SEO Best Practices for Content on Medium You Value

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Medium writers should use SEO best practices for content to increase visibility, drive organic traffic, and reach a wider audience beyond Medium readers. Search engines, Google, YouTube, Amazon and others bring organic traffic, which many bloggers relied on heavily for years.

_{This article is a longer version of the original I wrote for the Curated Newsletters Publication in Medium}

It is disappointing to hear some content authority figures say SEO writing is unnatural and not engaging to readers because it is written for search engine algorithms. On the contrary, engaging writing is enhanced by using SEO best practices for content.

I write articles for readers first. Then when I optimise for search I am also optimising for readers. Under no circumstances would I put an algorithm before a human. If your writing doesn’t resonate with readers, it doesn’t matter how well it is optimised for search engines, it will not get organic eyeballs or engagement.

When I was asked to write weekly articles about my travel experiences in 2008, I had no idea what a Blog was. It wasn’t until 4 years later in 2012 that I launched James King Blog. And How to Improve Your Blog and Make Blogging Fun was one of my favourite early posts. It is still relevant today and I have updated it several times, lastly in May 2024.

• I started with WordPress.com (no self-hosting required)
• When I became serious I gravitated to WordPress.org.
• Wix is my Author website because it is fairly static and looks pretty.
• I do very little SEO on the site, and
• I wouldn’t use it for blogging as it is limited.

Discovering Search Engine Optimisation

When I discovered SEO, I was soon struggling to surface for air, seemingly swimming in a vat of molasses. It’s been a long journey, and learning On-Page and Off-Page SEO, though tough, has been invaluable.

I advise anyone who wants to be a good blogger to take the following 3 steps in order. Study and learn:

1. the basics of writing fiction and non-fiction and write till your fingers bleed.
2. how to write and structure a blog post to engage readers.
3. how to optimise posts for search engines.

Writing good engaging content takes time, a lot of practice and a plethora of mistakes.

Why SEO Matters for Medium Writers

I am using Medium as an example, but it applies to any platform that publishes blog posts. Medium is where I have seen it intimated that SEO is not necessary. There are many things that aren’t necessary, but if you want to get the most out of your writing then read on to find out why SEO matters and is good practice.

Search engines, especially Google, are a major source of traffic. So, if when writing a blog post you do not optimise it for search engines you are wasting a big chunk of the energy that went into your article. If you don’t know how to do it, it may be worth considering taking time out to learn.

Start with these key factors.

External Traffic from Search Engines

Did you know – Most content is discovered through search, so if your articles are well-optimised, they are more likely to rank in Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages) and thus attract readers outside Medium’s ecosystem.

Internal Discoverability

Did you know – SEO-friendly practices such as using relevant keywords, optimising headings, and crafting engaging titles can help Medium’s internal search algorithm prioritise your content.

Long-term Growth

Did you know – Content optimised for search can attract a steady flow of traffic over time, long after publication. Evergreen articles that rank well can continue to attract readers for years. These facts indicate articles optimised for search are more natural and engaging, not less.

SEO Best Practices for Medium Writers

Medium writers should adopt SEO best practices, especially if they want to increase their visibility, drive organic traffic, and reach a wider audience.

13 Key Essentials.

Keyword Research

Identify relevant keywords that people are searching for in your topics. Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest can help you find keywords with good search volume and relatively low competition.

• Use keywords naturally in your title, introduction, subheadings (H2s, H3s), and throughout your article, and avoid overuse (keyword stuffing).

Craft SEO-Friendly Titles and URLs

Writing a clear, concise, and keyword-rich title helps with ranking. Avoid using automatically generated URLs as they tend to be too long.

• Keep titles to 9 words max and around 50 characters (the optimal length before search engines chop it off). I use Monster Insight’s Free Headline Analyser.
  • ChatGPT is good at giving you headline ideas initially. But when you have crafted a few hundred you’ll know what works. It’s logical, but make sure you would click the title yourself, with the focus keyword at or near the beginning.

Use Proper Headings (H1, H2, H3)

Search engines prioritise headings to understand the structure of your content. Medium allows you to format subheadings as H2 and H3, which makes content more digestible for readers and search engines.

So, while Medium leads writers in the direction of SEO, it is up to writers to do more optimisation before putting an article onto the platform.

Setences and Paragraphs

Keep sentences to less than 20 words on average, paragraphs between 2 and 4 sentences and sections without a heading break to under 300 words.

Introduction

The introduction should not have a heading, but it is good practice to have a boldened 300 character paragraph which includes the focus keyword and states clearly what the article is about. This will give you a better chance Google will grab it and use it as the snippet on the SERPs. If your focus keyword poses a question, it should be answered in the introduction, and not late in the article.

Add a Table of Contents

If your article has more than 5 headings use a TOC which will link to each heading, before the first H2. This makes navigation for the reader (including the algorithm) so much easier.

