in the first tip, this is an example of a good SEO description for a Medium story:

• “The best SEO tools list. Includes the top SEO software used by industry experts like Ahrefs, Semrush, Google Search Console, Moz Pro, Mangools, and Ubersuggest”.

2.Optimize Medium Story URLs.

The next step is optimizing your story URLs which is an essential strategy for using Medium for SEO. Optimizing Medium story URLs means adding your primary (main) target keyword into the URL field to send extra signals to the web crawlers that the page is definitely about that topic. When it comes to Medium URLs, there is a crucial aspect you need to keep in mind: Custom Story URLs can only be created before publishing your Medium story, and once the story is published, you won’t be able to change the URL structure anymore.

Hence, it would help optimize your Mediumstory URLs before hitting the “publish” button; otherwise, you will need to remove the previous version of your story and create a new one.

Follow the steps below if you want to customize your Medium Story URLs:

• First, open a draft story and click on “Edit Story.”
• Next, press on the 3 Dots (…) in the upper right-hand corner of the web page and select the “More Settings” option.
• After, select “Advanced Settings” and click on the same-named tab in the middle to expand it.
• Then, go under the “Customize Story Link” section and check the radio button: “Custom.”
• Next, edit the custom URL link by adding SEO keywords with a dash (-) between each word.
• In the end, click the “Save Story Link” button.

Once you publish your Medium story, you will see the URL customized with your keyword and look like in the example above:

• medium.com/@yourusername/keyword-optimized-link.

3.Add your main target keyword in the story title.

Putting your main keyword in the story title is another powerful Medium SEO strategy that can help your content rank high in Medium search engines and Google, Yahoo, and Bingo.

You need to know that the story title is visible to readers, and it appears on the web page at the top of the article. In the HTML code, the Medium story title is tagged as the H1 Heading, and there is evidence that it has a lot of SEO ranking value.

And that’s the reason why you always need to put your main keyword in your Medium story titles. Then, when writing the title, feel free to be as creative as possible to encourage more clicks from Medium users. Or you can copy the exact text from the SEO title field and paste it into your story title.

To gain more exposure on this social media platform (Medium) for your stories and get more readers, you should consider making a click-worthy title and optimizing it for SEO. If your main goal is to get your Medium stories ranked on Google, Yahoo, and Bing, you should duplicate (copy and paste) the SEO title in your story title field.

4.Add SEO keywords to Headings.

Another important step is optimizing the other heading tags (H2 and H3) for SEO, which can also serve as subheadings on the web page. A properly structuredMedium story or HTML document should always:

• Have the main subheadings of an article tagged with an H2 tag.
• Have Subtopics for every H2 section, and then they can be tagged as H3 tags.

Optimizing H2 and H3 tags is important because Google inspects the keywords in these heading tags for ranking purposes. Hence, you should always add your primary and secondary keywords in the areas of a Medium story and then optimize them for search engine optimization.

When it comes to adding keywords to a site for SEO, a good strategy is to include all your target keywords at least once in their H2 tag. You can also avoid over-optimization by using variations of those keywords in the H3 tags to keep maintaining your topic relevance.

5.Insert Keywords in the content.

Including keyword phrases in the body content of your article is another easy way you can optimize your Medium stories for search engine optimization. You can experiment with using keywords a few times on the web page throughout your content or learn about the optimal strategies that will tell you where and how many times you can put your keywords in the content for the best optimization.

6.Optimize image filenames for SEO.

Before uploading your images to Medium stories, you need to optimize the filenames. And the best way to do so is by inserting keywords into your filenames. For example, ‘target-keyword-phrase.jpg’ is the correct format a filename should follow.

7.Add keywords to image ALT text.

Once you have uploaded images to a Medium story, it is time to optimize the ALT text for those images. And that’s a simple but important step for SEO on Medium that can help your content rank as high as realizable on search engines (i.e., Google).

You need to know that ALT text is mainly used for screen readers to help people with disabilities understand the context of your image. However, the ALT text is also a good place to put your keywords – you have to make sure to use them naturally so it can be understandable for the user.

So, to optimize Medium image ALT text for search engine optimization, you need to follow these steps:

First, click on your image in a Medium story.

