Improving the click-through rate of articles on the Medium platform: from tag management, keyword optimization to community management
This article The author is Hou Zhixun. He founded an education and training team at the age of 21 to create a stage for self-learning, focusing on areas such as learning and productivity development, cloud work techniques and knowledge management. Thank you for authorizing the “Content Hacker” website to reprint it. Thank you hereby.
[Why we reprint this article] In view of the increasing number of Taiwanese creators using the Medium platform to publish articles, Hou Zhixun shared his own data and experience on operating tags and keyword SEO on Medium, teaching everyone how to increase the reading volume of blog articles and improve search rankings, which is worth your reference.
Over the past year, the author has become a remote freelance worker. Writing blog becomes a moment of reflection for oneself, and it is also a medium for sharing things and opinions that inspire oneself with friends.
Unexpectedly, the author accumulated 2,000 readers in this way.
The author used to publish articles on Personal Facebook Page. Although I wrote many opinions, as time passed, the article sank. This phenomenon is attributed to the following two points:
- Cannot be found on Google or search engines.
- Lack of article recommendation mechanism.
Because of these two flaws, content posted on Facebook often does not receive new feedback (leave a message, share or like) within a week. No matter how popular an article is, it will only be popular for two weeks at most. I always feel that this rapid loss of clicks is a harm to the cumulative influence of content creators. Later, the author discovered the writing platform Medium and started my writing journey.
Change in writing style: from writing for yourself to writing for opinions
This article happens to be the author’s 60th article on Medium.
The article at the beginning is Notes[Note 1] related to my “study”. Therefore, there is no plan or strategy when writing the article. I just copy the content on my note-taking software and publish it on Medium with a little polishing. Therefore, the narrative tone is more like a conversation with myself while reading.
[Note 1] Note writing style: usually refers to a writing style that can only be understood by the author himself, but it is difficult for others to understand the content.
Later, the author changed his writing style and re-planned [Medium tag](https://medium.com/@frankyu_61212/medium-%E7%9A%84%E4 %B8%AD%E6%96%87%E6%A8%99%E7%B1%A4%E7%94%A8%E6%B3%95-b3cbf614a75) (Tag), thinking [title] (ht tps://www.contenthacker.today/2018/02/5-tips-for-writing-catchy-titles.html) and subtitles (what keywords do ordinary people use to search for related articles), write articles in a conversational manner or the tone you usually share in lectures, no longer just personal notes. I hope that I can summarize the ideas that have inspired me into useful methods, so that these contents can also inspire readers.
Because the author believes that friends who come to read on Medium have relatively open minds and cognitions that are open to discussion and communication. Otherwise, why would they spend time reading here?
Before entering the text, I would like to thank all the friends who support the author.
As an amateur born in the 1990s who has one foot in the workplace and society and one foot still struggling in the school system, I am really grateful to every reader who is willing to take the time to read the author’s articles and give support and feedback (clapping, sharing, and giving rewards).
When I was a child, my family’s financial situation was not very good, so I was always told by my elders: “Don’t tell too many stories about yourself, otherwise you will be laughed at by people in society, or looked down upon by your classmates. Be patient and wait until you have enough social status before sharing.” Looking back, if I didn’t have these “feedbacks” from readers when I first shared, I might still be a child who is afraid of sharing.
But precisely because the author has no resources to give, I have always liked this sentence:
“Sharing opinions is the only behavior that does not decrease because of giving, but rather increases.”
This is why the author chose “The Power of Sharing” as the theme of his previous speech at TEDxTKU. Because the “sharing” thing really gave me a lot of power, I met many great friends and readers, and also encountered many valuable opportunities.
Not to mention the benefits of writing and sharing. You are welcome to watch the video when you are free and listen to the two major myths the author shared at that time and the four benefits he proposed:
2016 TEDxTKU Annual Conference: The Power of Sharing Hou Zhixun
“It is the author’s responsibility to write the work well.”
The author quite agrees with this sentence, but believes that I also bear another responsibility:
“Let more people start joining the ranks of writing and sharing.”
As the Medium Chinese Community (Facebook Community) is getting bigger and bigger, there are also authors like Li Feibu who have carefully compiled a list of Chinese authors:
Medium’s current environment and strategy have the following three areas for improvement for Chinese authors:
1. The effect of community bonus is limited
Story, Tag and Publication are ranked regardless of language. However, most of the users on Medium are English users, and the recommended rankings are not calculated separately according to language family, which is a serious injury to Chinese users.
