After writing my two viral stories on Medium, I received a lot of comments and emails asking me how to increase their reach on Medium.

They are reaching out because they feel that they did what I wrote in my post but are still not getting enough attention from their readers.

Here’s my two viral stories if you want to read it:

• My First Week on Medium: I Earned $19.58 and Got 47 Followers
• Do This to Optimize Your Medium Profile and Get More Visitors

Hence, I will share with you how to get more visitors and write a viral story without sharing it with any of your social media, just pure algorithm and SEO.

I already wrote and published the basics of SEO on my website, so you might also want to check it HERE.

Many writers complained about not getting any attention despite writing quality content.

I checked their profile and found out what is wrong with their content…

It is not SEO-optimized, so they don’t get enough traffic.

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of optimizing your posts so Google and other search engines can crawl to your website and push it to the top 1 of their page results; this means they find your content relevant for a certain keyword, so, they recommend it to people who searches about it.

It should be a skill that every writer should learn if they want to “hack” their growth.

The good thing here is that everyone can do it, there are not many technical things to learn, you just need to edit and optimize your posts.

3 years ago, I was struggling to get any traffic on my website. I researched the possible reasons why and the solution for them until I learned about SEO.

Now, I am getting a decent amount of traffic after publishing SEO-optimized posts consistently.

I even help businesses to increase their reach for up to 556.25% and their traffic is still now gaining a lot of visitors and impressions, and even ranked 1 on search engine.

According to Moz, Medium has a Domain Authority of 95, this could only mean that Google trusts it.

Having this high domain authority matters to you as a writer, because it will be easier for you to rank your stories with proper optimization.

SEO doesn’t only work for self-hosted websites; it will also work for platforms like Medium.

Think of SEO as a signpost on your story where it will lead Google to show your story to your target audience.

How to do keyword research?

Keyword research helps you to identify which keywords you should use to target your audience.

Learning about this will improve your discoverability on Google.

I always find this a bit of complicated. But I changed my perspective.

I learned that we should not overcomplicate writing. It should be simple and provide value to your audience.

Hence, I do keyword research without looking at the total volume or anything, if I know that people search for it, I’ll go and write about it.

The main rule is to find high-volume keywords with low competition, but I don’t consider it anymore.

While it will be hard for you to rank on Google, there is still a chance to rank if you write for your audience and not for Google only.

You can always do this by using free tools such as Ubersuggest or Google’s autocomplete feature.

As you can see, people are still searching for this term, so you can use it in your next post and you can possibly rank on Google if it is quality content and properly optimized.

Write quality headlines on your story

Writing a quality headline can increase your click-through rate (CTR), discoverability, and ranking on Google page results.

You can always incorporate your keyword on your headline, it is recommended, however, you must avoid keyword stuffing; putting your keyword inappropriately just to rank on Google.

It can backfire on you and can get penalized.

I already published a story on how to write killer headlines on Medium, so you can always check it to increase your visitors. Read it HERE.

Write content that your readers need

Content is still a king.

You can’t perform SEO without any content.

When you are just starting to write a blog, create as much quality content as you can.

I want to emphasize the word quality because Google prioritizes it now. 10 years ago, you could just do keyword stuffing by incorporating your keywords anywhere in your post.

Now, with the growing technology of Google, they can prioritize content that is meaningful and helpful for the readers.

You must satisfy the search intent of your readers.

One thing that I noticed is that you should also take the formatting seriously. Make sure that you write short paragraphs, proper formatting of headlines, italic, and bold phrases, and proper use of bullet points.

This is to ensure that your readers won’t be bored reading your content and can also push Google to think that your written work is quality content.

Optimizing your Medium story for SEO

When optimizing your Medium stories, it doesn’t only mean writing a well-crafted blog post.

You also have to consider the search intent of your audience. You must remember to edit and optimize the following:

• Meta title is the title that appears on the page results when you are searching. It is important to make sure that it can hook the attention of your readers and is SEO-optimized by incorporating your keyword into it.
• Meta description is also like an “excerpt” or the first sentence that your readers will read – so ensure that it is powerful and also answers their search intent.
• Slugs/Links are the “link” of your post mostly like this: _yourwebsite.com/how-to-write-a-blog_, I wasn’t aware that it also affects your SEO ranking. The secret? Make it shorter and avoid long slugs.

For example, my post about RealFit F3 Review is ranking number 1 on Google because I optimized this post with SEO.

• Meta title – red
• Meta description – blue
• Slugs – green

You can optimize those tags if you are using an SEO plugin on your WordPress blog, or if you are using Medium, you can do this before publishing your story.

Promote your posts on social media

If content is king, social media is your queen.

SEO doesn’t only mean optimizing your posts and editing some of those areas on your posts.

You also have to promote it outside the community.

• Join Facebook groups. Facebook has a lot of group pages; you can always find writers outside and start promoting your posts.
• Post a thread. If you are writing on X or InLeo, you can always start posting short-form content of your post and then create a call-to-action at your last thread. This is another type of content repurposing that you can always take advantage of to gain more audience.
• Create short and long-form videos. If you are fully investing your time and effort in gaining more visitors, why not try transforming your content into a video? I am planning to do this on TikTok and Pinterest and try my luck in promoting my Medium stories.

Finding the best social media that suits your niche and content is always the best to find your space.

I would suggest tracking your progress on each account and look which one is the most effective for your marketing.

In addition, sharing your posts on social media adds a backlink to your website which can help with off-page SEO.

Always track your progress

Tracking your progress with your SEO strategies is always important to understand which one is working and which is not.

If you are gaining a lot of views but only a few reads, maybe because your introduction isn’t catchy and powerful which leads to a “boring read” experience for your readers.

Making sure that your content is engaging will help to increase your reads and boost your earnings in Medium, plus, it increases your read ratio which indicates that your content is relevant to your readers.

You can always use the built-in Medium stats feature on your Menu and check your viral stories.

Usually, viral stories have a deeper analysis so you will understand your reader’s interest, read ratio, and traffic sources.

Summing up

While Medium prefers fresh content, it is important to consider the long-term benefit of SEO.

I have been seeing old content on the home feed of Medium, some are written years ago, but they are still ranking on Google and gaining organic traffic.

This can cause continuous growth in your traffic and can potentially boost your earnings over time.

It is important if you are also adding affiliate links to your posts because you can still potentially earn from it if you always optimize your content with SEO.

SEO is not complicated.

You don’t have to overthink it, just learn the basics and you are good to go!

Frequently Asked Questions [FAQs]

• Do I need to be an expert in SEO to see the results? No, learning the basics is enough if you are a beginner. Medium has its own way of distributing your content and that includes SEO. So, you just apply what is written above or dig deeper from this post and learn the basics to get the most out of it,
• Can SEO optimization make my stories go viral? While it increases your discoverability, Medium has its own way of content distribution in the platform itself, read the Medium guidelines. However, it can help you to increase your chance of going viral if your content ranks on page results.
• What are long-tail keywords, and why are they important? Long-tail keywords are specific phrases that have lower competition. Targeting these keywords will help you to rank in your niche.