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| Image by TEREX12 from Pixabay |
I joined Medium at the end of February 2022 and have been writing there since then. Initially, I didn't do much more than share some Atheist Revolution posts with a new audience. I learned that there is no SEO benefit to doing this (all external links are nofollow); however, it has resulted in getting some posts in front of people who wouldn't have seen them here. And since that was the point, I can't say I'm disappointed.
I soon began writing some off-topic stuff there too since there seems to be a lot of flexibility around niches. Their algorithm does a decent job of putting content in front of people who are likely to have some interest in it. Writers tag their posts, and we can follow tags we are interested in. For example, I started following "religious trauma" and a few others.
After a while, I decided to write some new on-topic stuff just for Medium instead of posting it here first. I wasn't sure I wanted to do that, but I figured I would need to if I wanted to test Medium as an eventual replacement for this blog.
Here are a few recent "Medium exclusives" for those who are interested:
- The Pro-Life Label Is a Smokescreen and We Can Reject It
- Tolerating Disinformation is Harmful to Democratic Societies
- Bigotry and Social Disapproval Reveal Inequities in Religious Freedom
As for the possibility of shutting down Atheist Revolution and moving to Medium, I haven't made any decisions yet. This is something I'm considering, but I don't plan to decide anytime soon. I need more time with Medium. While I have concluded that it is lousy at driving traffic to an external blog, I need to test out some other things before figuring out whether I want to write there instead of here or keep doing both.
I'd also like to see whether Google has any desire to fix the mess they've created with Blogger. I won't bore you with the details except to say that Google has been de-indexing Atheist Revolution due to problems they've caused and over which I have little control. It does not appear that they designed Blogger to work with their own Search Console, and I've been fighting with this for months now without a resolution. This has been frustrating and is making it more tempting to jump ship.
Between the annual summer blogging slump and Google's de-indexing, I expect I will be writing at Medium more than at Atheist Revolution for the next couple of months. That should give me the chance to complete a more thorough evaluation of Medium than I've had time to do yet.
