SMACKING the Truth — Why 99% of Medium’s Articles are not listed on Google

I recently had a chat with our new HustleVentureSG editor Mani Pathak on the issues of Medium and its SEO features. I went down the rabbit hole spending my time yesterday learning about indexing issues and found that Medium isn’t actually the best place for you to write content.

Surprise? So am I.

Why They May Not Be the Best Writing Platform

It’s not that content on Medium won’t do well. The simple answer is Medium is not recognized as a trusted source of information for everything. Hear me out!

Medium Niche is about Themselves

Even though you may be good at writing about coding or political talk, sorry to tell you that your odds of getting your content onto Google are low.

Have you ever searched for an article and found Medium as a trusted source? Probably not unless it’s about them.

Medium’s Technical Infrastructure

Another reason why Medium articles are not listed on Google is due to the platform’s technical infrastructure.

Medium’s publishing platform lacks essential SEO optimization features, such as custom meta descriptions, title tags, and headers. These features are crucial for search engines to understand the content of a page and rank it accordingly.

Furthermore, Medium’s publishing platform uses dynamic URLs, which are not search engine friendly. Dynamic URLs contain parameters and session IDs that make it difficult for search engines to understand the content of a page. This negatively impacts the indexing of Medium articles on Google.

I have seen Youtubers and Medium writers mention the activated SEO optimization feature on Medium. The problem is without properly identifying custom meta descriptions, title tags, and headers, Google won’t be able to pick up such content.

Sorry to call you guys out! But here’s what SEO optimization would ask!

There are a number of analytics to resolve in order to get your content picked up by Google. It isn’t as straightforward as writing and publishing what “SEO writers” on the Internet are saying.

Medium’s Content Quality

Here’s the biggest issue!

Medium has a vast amount of duplicate content, which negatively impacts the indexing of articles on Google. Duplicate content refers to content that appears on more than one URL.

When search engines find duplicate content, they have to decide which version of the content to index, which can result in lower rankings since the content feels spammy.

Moreover, Google prioritizes unique and relevant content. If Medium articles lack originality or relevance, they are less likely to be indexed on Google.

Medium’s Use of Canonical Tags

Medium uses canonical tags to inform search engines about the preferred version of a page with duplicate content.

Canonical tags are HTML tags that tell search engines which version of a page to index. Although canonical tags can be helpful for avoiding duplicate content penalties, they can also have a negative impact on the indexing of Medium articles.

When Medium uses canonical tags, it tells search engines that the content on the canonical URL is more important than the duplicate content on other URLs.

As a result, the duplicate content on Medium’s platform is not indexed, leading to lower visibility on Google.

Medium’s Nofollow Attribute

Medium uses the nofollow attribute on external links to prevent search engines from passing link juice to other websites. The nofollow attribute was created to combat spam and prevent the manipulation of search engine rankings.

This means that Medium isn’t really a good place to market your product/business as the point of it is to make you stand in the platform.

When external links on Medium use the nofollow attribute, it tells search engines not to pass link juice to the linked website. As a result, external websites may not receive the necessary link authority to improve their search engine rankings.

Why All this Information Is Important to Know

Have you ever asked yourself why Medium doesn’t want to run ads?

Ads is probably the best passive income any website can turn on right away to start making money. So why isn’t Medium doing it?

The simple answer is that if Medium turns on ads, its website authority will drastically reduce. As mentioned, Medium isn’t SEO optimized. That means the platform would do terribly if they were to turn on advertisements. However, they could do paid advertising for us but they choose not to. Weird? (Let me know if you have an idea why they don’t)

Why is Medium still Popular Then?

Medium is a popular online platform for writers to share their stories, ideas, and perspectives with a global audience. It gets millions of writers because we can write whatever we want freely(somewhat) without the need for sophisticated tools to get traffic.

Medium has its own readership community and the more readers that follow you, the more odds of your content being read.

What’s more, it’s pretty easy to get into the MPP(Medium Partner Program). It took me just 5 days to get approved and I can start earning money right away from my content. No need to seek approval from Google Adsense or whatever which tends to take months just to get a website approved.

If you want your content outside of Medium

If you love writing about personal finance and side hustle, you can join the HustleVentureSG publication. They are a publication that features your content outside of Medium and plans to provide you earnings from your content.

So be sure to check out HustleVentureSG, a community of writers that aims to support side hustling and growing your finance to live a better life.

Want more of such articles? Be sure to support me by following, subscribing, and maybe buying me a coffee. It isn’t much but every small donation really does help to support me!🤗