How cleanly you keep SEO leaving Medium depends entirely on one thing: whether your posts were published on your own custom domain through Medium, or on a medium.com address. This distinction decides everything, so settle it first. If you used a custom domain, you control that domain, so you can set a 301 from every old post URL to its new home, and the move behaves like any normal migration that preserves rankings. If your posts lived on medium.com, the honest answer is harder: you do not control medium.com, so you cannot put 301 redirects on those URLs, which means the ranking signals tied to the medium.com addresses cannot be fully redirected to your site. In that case you republish each post on your own site, decide carefully how to handle the canonical, and treat it as a gradual handover where your own site earns its standing over time. Either way, you first capture all your post content, images, and metadata from the published pages. WPBuildAI scans your published Medium posts and returns the content, images, and URL list as files, so you can rebuild on your own site with nothing lost.
Owning the domain matters more now that citation is a channel of its own: Seer Interactive found pages cited in an AI Overview earning roughly 2.1 percent click-through against 0.9 percent for uncited pages, and a citation pointing at someone else’s platform builds their authority rather than yours.
First, find out where your posts actually live
Before any SEO planning, answer the ownership question, because the rest follows from it. Some writers connect a custom domain to Medium, so their posts appear at yourdomain.com/post, even though Medium powers the publishing. Others publish directly on medium.com, so their posts live at medium.com/at-your-name/post or at a Medium publication address. The difference is who controls the domain the URLs sit on. With a custom domain, you do; with medium.com, Medium does. Since redirects can only be placed by whoever controls the domain, this single fact determines whether you can transfer your rankings with 301s or whether you have to rebuild your standing on your own site. Check your actual post URLs before planning anything else.
The good case: a custom domain
If your posts were on your own custom domain, leaving Medium is close to a standard migration. You move the domain to your new platform, capture and rebuild your posts there, and set a 301 from each old post URL to its new address on the same domain, exactly as the site move guide and redirects guide describe. Because you control the domain, the ranking signals follow the redirects to the new pages. The work is the familiar one: capture content, images, and metadata, rebuild on the new platform, map every URL, and redirect. In this case the answer to keeping SEO is genuinely yes, with the same discipline as migrating without losing SEO on any platform.
The harder case: posts on medium.com
If your posts lived on medium.com, be realistic about what you can and cannot do. You cannot place a 301 on a medium.com URL, because you do not own that domain, so the authority those specific URLs earned cannot be redirected to your site the way a normal migration would. This is not a failure of method; it is a limit of not owning the address. What you can do is republish each post on your own site and begin building your site’s own standing for that content. Over time, as your own URLs are indexed and earn signals, your site becomes the home for the content, but it is a handover, not an instant transfer. Accepting this upfront prevents the disappointment of expecting medium.com’s rankings to move with you.
Handling the canonical when you republish
When you republish a medium.com post on your own site, the canonical decision matters, because you do not want your version and the Medium version competing as duplicates. As the guidance on consolidating duplicate URLs explains, the canonical names the preferred version. If your goal is for your own site to rank, the republished post should be canonical to itself, and the Medium copy should ideally point its canonical at your version or be taken down, so there is one clear home. Leaving two identical posts live, each claiming to be original, splits signals and helps neither. Decide which version is the canonical home, make the tags say so, and remove or de duplicate the other so your site can take ownership of the content cleanly.
Capture your content first, either way
Whichever case you are in, the first practical step is the same: capture everything from your published Medium posts before you change anything. Medium’s own export gives you some of this, but the reliable, complete source is the published pages themselves, which contain the full text, the images, and the titles. This is the same capture approach as exporting a site with no export button, applied to Medium. Capture the post content as text, download the images so they are hosted on your own site rather than left on Medium, and record the titles and descriptions. Build a list of your post URLs too, which you need either to redirect (custom domain) or to track the handover (medium.com). With everything captured, you can rebuild confidently.
Steps to leave Medium
- Check your post URLs: custom domain, or medium.com.
- Capture all posts as content, images, and metadata from the live pages.
- Rebuild the posts on your own site with clean URLs.
- If custom domain: 301 every old post URL to its new address.
- If medium.com: make your version canonical and de duplicate the Medium copy.
- Prioritize your best posts, since most traffic concentrates on a few.
Worked example: a writer leaves medium.com
Imagine a writer whose posts live on medium.com and who wants them on an owned site. They first confirm the URLs are medium.com addresses, so 301s are not possible. They capture all their posts from the published pages, downloading images and recording titles, and rebuild them on their new site with clean URLs. Because traffic concentrates on a minority of posts, as the Ahrefs study shows, they prioritize their handful of most read pieces. They make each republished post canonical to their own site and then either update the Medium canonical to point at their version or unpublish the Medium copies, so the two do not compete. Their own URLs are new, so they earn ranking gradually rather than inheriting it, but within months the owned versions become the home for the content. The handover worked because they planned for it honestly, not because medium.com’s authority transferred.
Limitation: you cannot redirect a domain you do not own
It is essential to be clear about the boundary, because it is the whole story for medium.com users. No technique lets you place a 301 on a domain you do not control, so the authority attached to medium.com URLs cannot be fully transferred to your site; you rebuild it. This is not specific to any tool; it is how the web works. The practical consequence is patience: expect a gradual handover rather than a clean transfer, and protect what you can by capturing all your content and establishing a single canonical home. For custom domain users none of this applies, and the move is a normal migration, which is why checking your URL ownership first is the most important step of all, much like understanding the risks of any CMS migration before you start.
Common mistakes
- Assuming medium.com rankings can be 301 redirected to your site.
- Not checking whether posts are on a custom domain or medium.com first.
- Leaving images hosted on Medium, so they break later.
- Leaving duplicate copies live on both Medium and your site with no canonical.
- Expecting an instant transfer instead of a gradual handover on medium.com.
Key points
Migrating from Medium without losing SEO depends on where your posts lived. On your own custom domain, you control the URLs, so 301 every post to its new home and the move preserves rankings like any migration. On medium.com, you cannot redirect Medium’s domain, so you republish on your own site, set a single clear canonical home, de duplicate the Medium copy, and accept a gradual handover as your site earns its own standing. Either way, capture all your content, images, and metadata from the published posts first, and prioritize your most read pieces. The deciding factor is domain ownership, so confirm your post URLs before planning, and remember you can never redirect a domain you do not own. WPBuildAI scans your published Medium posts and returns the content, images, and URL list as files, so you can rebuild on your own site with nothing lost. Send your web address for a free analysis.
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