Optimise Meta Descriptions

While Medium doesn’t let you directly edit the meta description, the first few lines of your article often appear as the meta description in search results. The first paragraph of the introduction should include your focus keyword. Limit the meta description to 150 characters with spaces or Google will chop it off.

Internal and External Linking

• Internal linking: Link to other relevant Medium articles or your own previous articles to help users discover more of your content and improve your article’s SEO by distributing link equity.
• External linking: Link to relevant expert external sources as they add great value to readers and authority to your content.

Use Images with Alt Text

Medium shows us an alt text pop-up, so, adding a brief description for the visually impaired helps reader accessibility and SEO. Images can also rank in Google Images, thus driving additional traffic.

Promote Engagement

Google considers engagement metrics like time on page, bounce rate, and social shares when ranking content. Compelling content engages readers longer. This should encourage claps, comments, and shares to boost Medium’s internal signals and help visibility to search engines.

Mobile Optimisation

Medium is mobile-optimised, but by making your content scannable with short paragraphs, bullet points, and appropriate spacing, making it easier to read on mobile devices.

I notice a lot of Medium articles fail to adhere to basic blogging principles in regard to structure.

Create, High-Quality, In-Depth Unique Content

Search engines and serious readers favour comprehensive, well-researched content. Contrary to what many believe, longer, detailed pieces tend to rank better. So, aim for articles that cover the topics thoroughly in depth.

Social Sharing

While not a direct SEO factor, social shares can drive traffic to your articles. The more people engage with them on Social media, the more visibility they gain.

A Bit About WordPress

Built specifically for blogging, WordPress is still dominant today.

When it was launched in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, there was a growing demand for an easy-to-use platform that allowed people to publish and manage blog articles without needing extensive technical skills. WordPress filled the gap with a user-friendly content management system (CMS) tailored to meet bloggers needs.

Flexibility through a myriad of themes and plugins has made it the go-to choice for all types of websites.

The Open-Source platform has evolved far beyond its original purpose of blogging and is now used worldwide to build a wide variety of websites.

Business

Many small, medium, and even large enterprises use WordPress to create professional websites to showcase their services, portfolios, and contact information.

E-commerce Stores

Combined with plugins like WooCommerce, it is often used to build full-fledged online stores with product catalogs, shopping carts, and payment gateways.

News and Magazines

Media outlets and bloggers can create news portals, online magazines, and editorial platforms. Popular sites like TechCrunch and The New Yorker use it for content management.

Memberships

Create membership-based platforms where users can access premium content, courses, or forums after signing up or paying a subscription is made easier on WordPress.

Education

Many educational institutions and online course platforms use it to deliver learning materials, quizzes, and other resources for students.

Non-Profit and Charities

Non-profit organisations use WordPress to raise awareness, accept donations, and engage with their communities through blogs, event pages, and volunteer sign-up forms.

Booking and Appointments

Salons, gyms, or consultation services use it to enable customers to book appointments and services online.

Community and Forums

Powering social networks and forums through plugins like BuddyPress, allow users to create community-based platforms for discussions, groups, and interactions.

Personal and Professional Blogs

The free .com version is still widely used for personal and professional blogs, offering simple ways to create, manage, and publish posts.

• approximately 43% of all websites were built using WordPress, and

• it was estimated that more than 60% of websites using a content management system (CMS) relied on WordPress.

So, WordPress is the undisputed dominant platform for blogs and a wide variety of other websites globally.

The Go-to Platform for Bloggers

The WordPress dominance as the leading platform for blogs is understandable when you consider the advantages it has over competitors.

Open Source and Free

Open-source, free to use, and customisable sums it up. With a large community of developers and contributors the platform continually improves.

Flexibility and Customisation

Flexible, allowing users to create and customise websites—from personal blogs to e-commerce sites to large corporate websites makes it compelling. There are thousands of themes and plugins that enable customisation without technical skills.

Ease of Use

Non-technical users find WordPress relatively easy to use. Its intuitive dashboard make managing content, customising designs, and installing plugins relatively easy. The manageable learning curve makes it attractive to serious bloggers and business leaders.

SEO-Friendly

Built with SEO in mind, clean code, customisable URLs, and SEO plugins such as Yoast help websites rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs). This is essential to grow online presence and domain authority.

Large and Active Community

It comes with a vast global community of developers, designers, and users who contribute to the platform. They provide support, and create resources such as plugins, themes, and documentation. Access to human support makes it possible to troubleshoot issues and find solutions quickly. So far I have found Medium to be unresponsive in this regard.

Plugins

With over 58,000 plugins, WordPress allows users to add virtually any functionality to their website. Whether it’s e-commerce capabilities (through WooCommerce), SEO optimisation, contact forms, or security features, plugins cover most needs.

