Betta Fish hub

1. 84

   psycheskinnerposted 7 years ago

   I fully admit to not really keeping up with the current quality standards.  So I would appreciate help with getting this hub up to code.
   
   http://hubpages.com/animals/Better-Betta-Fish-Housing

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      paradigmsearchposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Long time, no see (for me). Followed. How the heck you doing?

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      Solarasposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Nice hub, you have a nice clean style. You also have a typo
      Selecting a Tank
      
      Size: Many small tanks are sold for Betta fish and these fish can survivein very small amounts of water. However it is wise to give them a bit more space to provide them with activities, room to move around, room for tank décor and appliances, and a larger amount of water that will have more stable chemistry. A (?)Small amount of water can change temperature quickly and rapidly build up waste products which can stress your fish.
      
      - I would add the following amazon capsule (fluval 5 gallon tank set) for this product and talk it up
      
      https://www.amazon.com/Fluval-Chi-Aquar … h+5+gallon
      
      It seems like it will filter without disturbing the water too much.
      
      Here are the things I might like to know:
      
      I would add siamese fighting fish, and discuss that the males should not be put together and why. Add a photo of them being aggressive.
      
      Do they live well with other species of fish, which ones, which don't get on.
      
      What do females look like, can they share a tank, do females get on with each other, can he have a harem.
      
      What do they like to eat, how do you introduce them to the tank, do you need water drops to dechlorinate the water, how often should you change the water, all of the water or half?
      
      How long do they live, how do you know if you found a young one or if it's already old.
      
      Explain the beta hammock a little more - give a photo or amazon capsule lol

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2. 84

   psycheskinnerposted 7 years ago

   Oh pretty good.  Trying to catch up on making my hubs live again.  But, honestly, I'm a bit too lazy to keep most off them out of the half-circle club.  I just don't like to have any in the white circle club.

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      paradigmsearchposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      What about life in general?

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3. 84

   psycheskinnerposted 7 years ago

   Thanks, Solaris.  That gives me some good ideas.  I'm also gong to try and get my current betta to pose for some pictures. But he doesn't like to stay still long enough!

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      DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I think personal photos would help a lot and make the reader experience. The first stock photo you show is of a Betta with a tail that is so heavy that his supporting spines are collapsed; show us the fish you picked and tell us why he was a good choice.
      I know that articles on HP are not supposed to be just personal, but having some personal input helps. The reason I read articles by Solaras, for example, is that she is a dog breeder so has experience in her area. What makes me think you know more about Bettas than what you read about on another web site? Some photos, the tank size you have used successfully, the filter and heater you have used and why they worked so well.
      Solaras´ suggestions are great. As a reader I would also like to know if there is a way to tell if a fish is going to get along with others, and what other species of fish you recommend to live with a Betta.
      You might know this better than me, but I think callout capsules work as great attention getters and headers for SEO purposes.
      Good luck.

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4. 84

   Marisa Wrightposted 7 years ago

   Rule #1 when writing a Hub is, get straight to the point in the first paragraph.  The reader (and Google) are attracted by your title, and they arrive at your Hub wanting to know about what's in the title.
   
   Right now, a reader would come to your Hub expecting to read about tanks and equipment for Betta fish.  They start reading the first paragraph and it's all about choosing the fish!  That's not what they came for, they'll click back and look for another result.  That will give you a high bounce rate and Google will eventually dump your Hub.
   
   So, decide - are you writing about the tank and equipment?   If so, delete the stuff about choosing the fish.  If you're writing about how to choose and care for Betta fish, change the title to say so.
   
   BTW I took a look at some of your Hubs and I notice a LOT of typos.  I don't know why, since you write so well on the forums and are not in the habit of making spelling mistakes!  Those alone would be enough for Google to mark you down and that may be part of what's killing your traffic.

