Ask the EditorsJonathan Greene, editor of Assemblage, joins us to talk about marketing and SEO
Artwork by Jessica Jungton, inspired by Jessica Lewis
We’ve all read tips on SEO and getting your writing in-front of eyeballs — keywords often come up. But how important are they really? How many should you try to include, if any, and where? This week, Jonathan Greene, editor of Assemblage joins The Writing Cooperative team to share their experiences with keywords.
Question: How Important are Keywords?Jonathan Greene, editor of Assemblage:
It’s hard to say how important keywords are in terms of the overall algorithmic machinations of Medium and other online publishing websites because we don’t know exactly how they are weighted. But from an editor’s point of view I think they are important to the longevity and niche of the piece. I think the most important thing to remember about keywords is that they should be accurate, but not duplicitous. For example, there is no reason to tag a piece Poetry, Poetry on Medium, Poem, Poet, Poets. You get no reach with that. What’s the poem about? Is it a life lesson? Is it about self? Why use five tags that are all the same? In contrast, you should be using a wide spectrum of tags to get maximum reach, but only as they are appropriate to the content. I would also note that it doesn’t help you to use tags with little following. Medium tells you how much reach each tag has so if you have the choice between Life Lessons and Lessons of Life, you would choose Life Lessons because that is the tag used the most and will give the story or poem the most reach.
So, are keywords important? Yes and no. No, in that you should be spending too much time fretting over them when you could be writing, but yes, in that it’s important for the longevity and cycle of your piece to be properly tagged. And if we ever knew how curation really worked, we could also assume that the tags are the funnel to the curation team.
Justin Cox, editor of The Writing Cooperative:
Jonathan provides a great explanation above. I’ll add that when it comes to client work, keywords are very important to implement based on their requests. Though, we’re not talking about client work here.
When it comes to our publication, keywords are important insofar as they’re on topic with the content. Stories in The Writing Cooperative average between 15 and 20 million Google search results per month. So while content on topic is important, cramming somewhat related or off-topic keywords into a story because they may rank higher isn’t worth the time or effort.
I want to read a good story that provides quality advice, SEO keywords or not.
Sand Farnia, editor of The Writing Cooperative:
If we were to do a cost benefit analysis, keywords should always be applied. It takes a minute to add them to the article, and they become searchable forever. But you have to use all 5 because it is the combination of search words that will make your work easier to find.
For example, let’s say your article is “How to Grow a Medium Publication”. If you just use 1 keyword (Publication) your article likely won’t show up in any searches. But if your keywords are Grow, Medium, Publication, Followers, and List, someone searching for Grow a Medium Publication is much more likely to see your article. Or someone searching for Grow Publication Followers. Or someone searching for List of ways to build a Medium Publication. It’s about maximizing reach.
Jessica Jungton, editor of The Writing Cooperative:
To be honest, I am not very aware of keywords when writing for myself, especially when I am writing fiction to publish online. When I write for marketing jobs, I keep keywords in mind and write them organically throughout the piece.
As an editor, I am more concerned about the story and quality of writing than the keywords. If you can work them in in a way that reads naturally and does not distract from the content, then by all means use them generously. If a writer needs to compromise on one, I would suggest fewer keywords than an awkwardly worded sentence. Each published piece sells your reader on the next one — you want the reading experiencing to be enjoyable and draw them in enough to get that follow. Readers can tell if you are writing for a search engine instead of a human. Write for humans.
Ask The Editors is an ongoing series curated by Jessica Jungton.
Editors Explain: How Important are Keywords? was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Read more: writingcooperative.com