This Is How I Ranked My Medium Story On The Front Page Of Google
Rank your stories on Google
To be honest, the SEO isn’t something I care about.
99% of my Medium stories are “Not SEO Optimized.” Because I don’t play this SEO game. But there is one story that I wrote and intentionally optimized the story for SEO. And guess what? It worked.
This is the story I’m talking about.
First, let me show you the proof of my story that’s ranked on Google.
It’s on the third number. Front page. And I couldn’t believe it!
Here’s how I found it. So a few days ago I was tinkering on Google search. And suddenly a keyword came to my mind: “How to grow on Medium.”
I typed it on the Google search bar. Press Entered. Boom… My story was there in the third number. For a second, I thought maybe it was personalized results because of my location.
To double-check that, I turned my VPN on. Location: New York. Copied the keyword “How to grow on Medium.” opened a new incognito window and typed the same keyword. Boom! the same result.
Now it was clear that the story actually has ranked on Google.
Here are the 4 Reasons why I think it got ranked on Google. (I’m no SEO expert though) This can be useful information if you’re someone who plays the SEO game.
Let’s dive in!
1. The Headline
There are only a few types of headlines that get ranked on Google.
One of them is “Not-clickbaity-short-headlines.” If you read the headline of that story you’ll find that the headline is so simple and short:
So if you want your stories to get ranked on Google’s search page, never clickbait and keep your headline short.
Not to mention, Medium’s domain authority is 95!
2. Loads Of Keyword
If you read the story, you’ll notice that throughout the story I’ve used some common main keywords. Those keywords are:
- Medium
- Medium growth
- Writing on Medium
- Growing on Medium
These keywords helped Google understand what’s the story about. So I’d say: if you want your stories to get ranked on Google, use the main keywords in your story.
Keep in mind, you’re not boring the reading.
3. Full SEO Optimized
You’ll get an option for SEO optimization in each story you write.
When I first finished writing that story, I optimized it for Google search because I knew that I could also get visitors from Google, which happened.
Here’s how to SEO optimize your Medium story:
When you’re writing your Medium story, you’ll find a three-dot on the top right menu. Click on that and then look for “More settings.”
When you click on that, you’ll see another dashboard, scroll a bit and look for the “SEO settings,” it’ll look something like this:
This is the section you need to fix. Change the headline, keep it short, and add the main keyword in your headline. Also, the description — keep it concise and clear.
Hope you understand.
4. The Experience
And lastly, of course, the story has to be good to get ranked on Google.
It’s all about the reader’s experience. If your story isn’t getting claps and comments (because it’s not good) then it won’t rank on Google search.
As you can see, this story has 850+ claps and 35 comments, which is a lot, by the way. And that’s why Google made it worth ranking it on its page.
So that’s all about the SEO game on Medium.
If you want to read the full story, click on the following story:
Thanks for reading!