Second. Click on “ALT text” – it appears as a pop-up above your image.

Third, Write a brief description of the image for visual-impaired readers on the Alternative Text box. You can put this description with your SEO keywords in the text field right under the image.

Fourth: To apply all your changes after editing the ALT text field, click the “Save” button.

8.Set a backlink in your Medium profile bio.

You can also use Medium for link-building, and you can also create many backlinks from this platform. The initial thing you can do is add a backlink in your Medium profile bio. You need to know that your bio appears on your Medium profile and next to your stories, and it can’t have more than 160 characters.

To edit your profile bio, you need to:

• Click on your profile image.
• Next, click on the “Settings” link.
• Then go under the “About You” section and look for “Short Bio.”
• After, click on the “Edit” button.

You can write a short description on your profile bio, including relevant keywords for the web page you want to link to, and put the URL backlinks at the end of the biofield.

Note: A homepage link is the best link for the biofield as you can add hyperlinks to specific pages on your website.

9.Syndicate articles with canonical links

Another easy strategy for including backlinks to URLs on your site is to syndicate your current articles/blog posts on Medium. You can as well get more exposure for your brand name, get more link equity for SEO, and excite more traffic to your blog content from the platform (Medium).

Here is how to syndicate an article (or blog post) on Medium:

• First, you need to log into your account on the platform.
• Then, go to the left sidebar menu and click on the “Stories” to pull up your story page.
• After, click the “Import Story” button.
• Then, paste the URL of your current article or blog post into the Field.
• Next, click the “Import” button and the “See Your Story” button.
• Make the formatting edits (as needed), and click the “Publish” button.
• Next, add five tags to inform readers what your story is about.
• In the end, click the “Publish Now” button so you can make the story live on the Medium platform.

By importing stories like this, you will create a canonical link that will point back to the source URL with its publication date. Canonical tags are good for search engine optimization because they tell search engines to give ranking preference to the content on your domain. Canonical tags can also pass link equity from your Medium posts to your original content, improving its PR for ranking purposes.

10.Repurpose content for backlinks

Another important Medium SEO link-building strategy is repurposing a single piece of your current articles (not the entire content). This method will allow you to create multiple Medium stories from a particular section of an existing article and then link them to that URL. Repurposing a piece of content helpsMedium readers find your content much more accessible. On the other hand, publishing many stories means many contents show up in the Medium search engine for your target keywords, making it harder for readers to find what they are looking for.

So, to use this link-building strategy, find a short section of a current piece of content on your site that you want to repurpose on the Medium platform. Once you do this, you can follow the following steps to write (create) a new Medium story with contextual backlinks:

• The primary thing you should do is log into your account on Medium.
•  Then, go to the left sidebar menu and click on the “Write Story” icon to pull up a new draft story page.
•  Be creative and write a unique title in the title field.
•  Then, copy the section of content from your current article and paste it into the “Tell your story” Field. You can add images and videos to make your story more appealing.
•  Next, go to the bottom of your story and include a CTA (call-to-action) with a target keyword in the backlink to the full version of your article so users can navigate to it.
•  Then click on the “Publish” button.
• You can add up to 5 tags to inform the readers what your story is about.
•  In the end, click the “Publish Now” button to make the story live on this social media platform.

11.Create original content for more SEO rankings

The final tip is to create original, high-quality content for the Medium platform. Given that Medium has a high DA, an article with high-quality content can rank at the top of SERPs for its target keywords. Therefore, publishing original, quality content correctly optimized for on-site search engine optimization on Medium can help you gain more visibility in search engines.

Another positive effect of using this SEO strategy is generating new backlinks from Medium and driving organic traffic to your site. Plus, writing original articles for Medium can improve your authority, gaining more loyal readers that can help you improve your brand awareness and search rankings. This happens because of the high number of direct links you earn from Medium and the number of organic backlinks you gain as other website owners discover your pages and link to them online.

We wish you liked this article, and it was helpful for you to learn how to use the Medium SEO strategy properly to improve awareness of your content on this social media platform, as well as increase the total number of pages that can rank high on search engines: Google, Yahoo, and Bing, for your target keywords.