I have written and published an article each week in the past four weeks. Adding this article makes it an article each week for five weeks straight.
I publish each article on free blogging platforms such as Medium, DevTo, and Hashnode. As a result, my articles have been performing well on DevTo and Medium.
DevTo Stats
Medium Stats
In this article, here is what you will learn:
- Why you should publish your articles on different blogging platforms.
- Tools to use to create your articles.
- Using tags and canonical links
- How to add tags and canonical links to articles on Medium.
- How to add tags and canonical links to articles on DevTo.
- How to add tags and canonical links to articles on Hashnode.
Why you should publish your articles on different blogging platforms.
You can reach a wider audience when you publish your articles on different blogging platforms.
Each blogging platform has its community, and by publishing on multiple blogging platforms, you can tap into each of these communities and potentially attract new readers.
According to Similarweb, Medium had a traffic of 147.3 million visitors in January 2023.
DevTo had a traffic of 14.1 million visitors in January 2023.
Hashnode had a traffic of 1.2 million visitors in January 2023.
Tools to use to create your articles
I use either Google Docs or Notion to create my articles. For Google Docs, I use it to create client technical articles, while I use Notion to create my articles like the one you are reading right now.
Google Docs is an online word processor for creating and collaborating on online documents. With Google Docs, you can create and edit text documents right in your web browser.
Notion is a productivity tool that allows you to organize and manage tasks, projects, and information in one place. Notion combines the features of a note-taking app, a project management tool, and a database.
What are tags and canonical links?
Before publishing your article on Medium, DevTo, and Hashnode, they let you add up to 5 tags. The tags ensure your article reaches the audience interested in your writing.
The tags help blogging platforms to group your article into relevant topics and categories. If more readers are interested in the topics your article is grouped in, the more readers your article will get.
A canonical link prevents search engines like Google from flagging your article’s content duplicate when it is published on more than one blogging platform.
The URL of the original published article is used as a canonical link to help search engines know where the article was initially published.
Adding tags and canonical links to articles on Medium
Once your article is ready to publish, click the three dots between publish button and the notification button. Then Select the “More Settings” option.
Scroll down to the “Reader Interests” section and type topics related to your article. For example, if you want your article to reach readers interested in JavaScript, start typing JavaScript. Then select JavaScript from the suggestions that appear.
After that, click the “Save” button to save the topics or tags.
To add a canonical link, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Advanced Settings.”
Select the “This story was originally published elsewhere” checkbox. Next, add the URL of the original published article and click the “Save canonical link” button.
Adding tags and canonical links to articles on DevTo
To add tags to your article, start typing the topics you want to target and select them if they appear on the suggestions.
DevTo allows you to add up to four comma-separated tags per article.
To add a canonical link to your article, click the “Post Options” button.
Add the URL of the original published article and click the “Done” button.
How to add tags and canonical links to articles on Hashnode.
To add tags to your article, click the “Publish” button and scroll down to the “SELECT TAGS” section. Then, start typing to search for the tags you want to target.
To add a canonical link to your article, scroll down to the “ARE YOU REPUBLISHING?” section and click “Add original URL.”
Then add the URL of the original published article.
Conclusion
In conclusion, cross-posting your articles on multiple blogging platforms is a great way to reach a wider audience and attract new readers.
By using free platforms such as Medium, DevTo, and Hashnode, you can tap into each of their communities and increase the visibility of your work.
Additionally, using tools like Google Docs and Notion can help streamline the process of creating and editing your content.
To maximize your article's exposure, you can add tags to help group your article into relevant topics and categories.
And to avoid search engines flagging your content as duplicate, you can use canonical links.
Follow me on Twitter @The_GreatBonnie for daily tips on Technical Writing.
Top comments (23)
Really informative thanks for sharing.
You are welcome, Andrew.
Сongratulations 🥳! Your article hit the top posts for the week - dev.to/fruntend/top-10-posts-for-f...
Keep it up 👍
Nice one boss, I'm looking forward to getting my first gig with your steps.
Awesome.
All the best.
Thanks for sharing this:Never knew about canonical links
They are quite helpful.
Thanks for the insight into this. I'm new to this whole process so it's exciting to see the breadth at which you can reach people and make community. Great article!
Thanks for sharing this post. I found it really helpful.
Happy to hear that, Victoria.
Awesome article! Glad that you included screenshots as well.
Happy to hear that, Suman.
that's why I spent 5-6 month to made a chrome extension (OnePubli.sh) that cross-publishing from Notion to DEV, Hashnode, Medium and Ghost.
I would say target platforms are not too much yet due to the API limitations. Hopefully, in future, platforms like beehiiv or substack will allow to create a post via API.
Great post man. It has helped understand the concept of canonical links
Hi! Thank you for this article, I learned something and I will apply it to my writing routine! Just a little comment, as a tech enthousiast I was looking for something for "automated" and I was expecting that by reading your article's title, but it is just me. However, do you have any idea or any suggestion on how to try to automate this work to avoid duplicate artciles manualy between several platforms ?