5 Seo Tips to rank high on Google and Medium pages.
In today’s digital world writing isn’t just about communicating heart and soul but involves employing optimization processes to make your content visible to those in need of it. This is called Search engine optimization or SEO. If you are on medium and own a website, you would want your medium articles to rank high on search results pages. This is done through SEO for medium and will help to drive traffic from medium to your website.
When it comes to seo for medium there are several steps to take and below are 6 tips along with useful resources to help your article rank high on google and medium search pages
Tip 1: Write from the heart.
Most articles would advise you to conduct a keyword research first. but I advise against this as writing with keywords in mind could restrict your flow of thoughts and make you write a piece appealing to search bots not people. I advise you first write out your heart then edit with your brain later.
Tip 2: Use Keywords in your write-up
With your writing in its draft stage perform a Keyword research. This means to discover the words your target audience would likely use to search for topics related to your article and placing these words or phrases in your write-up. Doing this ensures that when users search for a topic using these words, your write-up comes up as content most relevant to their query. To perform a keyword research you need keyword research tools. I recommend using a research tool with an extension for your browser like keyword everywhere. This free tool delivers immediate results as you search on google. Here’s a snapshot of my keyword research for this article along with the difficulty ratings. Notice this topic has a high SEO difficulty but it’s something I want to write about and I won’t let technicalities stop me.
Warning: don’t use every keyword or phrase you come across. Google has an over optimization penalty which will either push your content lower in search rankings or excludes it from the rankings altogether.
To get your article widely read on medium, keyword research isn’t a must, but if you are a writer who wants to rank high on search pages in order to boost traffic to your own website then all your post should be optimized.
Tip 3: Medium SEO Title
There are two titles in medium. The first is your main title located at the beginning of your medium article.
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Your main title is your invitation card to medium readers and should therefore be catchy enough to captivate the millions of readers passing through the streets of medium. A rule of thumb is to make sure your writing is crisp, clear and convey what the topic is about. For help in generating the best titles use an online title analyzer. I used monster insight for mine.
Using the analysis from monster insights [H1] I was able to tweak my first title into something more catchy.
The second is called the SEO title. What you put here is used by google to determine if your content is relevant to a user’s search query. It’s also how google will show your content to these users. To access this title simply do the following
· click the ellipses panel at the right hand side of your story dashboard.
· Click more settings
· Then click SEO Settings and you should be able to view your SEO title as shown below.
Your SEO title is different from your medium article title which is what readers on medium see as the title for your article. The two could be the same or vary slightly. I recommend you use a title generator to gauge how google and users would perceive your title.
Advice: Ensure your keywords are in the first words of your SEO title for medium and keep everything within a 40–50-word count.
Below your title SEO for medium is a description section. This allows you describe your article and like your SEO title is only used on google search results and not on the medium platform. Again Just like your SEO title IT should only contain words relevant to your topic.
Tip 4: add alt text to images in medium
Images help keep your post fresh and interesting but they could also help your article rank higher on search pages. This is achieved by using the alt text on medium which lets you describe what your image is about. Your readers won’t see them but search bots when crawling the web will! And if your description contains words relevant to a user’s query, will serve your content immediately. To add an alt text to your image in medium simply upload an image and type into the alt box above it. What you put into your description is also read out to visually impaired persons so be descriptive, clear and concise. For example, in this image below a good alt text would say African man performing keyword research on laptop.
Tip 5 Use medium hashtags
Hashtags on medium tie your article to various niches and are displayed to users when they search for content using these tags. You can think of them as classification of books in medium’s library. With this in mind you would want your article on dog care to be classified under the pet or better still dog care section and not the crypto or real estate section. For example, on this medium post I used classifications most relevant to my topic. I also used up my five tags. You should too.
Tip 6: Write long-from content
If you want your medium article to rank high on google search results, then it has to be a long form content. A long form content is between 1000, -7500 words and aims to provide users with as many robust details around a subject matter as possible. Since search engines like google view long form content as more comprehensive and likely to solve a user’s question they push these above short form content. Employing long form content SEO isn’t easy but definitely worth it. Remember that most users have a short attention span so keep them engaged by using headlines, quotes, images, infographics, gifs.
Tip 7: Structure your article.
An article could be paragraphed from top to bottom but if you want to rank high on search pages then give structure to your article as search bots tend to push articles that are structured above unstructured ones. To structure your article, use the following: Headlines, numbering bullet list etc. Another tip is to see how each of your headline can be a keyword phrase without coming off as unnatural or forced.
Marketing91 have a good post that teaches you all you need to know about this. Check them out.
In today’s digital world good writing skills alone won’t make you a successful writer; You have to know how to market your content and get it in front of the right audience. This process is called content optimization and regardless of whether writing is your main source of income its always great to have as many people as possible read, enjoy and learn from what you’ve written.
Write a long form content SEO
