How to Publish Your Blog to Dev.to and Medium Automatically

Dev.to and Medium are the two platforms developers and independent writers check most when deciding whether to follow a technical blog. Publishing your articles to both, automatically, with the right canonical tags, gives each new post two high-authority links back to your domain and puts the content in front of the readers who already trust those platforms. The challenge is that Dev.to and Medium behave differently from each other, and most automation tools handle only one of them correctly. This guide shows the complete setup using our Article Distribution tool, plus the manual approach for teams who prefer building their own pipeline.

Why Dev.to and Medium Are Worth the Effort

Dev.to reaches an audience of over 1.5 million registered developers who specifically come to the platform to read technical content. A post that lands on the front page or a popular tag gets hundreds of organic reads in the first 24 hours. Medium reaches a different audience: professionals, founders, and writers who come to the platform via topic pages and the Medium Partner Program. The two audiences do not overlap much, which means publishing to both roughly doubles your first-week reach from a single article.

The SEO angle is equally important. Both platforms have high domain authority. Dev.to ranks at domain rating 90. Medium ranks at domain rating 94. When you publish a canonical copy on each platform pointing back to your original URL, you earn a backlink from a DR 90 and a DR 94 domain on every post you write, automatically, without any outreach.

StartupHub.ai data shows that of the 453 content creation and marketing automation tools we track, fewer than 5 percent include native support for canonical tag injection across closed platforms like Medium. That structural gap is why duplicate-content penalties from republished articles remain common even among publishers who know the canonical tag exists.

The Canonical Tag Problem

When you publish the same article on your blog, Dev.to, and Medium, Google indexes three copies of the same content. Without a canonical directive, Google guesses which version is the source. It often picks the platform copy (higher domain authority) rather than your original. Your blog post ranks weakly or not at all, even though you wrote it first.

The fix is straightforward: every platform copy needs a rel="canonical" tag pointing to your original URL. Google then ignores the platform copies for ranking purposes and passes all link equity to your original post. Dev.to accepts a canonical_url field in its article API. Medium historically accepted it via their API as well, but their public API was deprecated in 2023. The platform still allows canonical tags, but they must be set through the web editor or via an automated browser session.

Dev.to: The API Approach

Dev.to offers a clean public REST API for article creation. To publish an article with a canonical tag, you POST to https://dev.to/api/articles with your API key and a JSON body that includes:

• title: your article title
• body_markdown: the article in Markdown format
• canonical_url: the full URL of your original blog post
• published: true
• tags: an array of relevant topic tags (max 4)

If you set canonical_url correctly, Dev.to surfaces it in the article header as a "Originally published at..." notice with a dofollow link. Google treats that canonical tag as authoritative and does not count the Dev.to copy against your original in the SERP.

The manual process works, but it requires converting your article from HTML to Markdown per post, creating the API payload, and firing the request. That is 15 to 20 minutes per article before you factor in tag selection and feature image upload.

Medium: Why the Public API No Longer Works

Medium deprecated their public article creation API in late 2023. The API endpoints still exist in some form but are no longer officially supported, meaning articles posted through old integrations may fail, strip formatting, or omit canonical tags silently. Third-party tools that rely on the old Medium API typically warn users that the integration is unreliable.

Medium still supports canonical tags through their native editor. When you import an article via the Medium import tool, the platform prompts you to enter the original URL and sets the canonical automatically. You can also paste the canonical URL into the story settings before publishing. The catch: this requires a manual step per article, per publication.

The reliable path for automated Medium publishing in 2026 is a local browser agent that authenticates as you and uses the Medium web interface directly, including the canonical tag field. This is the approach used by StartupHub's Article Distribution tool: a Chrome Browser Agent handles Medium natively, sets the canonical before publishing, and confirms the tag was accepted before marking the wire as complete.

The Automated RSS-to-Dev.to-and-Medium Pipeline

An automated pipeline that publishes to both platforms on every new post has four stages:

1. Feed monitoring: The tool watches your RSS or Atom feed for new entries. When a new post appears, it fetches the full article content from your blog.
2. Format conversion: Your article HTML is converted to the format each platform expects. Dev.to uses Markdown with frontmatter. Medium uses HTML with specific formatting rules. Platform-specific rewrites, like adjusting code block syntax or image hosting, happen at this stage.
3. Canonical tag injection: The tool inserts your original post URL as the canonical directive before publishing. For Dev.to, this goes into the API payload. For Medium, the browser agent fills the canonical field in the editor.
4. Publish and confirm: The article is submitted to each platform. The tool logs the published URL and confirms the canonical was accepted before marking the run as complete.