2. Low degree of customization
Although writing on Medium is easy to get started, the layout is simple and does not require too many settings. But for heavy users, it lacks many “customizable tools” and cannot embed Google Analytics code like WordPress, or use some keyword optimization tools. Therefore, Medium is to bring everyone back to their original form, purely as “content” or “diversion.” Even Custom Domain, which originally provided Publication, is no longer provided.
3. Poor Chinese font support and defective typesetting
For details, please refer to this article “The platform weakness of Chinese writers in Medium” written by leafwind.
Medium How to do keyword and SEO optimization? How to use labels?
How to play a good hand in a limited environment and resources?
This article is based on the data and observations accumulated by the author over the past year. When writing articles on Medium, there are really not many factors that can be controlled. In addition to the article title and content itself (keywords), there are probably only tags, article URLs, and image descriptions left.
[
- What can be seen from the article data? (reason)
- What is the impact of keyword management on articles? (Conclusion)
- Article style and trend in 2018
- In addition to leaving messages, how can readers interact with the author? (off topic)
- Why did the author choose not to join the paid plan? (off topic)
Let’s talk about the conclusion first:
“Tags are targeted at Medium communities, and keywords are used to manage long-term natural traffic.”
The impact of Tag
The author believes that the “tag” of the article will affect the following three aspects, which are the platform and community dividends brought by Medium itself:
- Medium Digest e-newsletter.
- Recommended on the Medium homepage (webpage and mobile APP).
- Recommended reading at the end of the article (the importance of Publication[Note 2]).
[Note 2] Publication can give the recommended reading at the end of the article to kidnapping. If it is an article in a Publication, the three recommended articles at the end must be other articles in the Publication.
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](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNfLwOirGEQEp4_LQMTKkNF5qTylbwAEdPpHn0dP6wVp9laPrjFlvn6SXd NYgMeYS5C0I8vcpLCvvtXy-pgmj3bvvKuwhOx8JGSUmfhYyE-Z2L-sFWAnFoDO1P3Pr9yT-8fnp0T_Vmq-Za/s1600/1_HNq38BBZ-syRb_xyaw7apQ.png)
▲Medium Digest e-newsletter (can be adjusted daily or weekly, the author chooses weekly)
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](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoHVhqzbfGhGyvHwqmY3m92xGl8LEcAJRAJuSEo1l2t_5E8_WgN4m4YXgp PDDLFSYbbwrwP_ZWzFl2-k8oQTLqqfRlsH_Gc7n0WngneTZigs0DX3oE6CskonkB0WiOQvWKWU0_SjdgtrnH/s1600/1_8-60QPwqXC6ku8DHbOWviQ.png)
▲Read the article to the end and the recommended reading will automatically appear
Therefore, it must be a good thing when an article is added to the appropriate Publication.
If it is not included in the last recommendation of the Publication article, it is possible that the article that is included in Publication is recommended (as the first recommendation in the picture on the right above). In other words, if there is no publication in the article, you can only recommend it through the “no publication in the article”.
“Good Publication will take you to the sky.”
My articles are mainly posted in Publicaiton, where I used to run a personal community. But since the New Year of 2018, I have been too busy with work, and I haven’t taken a proper rectification yet. I’ll sort it out when I have time after May this year. At present, I feel that the topic is still too divergent. Whether it is in this community or Publication, it should be more focused and thematic.
Everyone is welcome to leave a comment below and recommend a Publication that you think is good.
Publication recommendation 1: High-efficiency willful
“High Performance Willful” is a blog focusing on “personal growth”. A weekly thought question, hoping to help you and me be our own masters and find our own principles and free will through thinking and discussion. The world is not black and white. We cannot give a standard answer to a question, but we can give an angle, method and model to answer, and then find out which gray is our own…
Publication Recommendation 2: The company where the author currently works JANDI
JANDI Blog — Improve your office productivity and become a happy worker
JANDI brings you a brand new work experience, allowing you to use your accustomed communication methods to complete your busy work in one stop! Here is JANDI’s content blog that provides the latest work productivity at home and abroad. Let us be faster and happier together and become happy workers!
Special thanks to the company for being willing to open a column for the author to share articles related to “Work and Workplace Productivity.”
