Own WordPress website or create one on Medium for best indexing and ranking?

I have struggled to get our website rank well in Google for the last 4 - 5 years. Have tried almost anything from links from some of the most reputable members on BHW to the scams. Have done Youtube, Social media and so forth. Nothing made any big impact since Google 3 years ago made an update.

Now I consider to make a new website which could be on front of the old one, but would you think a own hosted WordPress website will be more difficult to rank as a Medium.com website ?

both platforms can index and rank. If you couldn't do it after 4 years there's something awfully wrong with your website... or you're in a brutal niche (forex, insurance, etc). But even so, I'm talking about rankings, indexing should happen much faster and easier, especially if you've "tried almost anything"...

Anyway, it's up to you whether you use Medium, or build your own website, but I would go for option #2 because it's simply better to have control over the stuff that you own. You never know when Medium goes out of business or decide to delete your website and leave you empty handed...

As for indexing and ranking, well... that's why there are indexing services and why keyword research and link building are so important

WordPress allows greater control over SEO and analytics, while Medium has simpler built-in tools

Thank you very much, that was the right point, I won't own my own content if I go with medium. Will install some wordpress.

The niche is small but the website is complex in regards to keyword research, there are hundred of keywords that would match, the website has almost only user generated content so keyword optimizing isn't really an option.

What I read during all the years but never put into action, I should have 5 - 10 wordpress sites, each optimized for one of the biggest keywords and link from these sites to the money site. But it is a lot of work and the costs would be roughly 5 - 10K for each website with linkbuilding and seo text writing. That's a lot of money.

kunter said:

The niche is small but the website is complex in regards to keyword research, there are hundred of keywords that would match, the website has almost only user generated content so keyword optimizing isn't really an option.

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unless you're big like Reddit or LinkedIn I don't think a UGC site will cut it due to the lack of content first and foremost, but also due to lack of optimized content as well...

And what do you mean by "niche is small"? Small as in there's very little traffic in it, or what exactly do you mean by small?

Also, how many results does google show when you type site:mywebsite.com into google (obviously replace "mywebsite.com" with your actual website). Because if only 4 results show up it's usually an indication of a penalty and this explains why you're not ranking...

kunter said:

What I read during all the years but never put into action, I should have 5 - 10 wordpress sites, each optimized for one of the biggest keywords and link from these sites to the money site. But it is a lot of work and the costs would be roughly 5 - 10K for each website with linkbuilding and seo text writing. That's a lot of money.

Click to expand...

what you're talking about is PBN (Private Blog Network) and, while PBNs work wonders, the problem - like you said - is that it costs a lot of money and dedication to create and keep them safe, because one of the priorities for google's spam-fighting department is to detect and penalize PBNs. So you're going to need to be very careful with your PBN.

Anyway, if you want to go this route I can link you with a guide to setting up PBNs properly that's been shared on the forum, but again, setting up and maintaining a PBN is very cost and time intensive and it's only worth the trouble for big competitive niches. So I don't recommend that you go this route, but if you absolutely must, let me know and I'll link the guide...