Setting Up Article Distribution for Dev.to and Medium

In StartupHub's Article Distribution tool, the setup for both platforms takes about ten minutes:

1. Connect your RSS source (your blog URL, a Substack feed, or a custom RSS endpoint).
2. Authenticate your Dev.to account by pasting your API key from the Dev.to settings panel.
3. Authenticate your Medium account by connecting via the browser agent flow: you log in once, and the agent stores the session for future runs.
4. Toggle the Dev.to wire and the Medium wire on in the distribution settings.
5. Set your preferred publishing delay (immediate, 2-hour lag, or next-day) so platform copies never appear before your original is indexed.

After that, every new post on your blog triggers an automatic run. The tool fetches the article, converts it for each platform, injects the canonical, and publishes. You receive a summary with the live URLs for each platform copy and a canonical confirmation for each wire.

Which Other Platforms to Add in the Same Run

Dev.to and Medium are the highest-value text-platform destinations, but they are two of the more than 30 wires available in the distribution tool. Platforms worth adding to the same automated run:

• Hashnode: A developer-focused blogging platform with strong community features. Accepts a canonicalUrl field in its GraphQL API. High value for technical content, especially programming tutorials and engineering posts.
• Substack: Has no public API, but the browser agent can publish to a Substack newsletter directly, including links back to your original. Good for building a newsletter subscriber base alongside your blog SEO.
• LinkedIn: Long-form article publishing on LinkedIn reaches a professional audience that may not visit Dev.to or Medium. Canonical tags are less relevant on LinkedIn (it does not rank in Google SERP the same way), but the distribution value for awareness is high.
• YouTube (16:9 video): Each article can also publish as a narrated Ken Burns video to your YouTube channel in the same automated run. One blog post becomes a text article on Dev.to, Medium, and Hashnode, and a video on YouTube, all from the same RSS trigger.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does publishing to Dev.to and Medium hurt my SEO?

Not if you use canonical tags correctly. When each platform copy includes a rel="canonical" tag pointing to your original URL, Google does not count the platform copy as duplicate content. Instead, it treats both as signals pointing to your original post, which can actually help your original rank faster. The risk only appears when you publish without the canonical, which is why the tool confirms canonical placement before marking each wire as complete.

Can I still use Dev.to and Medium manually if I also use Article Distribution?

Yes. The tool publishes the article once per new post. If you want to manually add a cover image, adjust the tags, or tweak the Dev.to front-matter after the automated publish, you can do that through the platform's native editor. The canonical tag is already set, so any edits you make do not affect SEO.

Does Medium still accept canonical tags after deprecating their public API?

Yes. Medium still renders canonical tags in the article header, and Google reads them. The deprecation affects the API endpoint for creating articles programmatically. Canonical tags set through the Medium web editor, or through a browser-agent automation that uses the editor, work normally. If you publish to Medium without setting the canonical, Google sees a duplicate.

How long does it take for Dev.to and Medium to appear in Google search?

Dev.to new articles are typically crawled within 24 to 48 hours, given its high crawl rate. Medium is similar, though articles on smaller publications may take slightly longer. The canonical tag tells Google to attribute any ranking signals to your original post immediately, so the platform copies contribute to your domain's authority even before they appear in the SERP individually.

What happens if my article contains code blocks or special formatting?

The format conversion stage handles the most common markdown and code-block patterns. Fenced code blocks convert cleanly. Tables and inline code generally render correctly. For articles with complex formatting (nested lists, custom HTML embeds, or non-standard heading structures), a quick review of the Dev.to draft before publishing is a reasonable practice for the first few posts, until you confirm your format converts cleanly.

Can I publish to Dev.to and Medium without an RSS feed?

Yes. Article Distribution accepts a single article URL as a source in addition to an RSS feed. If you have an older post you want to syndicate, paste the URL directly. The tool fetches the article, converts it, and runs the same canonical-tag publication workflow across every wire you have enabled.