From a content marketing / strategy perspective, writing on Medium is an interesting exercise and an opportunity to experiment with topics and formats that wouldn’t work outside, in the business environment.

From an SEO point of view it’s even more fascinating.

As an outsider, I would guess that Medium is interested in expanding their member base.

For this, they need to care about search queries and topics that can get new external traffic on the platform, so that eventually those new viewers become paying members.

Yet, as you pointed out, some publications seem to work against this goal ☺. Moreover, they’re promoting a certain “Medium way of writing" which at some point will stop generating results.

Reasons could be multiple: writer fatigue, readers figuring out that the same topics are covered all over the internet, or worse case scenario, readers realizing that they’re no longer getting enough value. It’s already starting to feel like topics keep repeating and the same way of writing is copied by multiple contributors.

It will be interesting to see how or if publications and curators will adjust their strategy when this shift in reader behavior will happen.