On the one hand, there seems to be no one in Taiwan or Medium Chinese communities currently operating in this field. Most of them are digital marketing, community and media publishing content. We speculated that this might be a blue ocean, so we chose to work on it. The company also agreed to let the author give full play to his work and write about workplace observations and ways to improve work productivity.
So far, the three workplace articles have performed well:
- 1.8K, 127 fans.
- 1.3K, 49fans.
- 2.5K, 47fans.
How does the author choose the tag to use?
This part is a little more hands-on. The author directly searched for Chinese authors on Medium who continued to produce articles and were highly relevant to their own writing field. Then read through their articles one by one, find out the tags they use most often, and use Airtable to organize them into a table for analysis:
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](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW-HDORQAAXkOvkO65UKpEYXe9BM3wz70aO0vDU1KDzCTmt_XxGkNFOEGE B5VHAnhxi6WgemiyYuHhKQbURP-G-4cHILKzIJ9CkGxom54FJFsBnBDP1CXPvNZEy1iQYyzkYp9yIj1MdWWP/s1600/1_3Rq3f7hn8ZAC2g80c66_uw.png)
Observation: Most large users still use English labels, but new users are starting to use Chinese
Although the official rankings currently use English tags, the big players with large traffic also mainly use English tags, maybe because they think they can get into the rankings. Therefore, this year, the author began to change the ratio of Chinese and English labels to 3 English and 2 Chinese.
At present, some Chinese tags are still used in the hope of attracting some traffic from new users. We also hope that Medium officials will notice the use of Chinese tags and optimize for Chinese users in advance.
Result: The article backend data shows that the traffic recommended through the Medium service has indeed increased.
What can the author see from the background data of the article?
To make steel again, divide the article’s background traffic source data (Referrers) by the total traffic to see the distribution changes.
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](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3AeenqaT7dqC3WXNsUOcSE9FYIwtKbOR4y5RL7IlGoR3ftHb4MSUXnoKx PMf-mevZPwEdPadyOsgXt1g-rcVc8F3Hqs_yJJu71xGqK4jkbmm1gVH6XqZN0kUc7MeVqf0PmvH-1l8Nk8eN/s1600/1_12J5eGRikcJSbkoaJm2p8g.png)
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](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7rnL5uGlkkEAM9Q3u-vUTvs5ZUcsX7eWJLowhvKLLF2fi6U1Bmk633JuT uRR1KfHDRJY9_gdZbAMuQXQbCFWOQYqlqdl859uIjt-6CGXy6TRIxaunacljaQdtgflT9T7CPRxpI0hfkoyC/s1600/1_VfNzOVbDaL70QY2dlmKgTg.png)
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](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGmyhKt9D2SuqnS7uh6qOVJ3hG4WyMboGDz9vp5PG7M238M7DT_Fn4sAWT E7B6L49gA2LuDFW9fC78j8SYmORT6r5YvpNvXPveciM83ScmIelDMvIS-uy3gHDvcA0OP3tHm3O5Fc2xhBI9/s1600/1_lHs1eRBrZ2uuBmPxZT548A.png)
Here we share the data of 7 articles written by the author, as well as the percentage of traffic sources:
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2018.03
[Two years of working remotely on cases, the digital application work and lifestyle I developed] 1.8K views; 127fans
Tags: #Work #Productivity #work #productivity #freeworker
“54%” Facebook diversion
“24%” Medium platform traffic
“21%” Email and direct link
2018.03 [How to cooperate with supervisor to communicate and submit tasks? 】1.3K views; 49fans
Tags: #Careers#Work#Productivity#Management#workplace
“61%” Facebook diversion
“28%” Medium platform traffic
“10%” Email and direct link
2017.12 [[Morality is to restrain oneself, talk about moral kidnapping traps and common fallacies] (https://medium.com/y-pointer/moral-307ba82b983a)] 3.8K views; 188fans
Tags: #moral, #中文, #viewpoint, #罗记思思
“42%” Facebook diversion
“16%” Email and direct link
“13%” Medium platform traffic
“11%” Natural search traffic (Google, Yahoo)
2017.11【Before sending your resume, five mistakes we think are correct. 】4.8K views; 170fans
Tags: #workplace, #中文, #practice, #Resume
“28%” Medium platform traffic
“26%” Email and direct link
“25%” Facebook diversion
“16%” Natural search traffic (Google, Yahoo)
2017.09 [[Tang Feng is good at focus discussion method, online message response, a model of response skills] (https://medium.com/y-pointer/orid-a40f32fca3d7)] Views 16.3K; 130fans
Tags: #communication #workplace #work #ORID
“56%” Facebook diversion
“20%” Email and direct link
“8%” Natural search traffic (Google, Yahoo)
“7%” other media diversion
“6%” Medium platform traffic
2017.08 [Self-introduction is not about introducing yourself, but how to leave an impression] 13.6K views; 95fans
Tags: #self-introduction, #social, #speak, #Careers
“48%” Natural search traffic (Google, Yahoo)
“25%” Facebook diversion
“11%” Email and direct link
“10%” Medium platform traffic
2017.08 [Sharing the mental journey and experience of freelance remote case workers｜How to manage personal characteristics? 】5K views; 75fans
Tags: #freelance #slash #work #freelanceworker
“31%” Facebook diversion
“30%” Natural search traffic (Google, Yahoo)
“15%” Medium platform traffic
“14%” Email and direct link
Dispelling the myth: Keyword management can be done in the long term. If you use tags well, you will get platform dividends.
