Why You Don’t Need An Independent Blog
Managing a Medium account and an independent blog splits your focus
Until yesterday, I used a two-pronged blogging strategy. I published my articles on Medium and published exact copies on my personal website at www.meganeholstein.com for anyone who is not a Medium subscriber.
Yesterday in my newsletter, I announced I wasn’t going to pursue this strategy anymore. I am going to be writing for Medium exclusively going forward. (Newsletter subscribers who are not Medium subscribers will be given friend links to read my work).
The same day, I received this email from a reader:
Just wanted to ask you why did you stop hosting articles on your website and instead gone for Medium? The reason I ask is I am about to start blogging and vlogging for professional purposes and was thinking about hosting the articles on my own website.
Since this is a question many people have, I decided to answer it publicly.
Before making any kind of strategic business decision, whether it be for a writing career or a multi-million-dollar product line, you must accept the first truth: everything has an opportunity cost. All the time and energy you spend doing one thing could be spent doing something else.
When you run both a personal blog and a Medium account, you spend more time on your blogging than you would just one or the other. Medium accounts require you to stay abreast of changes to the way Medium works, to read articles by other Medium writers, to find a good photo selection strategy, and to decide the best way to tag, get curated, and add Calls to Action, at a minimum. Independent blogs require you pick and manage a good blog design, that your email capture fields are embedded properly, that your SEO strategy is tight, and other web management considerations. When you decide to manage both a blog and a Medium account, you need to do both these things.
That doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. Each strategy pays big dividends if used correctly on its own. If they’re leveraged together skillfully, they can produce a return that far outstrips the return of each individual strategy.
But the trade-off is time. With any kind of entrepreneurial venture, you can’t put in a half effort. In the wild west of internet entrepreneurship, return on your effort is not linear. Either you give it your all and get the commensurate payoff, or you give it less than your all and you get basically nothing.
I’ve been managing a two-pronged blogging and Medium strategy since February of this year — about eight months. What I noticed is that I did not give either Medium or my independent blog 100%. I gave Medium 80% most days (95% some days). My independent blog about 50%.
But like I said, 50% is not enough. 80% is not enough. 95% is not enough. To get the results I’m looking for, I need to be giving 100%.
The tradeoffs between an independent blog and a Medium account don’t stop there. When you are double-hosting content, there is one big thing you need to worry about: Your SEO.
For those who don’t know, SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization, the practice of crafting content so that Google’s algorithm decides to promote it to people in their search engine results. When you do it well, Google promotes your content. When you do it poorly, Google penalizes your content. As a somewhat technical and highly variable skill, it requires constant work and research to be done correctly.
One of the biggest things Google penalizes is duplicate content. If two copies of the same article exist on the internet, Google penalizes them both for being duplicates. So if you post articles to both Medium and your website, both copies will be penalized in Google’s search rankings.
There is a way around this. When you’re publishing copies of your work, you must include canonical links. These tell Google which is the “original” and which is the “copy.” That way, the original is not penalized in search rankings.
Canonical links are, however, annoying. Setting them up between Medium and your website can be a pain in the rear. If you do it wrong, all your work will be penalized, so you have to get it right every time.
Medium tries to make it easy by offering its Import A Story function. This is great for articles that you have already published — but I’m not trying to republish old articles. I want to publish new and original content to Medium publications. When I use the Import a Story function, Medium tries to backdate articles that have not even been published yet. As a result, my stories appear to be a day or two old once a publication finally hits Accept. This impacts my Medium search rankings a lot more than the canonical link penalty impacts my Google website indexing.
So I’m Giving Up My Independent Blog.
I’ve been managing a two-pronged blogging and Medium strategy since February of this year — about eight months. What I noticed is that I did not give either Medium or my independent blog 100%. I gave Medium 80% most days (95% some days). My independent blog got about 50%.
But like I said, 50% is not enough. 80% is not enough. 95% is not enough. To get the results I’m looking for, I need to be giving 100%.
Also, this whole SEO-canonical link-backdated articles thing is really annoying. You can’t pay me enough to do busywork like this — so I decided I’m done doing it. I’m done spending my time managing an independent blog here or there. I’m going to spend my effort on Medium.
This doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon having a personal website. I think personal websites are a crucial marketing tool for anyone trying to get a job today. They cost $100 a year and make you seem vastly more professional. But, a personal website does not necessarily have to have a blog.
Here is a list of reasons your personal website may have a blog:
- You are trying to become a successful and well-known writer
- You are trying to become known as a subject matter expert in your field (mobile software engineering, for instance, or cybersecurity)
- You think well-written blog articles will impress potential clients and employers
The only reason I find compelling on this list is reason #3, to impress potential clients and employers. Reason #1 is much better served by investing your time into Medium, a major website with readership already built-in. Reason #2 is potentially served better on Medium for the same reason. It is equally well-served by finding an industry-specific website for which to write. Both of these strategies eliminate the massive amount of overhead work that comes with trying to drive Google traffic to your own website.
In my mind, the reason everyone should have a personal website is as a place to aggregate everything that exists online about you. A personal website should include links to all your social media, your LinkedIn, an “About You” section potential clients and employers can read, a way to get in contact with you via email (such as a contact form), and if you’re a freelancer, a “Work With Me” section. If you have work published somewhere or have been featured in the news, your personal website is a great place to store those links as well. But, alas, a personal website is not always a great place for a blog.
So, my recommendation is this: Have a personal website. Use it as a link aggregator. But host your articles on Medium (and your videos on YouTube). You’ll see a lot more results if you spend your time optimizing for these high-traffic websites, instead of trying to play the SEO game with Google at the same time.
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