How to Get Traffic To Your Medium Stories
There are two ways you can get traffic to your Medium story
It’s embarrassing.
No one reads your stories.
You rewrote your headline 5 times before you settled on the one you have now.
You slaved away at writing a killer introduction and shared your most valuable information.
You followed everything popular writers on Medium tell you to do.
And still, your story is met with…
Radio silence…
You’ve been rejected by what feels like everyone on the platform.
You turn off your computer, mumbling under your breath “I’ll never write on Medium again.”
I’ve been there.
It’s painful.
Nobody read my stories when I started writing on Medium.
But since then, I’ve learned how Medium works and how to get traffic to my stories. Now some of my stories get traffic daily.
You can get daily traffic to your stories too and here’s how…
Getting Traffic to Your Story
There are two ways you can get traffic to your Medium story.
Internal views, the first type of traffic, represent people who visit your story on the platform, including the homepage, app, emails, and social media accounts.
Every writer you enjoy on Medium puts a lot of emphasis on this type of traffic because Medium pays you for internal reads.
Writers who want to earn Money on Medium focus on internal views. They write stories specifically for Medium; stories readers on the platform care about.
To boost your traffic from internal views, do what “popular” writers do and publish your content in publications with large audiences, and focus on building your audience on the platform.
External traffic is the next type of traffic you can get on Medium. External traffic includes views from Google, email, IM, and places outside of Medium.
Writers don’t speak about external views because external views don’t get you paid, but you get other valuable things. External views can get you organic search traffic from Google.
If your content is what people are looking for, or solves a problem they have, they’ll sign for your email list, if you have one. It happened for me.
Getting External Traffic
The image above is taken from one of my stories on Medium. The story gets no internal views; all traffic comes from Google and it ranks 1st for my target keyword.
I published the story a couple of months ago and it’s made 12 cents. The money will come, I know it will. The views are there and have helped me grow.
My 1K in views has helped me grow my email list. And having a growing email list is more valuable long term than boasting about followers, or the money you made from the platform.
While, writers struggle to attract readers, claps, and make a sustainable income from the platform, I went the other way and used SEO to get traffic to my stories and build my email list.
How to do SEO on Your Medium Story
The SEO process starts by doing keyword research. I recommend finding a niche and doing keyword research for the niche you pick.
My keyword Research Process
I use a spreadsheet to do Keyword research and find as many keywords as I can in one day.
Steal my spreadsheet and use it as your own.
- Content foundation spreadsheet
- File → Make a Copy
My keyword research process is like building a house. I have Foundation topics and supporting keywords.
Foundation topics are general keywords you want to rank for, in our example, we’ll be using Instagram marketing.
Supporting keywords are the smaller keywords that help you become known for your foundation topic. Supporting keywords are 3+ keywords.
We type in Instagram marketing, our foundation topic, into Ubersugget to find supporting keywords.
“Instagram marketing tips” has a monthly search volume of 880.
A good article you could write and post on Medium is “X Instagram Marketing Tips Influencers Won’t Tell You.”
This article won’t get you claps or reads on Medium but if you do everything the right way, it won’t need to be popular on Medium, because it will be found on Google, potentially by 880 people a month.
You have your keyword, now you can write your story and publish it on Medium.
Before You Publish Your Story
Before you publish your story you want to write a title tag and meta description.
Press the three dots between publish and the bell icon, and go to more settings.
Inside more settings, you’ll find SEO settings. This is where you’ll write your title and meta description for your story.
Use a Google SERP preview tool to check the length of your title and meta description.
The tool I used said my title is 60 characters. That’s perfect.
Medium says my title is over 60 characters, this is because you can’t remove “| Medium” from your title.
That’s okay!
It’s more important to use your keyword at the beginning of your SEO title and SEO description, as I’ve done above.
Save these settings and publish your story.
Get External Traffic On Your Next Story
You can get external traffic from Google on your next Medium story by following the process I gave you.
The external traffic you get from Google will get more eyes on your content and help build your email list.
Find a keyword you want to rank for and write your story, then go to the SEO settings in Medium.
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