tkrunning

Shhh... ;)

IMO, it's not too surprising that they tried to be a bit more writer friendly initially (to attract more quality writers and larger publications). I guess it no longer fit with their new business objectives, which is why they quietly removed it this fall.

Good point! I'll update it :)

I just threw the site together in a few minutes before publishing the post (experimenting with Gatbsy), so literally just added a max-width and changed the font styles.

This is definitely true. What I'm referring to in the article is cases when you've done a proper update of the article to make sure it's up to date, added new information, etc.

I actually hope Google will start comparing versions of articles before/after date updates, and penalize those that update the date without updating the content.

Medium has quietly removed the support article describing this, but it used to live here: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/227017408-Set-cano...

Sadly, it's not archived anywhere I could find, but it did mention that you could send them a CSV file of up to 50 URLs to update the canonical links for.

I'm not surprised and as I say in the article "A heads-up would have been nice, but still, that's their prerogative."

I do understand why they would want to move in the direction they are, but I also think authors in particular should be aware of the trends and make choices that will benefit them, rather than Medium, in the long run.

What's a bit sneaky here is that they have been selling authors on the fact that they own the content, and the fact that you can move it elsewhere later (including updating canonical links). It's a bit like a SaaS offering an export function, but after you put a lot of your data there they quietly remove it. For bloggers, you can't claim to give them proper data portability without a way of updating the canonical links.

It's not only a problem with the search engines' own rankings, it's also that people are less likely to click an older article on the SERP.

It depends on the content and the type of updates you make.

As long as I do a significant update to an article, and make sure it's generally up to date and still entirely relevant, then I'll update the date to match.

When people look at the dates (in SERP) they generally want to know if the article is still relevant or if they are likely to find outdated information there. At least that's how I think.

Automatically updating dates without actually revising the content on the other hand... That's not something I'd want to endorse.

Feel free to take a look for yourself: https://cl.ly/93ce51946717

I just removed the support agent's name (no need to name names), otherwise the emails are complete.

I don't think Medium is able to plug the hole that easily, but they might tell me to stop doing it or plug the hole just for me. I don't believe I'm violating their ToS, but you never know how they would interpret it.

I don't believe I'm violating their ToS, but you never know how they would interpret it. That's why I'm not sharing it publicly. But feel free to email me on mediumtrick at nomad dot email.

I only set up this blog for this specific article, so haven't given following much thought, but yes it does have RSS (https://bts.nomadgate.com/rss.xml). And people do still use that.

My main blog (https://nomadgate.com) offers more options: RSS, web push, email newsletter, community forum, etc.

Luckily, it's no longer 2004, so no one in their right mind would start out blogging there ;)

I personally prefer Jekyll or Gatsby on GH Pages or, even better, Netlify. But if you're less technically inclined, WordPress.com is fine as long as you get a custom domain.

Typically, less than 5% of an article's traffic has been coming from Medium for me (that's true for unpopular articles as well as more popular ones with more than a quarter million views).

So don't give the "visibility argument" too much weight.

Ha, that's funny indeed!

I emailed with Josh a few times (regarding GDPR stuff) and he seems like a great guy!

The article limit only applies to their "premium" content. Any random article you post there can be read by anyone.

Still, post primarily on your own domain!

It obviously depend on your niche, but as long as it's not super competitive I've had pretty good success appearing in the top 10 with articles posted on my own (fairly new) domain.

Perhaps the best advice I can give is to don't focus too much on SE algorithms (just make sure you don't mess up any tagging etc), but rather focus on creating very good, well researched content. If you do that, people will share, and Google will notice. Personally, I have had success with writing long form articles. Many of the articles on Nomad Gate is 4-5000 words or more. At that point you will get a lot of long tail traffic as well.

Medium has become the go-to publishing platform for more and more entrepreneurs and businesses. However, I'd argue that most people would be much better off publishing content on their own domain. This is especially true for "evergreen" content, since Medium does not allow you to update the date of your posts—meaning they will perform worse in search rankings after a while.

I started my own business, Nomad Gate, on Medium about 3.5 years ago, but have realized that I'm much better off hosting everything myself. After making the switch, both my traffic and revenue more than doubled.

I wrote an article/PSA describing my experience with Medium (and moving off it), how they are making it harder and harder to actually leave their platform (no more custom domains, no more updating canonical links, etc), and how to safely do content syndication to Medium after moving your content hub elsewhere.

I hope it will help some of you make better decisions about your content strategy, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have for me!