Keep Your Medium SEO and Readers When You Move

What you can keep when you leave Medium depends on your address. If your stories are on your own domain, move the domain to WordPress and match the addresses, and every old link keeps working. If they're on medium.com, you can't redirect them. Instead, keep the stories live and add a canonical link on each one that points to its WordPress copy.

Your followers stay on Medium either way, but you can still reach many of your readers. We checked the Medium, WordPress and Google details below on 13 November 2026.

Which Medium address do you have?

Medium supports three kinds of profile address, and publications have their own. Open one of your stories and look at the address bar.

Every story address ends with the title and a short ID. On the custom-domain stories we checked, that slug came straight after the domain, with no folder in between.

If you have your own domain: move it and keep every address

A custom domain on Medium is a domain you own, pointed at Medium with two A records. Medium only lets members with an active membership set one up. When you point those records at your WordPress host instead, the domain shows your WordPress site. If WordPress uses the same story addresses, nothing needs redirecting. Google calls this a site move without URL changes.

1. Save your old addresses. Before you touch the domain, list every story address. Each published story in your Medium archive ends with a canonical link to it, and your profile page lists them too.
2. Set WordPress permalinks. Go to Settings → Permalinks and choose Post name, or the custom structure /%postname%/. %postname% is the post's slug.
3. Import the stories with their original slugs. The slug is the whole last part of the address, ID included: my-story-a1b2c3d4e5f6, not my-story. Blog Porter takes it from each story's Medium link in the archive. If you copy stories by hand, paste each slug into WordPress yourself. Either way, compare a sample with the addresses you saved, and fix any that differ.
4. Recreate your other pages with the same slugs, such as an About page.
5. Point the domain at WordPress. At your domain provider, replace Medium's A records with your WordPress host's records.
6. Test old addresses. Open a sample of the addresses you saved. Each should show the right story. If an address changed, add a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one, for example with the free Redirection plugin.

WordPress adds a final slash, so /my-story-a1b2c3d4e5f6 becomes /my-story-a1b2c3d4e5f6/. WordPress answers the address without the slash with a 301 redirect to the one with it, so old links still land on the story.

One thing we couldn't confirm. Medium says that once a custom domain is set up, your old Medium addresses redirect to it. We found nothing in Medium's help center about what happens to those medium.com links after the domain leaves Medium. Test a few old medium.com links after the switch, and don't count on them.

If your stories are on medium.com: use canonical links

We found no Medium setting that redirects a story to another website. Medium doesn't let you add redirects or code to its pages. Its help center says there's no way to add any kind of code to your page. What you can change is each story's canonical link.

A canonical link tells search engines which copy of a page is the original. Medium says search engines use canonical links to prioritize the source of content when there are several copies. Google calls a canonical link a strong signal, not a command, so this makes your WordPress copy the likely winner in search rather than a sure one.

Set the canonical link on each story

Only the story's author can do this, and only on the web:

1. Open the story, click the three-dot button and choose Edit story.
2. In edit mode, click the three-dot button again and choose More settings.
3. Under Advanced Settings, select This story was originally published elsewhere.
4. Enter the story's new WordPress address and click Save canonical link.
5. Click Publish to save the change.

To check it, view the story's page source and search for canonical. You do this one story at a time. For a large archive, set the links on your most-read stories first. Your Medium stats show which ones they are.

Keep the Medium stories live

Don't delete them. Medium says deleting a story is permanent, and there's no redirect afterwards, so every link to it breaks. Medium also says there's no way to delete all your stories at once without deleting your account.

Keeping a copy on your own site doesn't break Medium's rules. Its No Duplicate Content rule covers copies on Medium only, and says you can still have your content on your personal blog.

Add a short line at the top of your most-read stories that links to the WordPress version. Readers arriving from search or old links then have a reason to follow you.

Unlisting is not a redirect. An unlisted story disappears from your profile, Medium search and topic pages, but anyone with the link can still read it. Unlisting a member-only story also takes it out of the paywall.

Publications

A story in a publication belongs to its author. Only the author can set its canonical link, so each writer has to do their own stories. Medium says that if the account that owns a publication is deleted, the publication is taken offline. Keep the owner account open.

Your followers and subscribers

Your audience on Medium is in two groups, and Medium counts them separately:

• Followers follow you on Medium. They don't come with you, and there's no export.
• Email subscribers get your stories by email. You can export the addresses you imported and those of readers who subscribed before April 2025. Medium says that if all your subscribers joined after April 2025, the export is empty.

What you can still do:

1. Publish a "we've moved" story on Medium, with a link to your WordPress site and its email sign-up.
2. Email it to your subscribers. Open the story, click the three-dot button and choose Email to subscribers. Medium lets you send each story to your subscribers once, and the email shows a preview that links back to Medium.
3. Export what you can. On the web, download your subscriber list from Stats → Audience. You can also download a CSV of your audience stats. Only email people who agreed to hear from you.
4. Update your profile bio with your new address, so readers who find your Medium profile can follow the link.

If you keep writing on Medium

Publish on WordPress first, then bring the story to Medium with Import a story on your Stories page. Medium says an imported story gets a canonical link to the original automatically, and keeps its original date. Your WordPress copy stays the original in search, and your Medium followers still see new work.

After launch

1. In WordPress, go to Settings → Reading and make sure Discourage search engines from indexing this site is unticked. While it's ticked, WordPress turns off its sitemap.
2. In Google Search Console, submit your sitemap. WordPress has one at /wp-sitemap.xml, unless an SEO plugin replaces it.
3. Update links between your own stories so they point to WordPress, not Medium.
4. Watch Search Console for a few weeks for pages Google can't find. How to migrate from Medium to WordPress covers every route and the full order.

Move the stories with Blog Porter

Blog Porter imports your Medium stories into WordPress from the archive Medium emails you. It brings titles, content, publish dates, tags and each story's original slug, and downloads available images into your Media Library. With the permalink settings above, stories from a custom domain can keep their addresses.

It costs $0.20 per story, paid once, and the free analysis shows the exact price before you pay. Blog Porter doesn't create redirects, set canonical links on Medium, or move followers and subscribers. Those steps stay with you.

Install the Blog Porter plugin to run the free analysis, or read more about moving from Medium to WordPress.