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The Second Secret Way to Boost Medium Stories

Easy trick — how to use meta description on Medium or anywhere else

A meta description beckons readers into your story. It’s a short, punchy one-liner that tells precisely what readers gain by reading your story. Let’s look at how a simple sentence of fewer than 156 characters can boost your readership at Medium or anywhere else online.

SEO OMG

I know. When someone says SEO (search engine optimization) or SEM (search engine management), half the audience goes glassy-eyed and stops listening. Websites ramble on and on about SERP, keyword string, indexing — you don’t have to care about that stuff.

Meta descriptions and alt text will cause your stories to appear in search engines alongside articles from mega sites with substantial marketing budgets. I promise you, it’s as easy as convincing a teenager to text their BFF.

For more on self-boosting, read

How to exploit meta descriptions

Open one of your stories in editing mode and click the three dots at the top. (…)Open story settings and scroll about halfway down to SEO settings. The second item under that heading is this

SEO Description

The SEO Description is used in place of your Subtitle on search engine results pages. Good SEO descriptions utilize keywords, summarize the story and are between 140–156 characters long.

If you don’t specify a meta description, the system will pull in the first sentence of your article, and those first sentences are not often targeted enough to be compelling at first glance.

Ok, you’re almost done — I told you it’s easy. Now, think about your story and distill EXACTLY what you want your readers to take away.

For my story about alt text, another simple SEO trick, my meta description is

“You can’t slap a Medium Boost on your story, but you can tweak it to be more search-engine-friendly. Read this for one simple way to get more traffic.”

That’s 150 characters that get attention by mentioning Medium boost, then promising more traffic and incorporating a call to action — Read this.

It took a little thought to hone down my original effort so it fit within the 150 characters. I removed all non-essential words from this first try, “We all know you can’t slap a Medium Boost on your story, but you can easily tweak it to be much more search engine friendly. This story gives you a simple way to make Google recognize your story.”

It’s important to stay around 150 characters. The meta description is the sentence you see on a search engine response right under the title of the article or webpage in question. Over 150 or so words, the engine truncates it, leaving words out.

My stories often turn up in searches. I choose words carefully so my stories strongly relate to what readers will search for. For example, using the phrase Medium Boost in my titles, headers, text, and meta description is likely to put me into searches for those keywords — viral keywords.

When you format your next story, take a minute to add a custom meta description that differs from your opening sentence. You’ll feel the boost.

Bonus tip: On every story, just below the meta description field in story settings, you’ll find a friend link. That’s a link that allows non-members to access your story for free. Use it on social media or on your website to attract new readers.