Summary

The web content explains the concept of a canonical link on Medium, its importance in preventing duplicate content issues, and provides a step-by-step guide on how to add a canonical link to Medium stories to safely republish content across platforms.

Abstract

The article titled "What is Canonical Link On Medium? And How To Use It Properly" delves into the significance of canonical links for Medium users. It clarifies the role of canonical links in signaling search engines to index the original source of content, thereby avoiding SEO penalties for duplicate content. The author emphasizes the benefits of using canonical links, such as reaching a wider audience without SEO repercussions and maintaining the original content's ranking integrity. A detailed guide is provided for Medium content creators to import stories with canonical links, either through Medium's import feature or by manually adding the link in the story settings. The piece also touches on the potential for stories published elsewhere to be curated or distributed on Medium, especially if they originate from recognized platforms like Forbes or Entrepreneur. Additionally, the article suggests that popular Medium publications may accept articles that have been published elsewhere, offering writers the opportunity to monetize their work across different platforms.

Opinions

The author believes that understanding and properly using canonical links is crucial for Medium content creators to avoid SEO issues related to duplicate content.
It is the author's personal experience that Medium curates and distributes content that has been published elsewhere, particularly if it comes from well-known sources.
The author implies that republishing content on Medium, even if it has been published elsewhere, can be beneficial as it may lead to acceptance by popular Medium publications and potential monetization.
The author suggests that adding a canonical link is a straightforward process, and Medium's platform is designed to facilitate this for users importing content.

What is Canonical Link On Medium? And How To Use It Properly

Understanding “canonical link” and its benefits and then a guide of how to add a canonical link while publishing on Medium.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

If you are on Medium then you might be wondering what is the canonical link, and why it is important?

In this article, we will discuss some myths and how you can actually import content to Medium. If you want to import content to Medium or running a blog where you can add your Medium story to a blog then you should know about the canonical links as it will help you in a lot of things.

What is a Canonical link?

A canonical link is a signal to the search engine crawl that this post is published somewhere else and don’t crawl it. Instead, crawl the *link* given. Duplicate content is dangerous for your blog ranking in general, and for a specific post in particular. That’s why you need to add a canonical link to your Medium story.

Using the Canonical link enables you to use your content on multiple platforms without worrying about being penalized from the search engine. You can republish your content published on one platform and republish it on other writing platforms.

What is the function of using the canonical links on your Medium stories?

Following are some of the functions of the use of the canonical links in your Medium story;

You can republish your content on multiple platforms. This could help you reach a wider audience.
The issue of duplicate content is solved. Google doesn’t like duplicate content and if you don’t add a canonical link, it could create an issue for you.

How to add a canonical link to your Medium stories

The following is a step-by-step process to add a canonical link on your Medium posts;

First, you can import content through two ways; if you go to stories and click on “Import a story”, now you just have to add the link of the story published and you don’t need to add a canonical link because Medium already adds it for you.

Now, if you manually want to import content to Medium from your blog then you have to follow the following process.

Click on “New story” and copy-paste your published story from your blog.
Add a featured image and add title and sub-title. If you have affiliate links or any other things that violate Medium policies, do remove them.
Now, on the top-right side, there are three dots “…” click on it and click on the “More setting” option.

Click on “More setting” in order to add Rel=Canonical link in your Medium stories. / Screenshot taken by the Author

Now, in the next process, scroll till the end of the option where you have the option of “Advanced settings” click on it and now you have an option to add the URL of the story.

Adding a canonical link to a Medium story / Screenshot taken by the Author

When you tick this option “This story was originally published elsewhere” Medium will give you an option to paste the link. Paste the link there and click “Save”
Boom! You can now submit it to a publication or self-publish it.

Can stories published elsewhere get curated or distributed?

I have spent over 2 years on Medium reading and creating content and one of the things that I have noticed is that Medium does curate or distribute content that is published elsewhere. i

If your content is published in Forbes or the Entrepreneur, then there is a high chance that your articles are distributed on Medium too. (This is my personal experience.)

Can Medium popular publications accept your work?

Yes, I have seen the big publications accepting already-published articles into their network. There are some other platforms like Vocal, and Newsbreak, that could accept your articles published on Medium, and you will be paid for your work too.

So, you can publish your Medium article on another platform, or you can republish your already-published articles on other platforms on Medium.

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