Write articles and create your own website to publish them
Why start blogging and How to use a central publishing website to get SEO on your own blog
Hey,
I have wanted to talk about the 2nd story in this newsletter for quite a few months now but I didn’t do it because (as you would see) it felt like ranting. But then this past week, I found the perfect 1st and 3rd stories to wrap my complaints in!
These stories are about writing.
Writing articles has become a big part of my life in the past couple of years. If you write or have ever thought about writing something yourself (I think you have!), I feel that this is really important for you to know.
Cool stuff I found last week:
First: Why write articles?
(Yes, You Should Write That Blog Post by Ali Spittel)This is a talk in which Ali Spittel describes her journey from 0 to a million in a year and a half of blogging.
I write for 3 people - my past self, my present self and my future self.
She goes on to explain how that can help you:
Write the post that would have helped the past you. [Write that post] For the present you to learn new things. And to establish you as an expert, for future you’s career.
I came across her when I went deep on this post (I’m going to talk about later in this newsletter).
Why you should dive deeper:
* “I wrote about Augmented Reality this year and people think that I’m an expert. I’m not. I just wrote a blog post about it. And in general, people think that I’m way more confident than I actually am.” Well, isn't that a great hack!?
* Alexey Guzey (yes, him again! :3) has a really convincing article if you want to be nudged further into writing something yourself
Beware of the publishing platforms - both for-profits (like Medium) and non-profits (like FreeCodeCamp)
WARNING: This part might come off as quite cynical where I show a lack of faith in publishing platforms of all kinds. I don’t like this negativity either but it’s important. (Oh and don’t worry; I’ll take a positive note again in the next part! :) )
Beware of the for-profits like Medium —
I think Medium has the best intentions of everyone when it aims to replace the advertising engine from quality writing - “The internet should reward quality thinking, not clickbait.”
If you are a writer and this attractive goal isn't enough for, you it also an amazing distribution technology to lure you in. Its effective recommendation system will make your articles reach out to a constant stream of new audiences.
But recently, it decided to aggressively push publications and authors to join its Medium Partner Program. It is now forcing them to put their stories behind their paywall if they wanted Medium's distribution. Joining this program also makes you eligible to earn money but it really isn't right for people who write to keep their articles free.
So, obviously, this push has been criticised a lot. Two of its largest publications - FreeCodeCamp and Hacker Noon - even broke away from Medium a few months ago for the same reasons.
Beware of the non-profits like FreeCodeCamp —
FreeCodeCamp started it's own blogging platform on its website when it broke away from Medium. In doing so, it played a really neat trick with its custom URLs so that every link to a story on their Medium publication now directed people to their own website.
This move annoyed me a lot but I wasn’t sure if my anger was at the right place.
Isn’t FreeCodeCamp a victim of capitalism here??
But then last week I came across this popular article on DEV.to (I discovered this platform last week too) - “I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium”.
“I understand the reason for moving off Medium and I think everything you're doing in that regard is noble, but to ingest everyone's data and republish content without transparency or consent is a real problem.”
Yes, non-profits can piss people off!
FreeCodeCamp has been able to largely get away with this ugly move because they are non-profits. They are literally working for the people. But they also misused the trust of thousands of creators who wrote on their platform.
Why you should dive deeper:
* Ali Spittel, whom I mentioned in the previous story, was also caught in this crossfire. Her response to this article is really eye-opening.
Canonical URL
You: Yes, all of this is makes sense but I don’t want to lose out on the opportunity of reaching a wider audience through these platforms. Also, I don’t think that articles on my personal blog will ever get popular.
This is exactly why I didn’t start my own blogging website till now.
Imagine if there was something that would let you have the benefits of a wide audience on your completely new blogging website.
Yep, that something is a CANONICAL URL!
And this is how it works:
You write your articles on the platform as usual but before publishing you set the canonical link to your the copy of the article on your own blog. This would tell the search engines that your blog is the original source of the article. So, if the article goes viral on the platform, your blog reaps the rewards and gets displayed in the top results of Google search.I came across Canonical URLs from the DEV.to article that I linked above - “I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium”.
Why you should dive deeper:
* Canonical URLs are not just useful, they are a necessity —
See what FreeCodeCamp did when they moved everyone’s data without their consent:
As part of this migration, FreeCodeCamp has removed canonical URLs from submitted posts - your original post is now competing with freecodecamp.org, and Google (and other search engines) is going to do a duplicate content check. Considering that FCC is in the top 2000 sites in the world according to Alexa, there’s a strong chance your site will be penalized. This is a big deal for authors.
* Here’s what Medium says about canonical URLs.
FINALLY, A CAUTIONARY TALE:
I mentioned how I was angry at the move that FreeCodeCamp played. It was because some of my first articles were published on their Medium publication.
So when I received an email from its founder that just plainly informed me of their decision to move all my articles away from Medium, I didn’t want it. I understood the implications it would have on my popularity on Medium. I felt cheated.
A few weeks later, I emailed him that I wished not to be a part of their new initiative and asked him to remove my articles from their website. This is how it went:
And that is how I lost all my articles’ SEO on Google. :(
That’s it from me this week!
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