Medium vs Personal Blog
When we first started blogging for Keywords Heaven, we were faced with a dilemma. Either we could blog on Medium and take advantage of its high domain authority, or we could blog on our personal blog/website and drive traffic to the site. They both had their pros and cons, but we ultimately decided to blog on Medium because by using it, we could easily rank on Google. That being said, it would still be a reasonable decision to switch to our website. In this article we will discuss the pros and cons of blogging on Medium vs a personal blog:
The Pros of Blogging on Medium:
1. Internal Audience
Medium is a social network for bloggers, so they will send you internal traffic. While other people may have better results with this, internal Medium traffic makes up only about 10% of our blog’s traffic. Therefore, we do not recommend this as a major reason for blogging exclusively on Medium.
2. High Domain Authority
Along with analyzing the content you put on your page, Google also analyzes how trustworthy and authoritative the domain you are posting on is. When starting a new website, this can make it difficult to gain traction. That is why for at least the first 6 months of your website, or until your website builds authority, we recommend publishing a majority of your content on Medium, linking back to resources on your website in each post.
3. Ease of Use
Although content management systems like Wordpress have made creating and managing websites easier, some technical knowledge is still needed. We understand that not everybody may have this knowledge, thus Medium can be an easier way to get started.
4. Ability to Build Links More Easily
While we do not recommend immediately building a large amount of links to a new website, authority websites like Medium can be handled differently. Check out our article about parasite SEO for more information on the differences.
5. Build Authority to Your Website
When you blog on Medium and link back to your website, Google views this as an off-page signal and ranks your website higher. That being said, this is a double edged sword because the backlinks that you acquire organically will most likely all be pointing at your Medium blog.
6. Higher CTR and Trust
Platforms like Medium have higher click through rates in search results due to brand recognition and because users trust them.
7. Subscribers and Engagement Signals
While it is possible to manually notify people when you publish new content via channels like email and browser notifications, Medium has this built in and automatically does the notifying for you. It also allows readers to clap for your posts, allowing you to gauge which content people like. This can be replicated on your own website, but just using Medium makes things far easier.
8. Engage with Other Content Creators
While this pro doesn’t necessarily require you to exclusively blog via Medium, it is something unique to Medium. With Medium, you have the ability to comment, follow, and engage with other bloggers. This can be particularly good when your traffic is low since you can interact with some content that is performing well and mention your own content. As long as you are not too spammy with it, you should be fine.
The Pros of Blogging on a Personal Blog:
1. More Customizability and Better Branding
When you own the website you are blogging on, you can control the design and formatting of your articles. This can create a unique branding experience in and of itself. On the flip side, Medium has probably spent a lot of time and money testing different layouts and designs, so imitating them, or just using them, may be the way to go.
2. CRO
There are many way to improve your conversion rate optimization that Medium just will not allow. These include sidebar links, sticky headers, exit opt-in forms, and more. That being said, we do not recommend worrying about CRO if you are just starting out.
3. Displaying What You Offer Front and Center
When blogging on Medium, you cannot host your products or services directly on the platform. Instead, you can only link to them through your content, which makes them less noticeable.
4. Multiple Monetization Methods
Blogging on your own website allows you to utilize various monetization methods that Medium does not allow. One of the main monetization methods that you unlock is the ability to display ads.
5. Retargeting Pixels
When we started out with Medium, we were surprised to discover that they do not support retargeting pixels. This is a major issue since you cannot follow your traffic around the web and remarket to them as you see necessary. This is not an issue when it comes to your own website, since you can install anything you like.
6. Third Party Plugins and Libraries That Add Functionality
Third party plugins and libraries can help you do things on your website’s blog that your Medium blog just can’t. For example, on our site we use a Wordpress membership plugin to organize our software subscriptions and to give users different privileges.
7. You Control the Asset
On Medium, your account can be banned at any moment (hopefully you are not giving them a reason to ban you). When using your own website to blog, you do not have to worry about this and can have peace of mind knowing that you control the asset.
8. Selling the Website
While it is possible to sell a Medium blog, it is not very common. On the other hand, selling websites is very common and if you can build one that receives a lot of traffic and is good standing, you can likely sell it on a site like Empire Flippers for around 30 times the monthly profits.
9. Building up Your SEO Authority
Since we write most of our content on our Medium blog, most of our backlinks are to our Medium blog rather than to our site. This also leads to us not getting as many brand searches and direct traffic, both of which are ranking factors in Google’s algorithm. When blogging on your own website, you are building up your own domain instead of Medium’s.
Our Thoughts on the Medium vs Personal Blog Question
If we had to make a general suggestion for someone looking to publish content on Medium or on their personal blog, we would suggest that people start by mostly blogging on Medium and then switch over to mostly blogging on their personal website in the long run. That being said, even after your website gains some authority it’s still a good idea to use Medium for some articles that are targeting competitive keywords. This is mainly due to the fact that a Medium blog is generally easy to rank.
Please let us know your thoughts on this topic in the comments below or in our Facebook group.