Scalability

Suitable for any size of website makes the platform scalable. Whether you’re running a small personal blog or a large, high-traffic corporate website, WordPress can handle it. TechCrunch, The New Yorker, and BBC America run on WordPress, showcasing its capability to handle vast amounts of content and traffic.

Security

WordPress takes security seriously and regularly updates its platform to fix vulnerabilities. In addition, many security plugins enhance protection, making the platform reliable. Hosting companies usually provide automatic website backup services too.

Strong Ecosystem

The ecosystem includes hosting services, agencies, freelancers, and support tools built specifically for the platform. This support network makes it easier for WordPress.org users to find reliable hosting and ongoing website management services.

Mobile-Optimised

With mobile usage overtaking desktop, WordPress themes and plugins are typically designed with responsive, mobile-first designs, ensuring that websites perform well on all devices.

All these factors make WordPress the go-to platform for a wide variety of website needs, ensuring its ongoing dominance in the blogosphere and beyond.

 Final Thoughts

This is probably the longest of my Final Thoughts. But I make no apology as the subject matter is complex and I hope my views are helpful.

Step into the Light

Unless you have been locked in a dark room alone since the start of the 21^st century you will have used AI in one form or another every day. So, if you want to expose your content to more potential readers by optimising for search engines and in the process readers, you’d better not be AI-phobic. Because without AI, SEO as we know it wouldn’t exist.

Here are 15 of hundreds of AI tools writers use every day to improve SEO:

1. Google – search engine
2. YouTube – search engine
3. Amazon – search engine
4. Facebook, X, Linkedin, other – social media.
5. Grammarly – grammar and spelling check
6. Pro-writing Aid – editing text
7. Ubersuggest – keyword research
8. Ahrefs – keyword research
9. Plagiarism checkers
10. Mid Journey, Ideogram, Leonardo -image creators
11. Nueron – Blog competitors keyword research
12. Koala writer – Outlining and structuring posts
13. ChatGPT – research/information
14. Yoast – SEO
15. Linkwhisper – Internal post linking

Notice the Irony

It seems quite ironic when Medium Rules are vociferously anti-AI that the platform uses machine learning algorithms, a subset of artificial intelligence. Its AI-driven systems analyse

• user behaviour,
• content preferences, and
• reading patterns to recommend articles and stories.

The algorithm considers factors like user interactions (e.g., claps, highlights, reading time), the quality of content, and engagement metrics to personalise recommendations.

The goal of Medium’s AI is to create a more tailored reading experience, helping users discover content that aligns with their interests while promoting high-quality writing across the platform. This is exactly what Google’s algorithm was supposed to do. But in 2024 it demonstrated the opposite with a bias against a plethora of high-quality writing from small blogs.  Let’s hope the trust Medium places in its algorithm is better-founded.

Even with the help of modern technology, while Medium continues to grow, it will optimise infrastructure to handle increased traffic, so I hope any overload is more about content discoverability than technical strain on the platform itself.

WordPress is not Like Medium

Unlike Medium, WordPress is open source, so it does not have a centralised recommendation system or algorithm to help surface content for readers. Instead, WordPress users are responsible for driving traffic to their sites through SEO, social media promotion, and other marketing techniques.

If Medium’s human police force uses AI to detect AI-generated content, it highlights the paradox of leveraging the same technology it may be trying to minimise. This irony exists because AI is very good at detecting patterns and anomalies in text—better than humans in certain contexts. Despite this, I suspect Medium’s broader concern is about creative authorship, where it wants to encourage human creativity, originality, and personal voice in writing, rather than raw technical capabilities.

The use of AI to police AI could be seen as pragmatic. It ensures the platform maintains its standards while embracing the tools available to manage the growing complexity of digital content creation.

Medium’s recommendation system is a powerful tool that leverages the latest advances in machine learning and human curation to provide a highly personalized experience for its users. Whether a user is interested in personal development, mindfulness, financial planning, or any other topic, the recommendation system on Medium will suggest articles that are tailored to their reading habits, preferences, and interests. – Ritesh Gupta

NB – I find it quite amusing that the articles, Ritesh refers to, which are recommended by Medium’s artificially intelligent algorithm must be written by humans and definitely not AI!

A Guide to the Process

I don’t often write this kind of article, as I haven’t seen them as a good fit for my core subject – Arts and Humanities. But lately I have come to accept Blogging as a modern type of Literature, and Literature is one of my blog’s 7 main categories.

Help was sparse when I started out. So, I am considering producing a step-by-step guide in modular form with short instructional videos. I will walk students through the methods I use in the writing process to ensure posts are structured definitively, are logically constructed, and are easily navigable by readers and search engines alike.

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NB – The original shorter version of this article was first published in Medium Curated Newsletters