For most of its history, Medium didn't reward SEO. You wrote, the algorithm decided who saw it, and Google was a nice bonus if it happened. Most Medium writers didn't bother optimizing for search because it barely affected their earnings.

That changed. Medium's Partner Program update in late 2024 started rewarding external traffic — readers who find your articles via Google, social media, or other websites outside the Medium platform. That single change made SEO a first-class strategy for Medium writers who want to grow their earnings and reach.

Here's how to do it properly. I go even deeper into the full SEO and growth playbook in my Medium Growth Guide.

The basics: how SEO works on Medium

Medium has very high domain authority — one of the highest of any website on the internet. That's built up from years of high-quality content published by millions of writers, plus the links Medium has accumulated from other websites citing Medium articles.

What that means for you: when you publish on Medium and optimize your article well, you're borrowing Medium's authority. Your article can rank for keywords that would take a personal blog years to compete for, simply because it's on Medium's domain.

This is the same reason articles on Wikipedia or the New York Times rank easily — they're on domains Google already trusts deeply. Medium isn't at that level, but it's significantly above the average website.

The opportunity: there are vast numbers of keywords where the current top results on Google are weak. Thin content, outdated articles, or pieces that don't actually answer the search intent well. If you write a better article and publish it on Medium, you can take those rankings.

Keyword research for Medium writers

Before you write, find out what people are actually searching for. This doesn't require paid tools, though they help. Free methods that work:

Google autocomplete. Type your topic into Google and read the suggestions. Each one is a real search query. "How to write on Medium" → Google suggests "how to write on Medium and get paid," "how to write on Medium and make money," "how to write on Medium for beginners." Those are your keywords.

"People also ask" boxes. When you search a topic, Google often shows a box with related questions. These are actual questions real people searched for. Answer them directly in your article — ideally with a header that matches the question.

Existing Medium articles. Search your topic on Medium and look at the most popular articles. What titles are they using? What keywords appear in the subtitles and headers? This tells you what's already working, and gives you a target to improve on.

Once you have a keyword, reality-check it: search it on Google and look at what's currently ranking. Is the top content genuinely good? If yes, it'll be hard to beat. If the results look thin, rushed, or outdated — that's your opening.

Optimizing your article title

The title is the single most important SEO element in your article. Google reads it as your clearest signal about what the piece is about.

A few title principles that consistently work for Medium SEO:

  • Put the main keyword near the beginning of the title, not the end
  • Be specific about what the reader will get: "How to Negotiate a Salary Raise: The Exact Script I Used" beats "Tips for Getting a Raise"
  • Include the year when it's relevant — "Best Productivity Apps in 2026" gets more clicks than the same title without a year, because searchers want current information
  • Ask a question if the keyword is naturally a question: "Is Medium Worth It in 2026?" ranks well for people searching exactly that

The subtitle (the short description below the title in Medium's interface) is also read by Google. Don't leave it as a throwaway line — use it to reinforce your keyword and tell the reader what they'll get.

On-page optimization

Once the title is sorted, these are the main places to optimize within the article itself:

First paragraph. Mention your target keyword within the first 100–150 words. Google weighs the opening of an article heavily. Don't stuff it — just use the keyword naturally as you introduce what the piece covers.

Section headers. Medium's H2 headers are indexed by Google and help signal structure. Use them to cover related questions and secondary keywords. "How much does Medium pay per view?" is a better header than "Earnings." Not only is it more specific, it matches real search queries.

Length. Longer articles generally rank better than shorter ones, provided the length is earned. Aim for 1,000–2,000 words for competitive keywords. Don't pad — cut anything that isn't adding value — but don't artificially truncate either.

Internal links. Link to your other Medium articles where relevant. This keeps readers on your content longer, which signals quality to Google, and it distributes some of your more established articles' authority to newer ones.

Getting backlinks to your Medium articles

Backlinks are links from other websites pointing to your article. They're one of the most significant factors in how Google ranks content.

For Medium writers, the best backlink strategies are:

Share to Substack or your own blog first. If you have a Substack or personal blog, publish your article there first, then republish on Medium with a canonical link. That gets a backlink from your own platform. It also means your platform (not Medium) gets the full SEO credit — the canonical tag tells Google where the original lives. For the full dual-publishing workflow, see my Dual Strategy guide.

Share the article on LinkedIn and Twitter/X. Social shares don't carry direct SEO weight, but they drive traffic. Traffic drives engagement signals. Engagement signals help rankings.

Quote your Medium articles in other content. When you publish something new that builds on an older piece, link back to that older piece from the new one. These internal links within your Medium profile build authority across your body of work.

The canonical link strategy

This is the most important SEO move for Medium writers who also publish elsewhere.

If you write an article and publish it on both your Substack and Medium, Google sees two identical pieces of content. It has to decide which one to rank. Usually it picks one and ignores the other. Which one it picks is unpredictable.

The canonical tag solves this. When you import an article into Medium, you can set the canonical URL to your original source. This tells Google explicitly: the original lives here (on your Substack, blog, or wherever), and this Medium version is a syndicated copy. Google gives full SEO credit to the original and treats the Medium version as a non-duplicate.

If you want the SEO benefit to go to your own platform, always publish there first and set the canonical when importing to Medium. If you want the Medium article to rank independently, publish it on Medium first or don't set a canonical pointing elsewhere.

Conclusion

Medium SEO in 2026 is a real opportunity that most writers are underusing. Medium's domain authority gives every article a head start. The platform's 2024 Partner Program update made external traffic financially valuable for the first time. And the tools for keyword research and on-page optimization are available for free.

The writers who combine good writing with basic SEO discipline on Medium will outperform writers with better writing and no SEO awareness. That's not a cynical observation — it's just how search works. Of course, SEO only matters if you're writing about topics that actually get read on Medium in the first place.

For more on how to think about Medium as part of a broader writing strategy, see my comparison of Substack vs Medium and my piece on the Medium Partner Program in 2026. And if you want to see what all this SEO effort translates to in actual dollars, here's what Medium pays per 1,000 views.

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