A lot of data has been listed before, and the conclusions are summarized as follows:
1. Short-term traffic comes from: “Facebook Diversion”, “Medium Platform Recommendation”
I personally guess that the source of “email, IM, anddirect” includes the Medium Digest newsletter, so the use of tags (it is recommended to look for tags from big authors of the same genre), so the number of claps becomes very important, and will directly affect whether the article will be selected for the newsletter. The author’s test result is that English labels will significantly improve the platform’s bonus effect.
2. Long-term traffic comes from: “natural search based on keyword management” and “other media exposure”
In fact, Medium’s own SEO is very good. At first, I thought there would be no natural traffic, but the result is quite a lot, which is more convenient than WordPress’s complicated SEO settings.
There are three key points in designing keywords on Medium:
- If you can use headlines and subtitles for paragraphs (two sizes T format after selecting the text), don’t use bold. For both H1 and H2 title formats, try to put the keywords you want to be searched for. For quotations or key sentences, remember to use Quotes format, which will make readers realize that important points can be made. We have not yet tested whether it will affect the search speed if a large number of articles are highlighted.
- The headline and subtitle at the beginning of the article (the same are H1 & H2) must be keywords that others will search for. You can use some keyword tools to find keywords commonly used by potential users. In addition, the description of the image is also very important. It has been confirmed that the description of the image will be captured by Google Images.
- Before publishing an article, remember to click ”⋯” next to “Publish”. As for the Customize title/subtitle field, it is used to set the title, subtitle and description. Although Medium will automatically crawl the description, it is usually crawled randomly. Please reset it according to the keywords you want to be searched for.
There are only two media that have long-term cooperation with the author: “Wind Media” and “Key Comment Network”. Usually after an article is reposted to these two platforms, due to the Canonical Links and Backlink features of SEO[Note 3], it doesn’t take long for the article on Medium to easily reach the first page of Google search.
[Note 3] When website A has a link to your article, but there is no link to website A in your article, it is called a “backlink.” The more backlinks a website has, the higher the probability of being taken seriously by search engines.
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One of the characteristics of Medium is that even articles written half a year ago are still being read by people now, unlike Facebook where they just disappear.
The importance of keyword SEO optimization
If you are like the author, you do not take the limelight-grabbing writing route of “Current Issues”, nor are you like Internet Celebrities (KOL, Key Opinion) who have many fans Leader) can easily achieve a large amount of “Facebook diversion”, then it is recommended to find online media submissions and specialize in long-term keyword management and natural traffic routes.
If the keywords are well designed, “natural search traffic” will often exceed “diversion traffic” after a month. Because traffic diversion platforms (such as Facebook and cooperative media platforms) are often time-sensitive; but natural traffic is not and can be operated for a long time.
Because these diversions usually pass over time, no one comes anymore. Facebook is very timely, while other media reprints have a low conversion rate because they are closed immediately after reading.
- Articles with good Facebook diversion effect but poor keyword management. The title, subtitle and image description are not specially designed, and they are not words that people will search for. The natural traffic after long-term operation is still very low. Facebook can be said to have no recommendation effect without backlinks.
- Even if Facebook diversion is not included, if the keyword management is good and there are articles reprinted by other media, it is easy for the natural traffic to explode in the long run.
Although this also reminds the author that he should find some media that are more in line with his own style for long-term cooperation. I wonder if any colleagues in the media are interested in talking about it? (laughing)
Article trends in 2018
Towards the end of the article, the author shares this year’s writing direction, which is roughly divided into three categories: “Work Productivity”, “Personal Views” and “Weekly Diary” each list two articles for reference.
