How Publishing Under a Custom Domain on Medium Impacted My Views
In August of 2022, I was achieving a satisfactory level of views on my Medium page, averaging approximately 4500 views per month, which is not bad at all.
However, in September of that year, I made the decision to purchase a personal domain, raphaeldelio.com, and forward my Medium page to it.
What I failed to consider at the time was the impact this would have on my search optimization. A significant proportion of my views came from Google, and as a result, my views began to drop immediately.
I knew search optimization was great under the Medium domain, as you can see from this message I sent to one of my friends in August, bragging about my recently published story being shown as the third result just a couple of minutes after.
After four months, I looked for my story again on Google to find out it was no longer appearing on the first page. It clicked. My custom domain was the drawback. From 4500 monthly views, I found myself receiving around 2000 four months later. My views had dropped by more than half.
I was also able to see that my views dropped as soon as I forwarded my domain on September 17th. I bought my new domain on the 17th of September, and my views suddenly started dropping on the 25th of September.
The main reason I like using Medium is because my content is easily findable. I don’t have to worry about SEO or anything related to blogging. I can focus on writing my stories. But by forwarding my domain, I messed with the thing I like the most about Medium.
What to do instead?
I turned off custom domain forwarding on Medium and, instead, configured my personal domain to redirect to my Medium profile. That way, my stories were still on Medium’s domain, but anyone who went to my personal domain was redirected to my Medium page.
You can turn it off on Medium at: https://medium.com/me/settings/custom-domain
And the company where you’re hosting your domain can help you with redirecting it if you have no clue how to do it.
It was a lesson learned. Running a custom domain has pros and cons, and weighing them against your specific requirements is important. If you’re considering doing the same, I recommend reading The Pros and Cons of Publishing Under a Custom Domain on Medium by N2RAC for a comprehensive analysis.
I hope you have enjoyed this story. See you next time!
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