Should You Ever Unpublish Your Online Articles?
When Should You Delete a Hub or Article?
Are there hubs that you should unpublish? Perhaps hubs that are dropping in score? I'm not sure that I'm the right person to ask, because I haven't unpublished any of my hubs in the time I've been on HubPages. Maybe I'm too sentimental and think of my hubs as my babies. It's hard to let them go. I don't just leave them sitting there, though. I visit them, I check on them, and I nurture them until they can do better on their own. So in a way they are my babies, I guess.
I hear about people deleting hubs, or at least unpublishing them, and maybe I will one day. For now, though, I look for other alternatives before I kick those babies out the door.
Alternatives to Unpublishing Hubs or Articles
Maybe I'm just sentimental, but I've never yet unpublished a hub, or any other article I've written and published online, and I don't know when I ever will. Right now, I regularly check my hub scores and revise them when they fall into the lower 60s or are getting very few views. Some things you can do:
- Use the title tuner to see if your title could be improved as far as searches go
- Use Google Keywords Tool to see if there are more search-friendly key words you could add into your title or into the body of your article
- Change up the wording, revising it to read better
- Add more content, such as photos or videos
These are some of the things I try that often work to raise my hub scores, at least for a while. I'm also giving time to some hubs. As times passes, hubs seem to do better. My first hub, "Getting Over the Fear of Writing Your First Hub," got a lot of reads at first, but as my portfolio grew, it didn't fare so well. It scored usually in the mid to upper 70s. However, after about six months with HubPages, I wrote some more hubs about HubPages and linked the new hubs to my old hub. Voila! Those links helped bring more traffic to the older hub. The more hubs I accumulate, the more I'm able to link some of the lower-scoring hubs to higher-scoring ones. Look for hubs that logically go together and try linking them to see if traffic and hub scores improve.
A Cluster of Poems with So-So Scores
What About Unpublishing Poetry?
What about hubs that are performing poorly? Often, poetry hubs fit into that category. Poetry hubs are great for those who want to read poetry, but they aren't necessarily what gets searched on the web--thus, the lower scores. My poetry hubs score a wide range, from the low 60s to just above 90.
My higher scoring poetry hubs are those that have explanation to go along with them or that fit into a category for which people might be searching. For example, I have a poem that I've classified as a Mother's Day poem that is currently a 91. I have another poem about how death changes everything that includes explanation about a real life tragedy. That hub scores generally in the 80s.
Still, I don't delete the lower scoring poems. Why? Because I want to write poetry. Poets and non-poets want to read poetry. So, poetry should be there. That isn't to say that I don't revise my poems. I keep an eye on all my hubs and revise them when they get into the low 60s. Recently, I revised my poem, Romance, Ballet, and Cats - Love Poem, because it was scoring at 56. I added "first" to love to make "first love" which could be a search term people would enter. I added a couple of "Swan Lake" videos that might enhance the reading of the poem. The next morning the poem's score had risen 12 points to a 68, and 70 the next day. Was it due to my revision? I would like to think so. The poem has risen still, now to a 72.
- How to Come up with Hub Topics
How do you come up with ideas for hubs? Keep a notebook, take photos, ask and answer questions, and more!
Would I Ever Unpublish a Hub or Article?
I would consider unpublishing a hub that went below the score of 40. At that point, the hub becomes a NoFollow hub, which means that Google won't recognize it in a search. If I couldn't revise a hub enough to get it up to at least 60, then I would probably feel compelled to unpublish it.
I may have an unpublishing frenzy one day, but, for now, I'm following my current plan. I go back to tend to hubs when I don't feel like writing new ones, spending my time tweaking them. I may revise language, add photos and videos, links to other hubs, quizzes or polls. Then I check back to see the result of my efforts. With poetry, I'll keep an eye on it but not worry too much about the score. Still, I will look to see if I can add more content there as well without taking away from the poem. Some poems lend themselves to more background information, while some do not.
For now, I am content to continue to work with all my "babies." What about you? Do you often unpublish hubs? Do you spend time revising them to achieve higher scores? I'd be interested in hearing your perspective.