Work productivity: workplace survival rules, personal work skills, productivity development
Personal point of view: observe from life, summarize methods, and provide different perspectives
- Morality is to restrain oneself, talk about moral kidnapping traps and common fallacies
- How to chat with parents and reassure them? How to respond to concerns and deflect and avoid problems?
Weekly Notes: Make your writing more life-like and your words more emotional.
*13 weeks: Our optimism may be because we are all vulnerable children
Off topic: Make good use of the Private Notes function to interact with the author
In fact, the author has always felt that Medium’s responses (Responses) function is flawed. Responses to articles will be counted in Stories, and often Chinese characters cannot be entered halfway through typing. Although the function of being able to respond to selected sentences in the article feels good, there is actually a small function of Private Notes that I recommend you to use:
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](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYBRn3F5Tn6OKxIc2qv0vDhHzOmgOswSDQQrs9G8Kbs68ltRZ_G_V5c 4yBfzV33g_QjUG8-w6G1zolvtJZNdFJkjIb3iovBMdMdGMSV3DcnTLSLzt6_O5ddtK5VQXRlMPm5RInWH5uvd4V/s1600/1_V9fkkLEDLNBWbxmTtzhzHg.png)
Private Notes: After selecting a piece of text, the lock dialogue icon on the far right can leave a piece of text. If you don’t want others to see your response, only you and the author can see it.
In addition, it may be because the author often writes wrong words, so many friends will point out through private messages where there are typos, or the words do not read smoothly. Welcome to use this method next time, which will directly let the author understand where the error occurred. I’m so sorry! 😅
Finally, why didn’t the author join the Medium paywall plan?
Recently, some readers and friends have come to inquire about this matter and also asked me about my views on content payment.
But basically the author has not joined or used the paywall service, so it is difficult to explain my experience. But I also subscribe to some content services and online courses, so I definitely support the idea of “paying for content.” However, the author chose not to join the paywall for the same reasons as Evonne Tsai’s article “[Why I don’t participate in Medium’s paywall writing program](https://medium.com/@evonneyifangtsai/%E7%82%BA%E4%BB%80%E9%BA%BC%E6%88%91%E4%B8% 8D%E5%8F%83%E8%88%87medium%E4%BB%98%E8%B2%BB%E7%89%86%E5%AF%AB%E4%BD%9C%E8%A8%88%E7%95%AB-8c2bb8cb1ee9)” has a similar view:
- The purpose of writing is to stimulate thinking and exert influence
- If you really want to charge for writing, you can’t rely on locking up the article now. You can rely on other methods.
Evonne wrote another article “[How to support writers with small payments on the street](https://medium.com/@evonneyifangtsai/%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E7%94%A8%E8%A1%97%E5%8F %A3%E6%94%AF%E4%BB%98%E5%B0%8F%E9%A1%8D%E6%94%AF%E6%8C%81%E4%BD%9C%E5%AE%B6-4462325afd59)”, so the author also adopted his favorite street payment.
If you use a computer to read and have a mobile phone, you can scan and tip ❤️.
If you are reading on a mobile phone, please select “Save the picture → Open the Jiekou Payment APP → Scan the barcode in the upper left corner → Click the image in the upper right corner → Select the QR code you just saved” and you can reward! Otherwise, Zhipay’s rewards are really complicated for me.
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Hou Zhixun (Raymond) street payment collection barcode
Thank you to the more than 2,000 readers and you who are reading now. The author will continue to work hard and produce content that will inspire and gain everyone. Let’s build a richer Chinese writing circle together!
☛ Want to learn to subscript? Come and sign up for the “Ouchi Master” lecture in May: [Write a good bid and sell without selling] (https://www.accupass.com/event/1804041321359643076770).
★ Vista Reading Club April Special: “[The Most Productive Year] (https://www.accupass.com/event/1803300504501540766404)”.
★ To improve your content power, please don’t miss the online course “[Content Power: The Super Power of Building Brands] (https://hahow.in/cr/content-power)”.
★ Photo Credit: Hou Zhixun
Further reading
- How does a designer write a popular article in only three months? (Part 2)
- How to make the headlines on LINE Today? The designer uses personal experience to teach you the six key points you must master to write popular articles
- How does a designer write a popular article in only three months? (Part 1)
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