Is a Medium.com Guest Post Actually Good for SEO? (The Nofollow Reality Check)

Guest posting remains one of the most reliable ways to build real authority online — it puts your brand in front of an audience that already trusts the site hosting you, it earns you a link back, and done well, it compounds over time as more people discover and cite your work. That’s exactly why Medium.com shows up on almost every “high authority sites to guest post on” list. It has real domain trust, an engaged built-in readership, and a publishing experience that makes it easy to get in front of new people fast.

Here’s the part worth understanding before you publish there, though — not because it makes Medium a bad choice, but because knowing exactly what kind of value you’re getting lets you use it correctly, and pair it with the right kind of placement for the results you actually want.

What a Medium.com Genuinely Delivers

Before getting into the technical nuance, it’s worth being clear about what Medium is genuinely good for, because these benefits are real:

• Fast exposure to an engaged, built-in audience. Medium’s recommendation engine can put a well-written post in front of readers who’d never have found your site otherwise.
• Brand trust by association. Being published on a platform readers already respect lends your content credibility it wouldn’t have sitting only on your own blog.
• Referral traffic that converts. Readers who click through from a Medium post arrive with context and interest — often higher-intent traffic than a cold link elsewhere.
• A foothold for secondary mentions. A strong Medium post gets cited, shared, and linked to from other sites, and those secondary links frequently carry full SEO value even when the original Medium link doesn’t.

All of that is a genuine reason Medium deserves its spot on any credible guest posting shortlist.

The One Technical Nuance Worth Knowing: How Medium Handles Links

Here’s the detail that helps you plan smarter: Medium automatically applies a nofollow attribute to every external link in every post, platform-wide. Since 2020, that’s specifically the combined attribute rel="noopener nofollow" — “ugc” marking the link as user-generated content, “nofollow” telling search engines not to pass ranking authority through it. Medium controls this setting across the platform, so writers can’t change it. The same rule applies to external links from every author and account.

Internal links between Medium articles are dofollow. Links pointing off the platform are not.

That’s worth knowing because DR, as covered in what DR actually measures and how it’s calculated, reflects how much link authority a domain passes on. Medium’s own DR stays high because of the dofollow links pointing into it from across the web — but that authority doesn’t flow back out through the links inside individual posts, because they’re tagged not to pass it on.

In practical terms: a Medium guest post is genuinely strong for traffic, exposure, and brand trust — it’s just not the mechanism you’d rely on to move DR or DA directly. Neither of those things cancels the other out. They’re just two different jobs a guest post can do.

Getting the Most Out of Both Kinds of Placements

The smartest guest posting strategies don’t pick one type of site and stop there — they use each type of placement for what it’s actually best at:

• High-traffic platforms like Medium are excellent for audience reach, brand exposure, and earning organic secondary mentions.
• Editorially vetted, niche-relevant sites with dofollow links are what actually move DR, DA, and rankings directly, since the link equity passes through cleanly.

A well-rounded link building plan usually includes both — visibility plays that get your name in front of readers, and authority plays that pass real ranking value. If you’re searching for marketing guest posting websites similar to Medium, iCopify’s marketplace lists over 1,600+ vetted sites in the marketing category alone — giving you room to match each placement to the outcome you actually want, instead of assuming every high-authority site delivers the same kind of value.

How to Check Whether a Site Uses Dofollow Links

This isn’t specific to Medium — it’s a good habit for evaluating any guest post opportunity:

1. Publish (or find an existing) post with an external link, then view the page’s source code (right-click → “View Page Source,” or Inspect Element on the link).
2. Find the <a> tag wrapping your link and check its rel attribute. If “nofollow” appears, that specific link won’t pass ranking authority — regardless of the site’s overall DR or DA.
3. Check whether the platform documents its link policy. Medium’s is public and consistent, which makes it easy to plan around — some smaller or less transparent platforms nofollow links quietly, without disclosing it anywhere.
4. Use domain score as one input, not the whole picture. DR and DA reflect the links pointing into a site — not necessarily what happens to the link you place inside it.

The Bigger Takeaway

A strong domain score can indicate that a site has built substantial authority. It doesn’t automatically tell you what your specific link on that site will do. Understanding that distinction — rather than treating every high-DR guest post the same way — is what separates a genuinely effective guest posting strategy from one that just collects logos. Medium earns its place in a smart content mix; it just plays a different role than a fully vetted, dofollow placement does, and the best results usually come from using both intentionally rather than choosing one over the other.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Medium give dofollow backlinks? No. Medium applies a nofollow attribute (rel="noopener nofollow") to every external link in every post, platform-wide. Internal links between Medium articles are dofollow, but links pointing off the platform are not.

Is a Medium guest post worth it for SEO? Yes, for the right goals — audience reach, brand trust, and referral traffic are all genuine, valuable outcomes. For direct DR, DA, or ranking impact, pair Medium posts with dofollow placements on relevant sites that maintain strong editorial standards.

Why does Medium have such a high DR if its links are nofollow? Medium’s DR reflects the dofollow links pointing into Medium from other high-authority sites across the web. That’s a separate thing from what its own outbound links do — the platform’s domain score and the links inside individual posts function independently.

How can I tell if a guest post link is nofollow? View the page’s source code and find the <a> tag around your link. If the rel attribute includes “nofollow,” that link won’t pass ranking authority, regardless of the site’s overall domain score.

Do nofollow links have any SEO value at all? Yes, indirectly. Google has indicated that its systems can still crawl nofollow links and use them to discover content. These links can also drive genuine referral traffic and increase brand exposure, even without passing direct link equity.