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5. 84

   psycheskinnerposted 7 years ago

   Yep I have some editing to do.... eventually.  When things were paying out well I would put stuff up quick when I thought of a topic and then gradually improve it in place
   
   It might make more sense to change the title of this one than the content. I will look at it.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, I think the title change is the way to go too.

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      Solarasposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I would add content and a reason to have an Amazon capsule that no one can complain about. I make the same or more on Amazon each month as HP ad program earnings. That doubles+ my income with just 4 sales hubs out of 42 or so.
      
      2500 words often gets me 800-1200 views a day on that hub, if it is on point and worth the reader's time.  "Warnings" would be good ( people hate to make mistakes and kill their pets) like "be careful not to put two males in a tank smaller than 100 gallons" or "watch out for" - Dr. Mark makes an excellent point about the call out  boxes -, throw your warnings in them. Somehow Google loves them right now.

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6. 97

   Solarasposted 7 years ago

   Something I was encouraged to do, (thanks to Marissa) and which got the hub moved to pet helpful, and another moved to healdove, was to give a short bulleted list near the top saying " in this article you will learn... What is the best tank size and equipment, how to select your Beta, how long to expect them to live, how to build a lovely ecosystem for your beta etc...
   
   Then people know upfront where they can skip around too.  The callout boxes make it easy for them. Use them in place of capsule titles..
   
   A couple of hours work and an Amazon capsule will pay for the time invested within a month, and keep on giving!

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      Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I really should follow my own advice sometimes, LOL.   I've just been tweaking a few of my old Hubs to get them up to the new standards and I didn't do that on any of them.  Curses, off to look at them again!

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         Solarasposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I could give my same advice to myself for my old hubs and articles as well.  Sometimes it is hard to feel excited about revamping that which you feel already done with.  On the other hand, if you are already 85% there. Just do it ( insert Nike swoosh).

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            DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Okay, but I still have about 100 hubs from my early days here that have not been moved to Pethelpful. They only have a few thousand views each, and do not get significant traffic now, so I wonder if it would be better to just unpublish them, totally rewrite them, and publish them as new hubs with a better format?
            About 5 of them have over 10,000 views, and since a lot of them are from Google, they seem to have lost popularity for some reason. High bounce rate? They do give the info that the title indicates, but perhaps not in the layout most readers want.
            Any ideas on whether unpublishing is better than just another edit?

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               Solarasposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               I find that revamping an article can send traffic back to it again.  Probably somebody leapfrogged over you in SERPS, but it make just take tightening it up, better images and a little more depth will send it back to the position that was giving you reads.  You lose whatever history/ longevity the article has with Google when you start over from scratch.

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                  DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  All of the hubs that edited has extra views, but not really enough to justify my time. They do not appear to have changed any in the search engine rankings.
                  I understood that about the loss of history/ranking, but I just do not know what more I can do to these articles to make them get any better. Submitting them to HP one by one will take too much time. It just looks to me as if an article is not on a niche site, it is not worth keeping around.
                  If the article is newly published, but contains the same information, would HP be more interested in moving it to a niche site?

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                     Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     I have the same feeling about Hubs that are left behind on HubPages, I have no confidence in the future performance of the parent site. 
                     
                     The team are still dredging through the parent site for more Hubs to move to the niches, so I'm happy to wait and see - the niche sites they'd be eligible for aren't performing that well, so it barely matters to me. However PetHelpful is going gangbusters so I can see why you'd want to jump on that bandwagon sooner, not later.
                     
                     Just unpublishing won't work as the URL won't change and it will still be regarded as an existing article.  You would need to delete and recreate with a new URL.  I think it's worth a try.  Yes you will lose age, but it doesn't look like Google loves them any more, so what's to lose? 
                     
                     Just one thing - make sure you do a thorough search before deleting them, to make sure it hasn't been stolen.

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                     Solarasposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     I was thinking of the 10 or so hubs that once performed well, but now languish.  Can you combine some of these hubs with a little editing to go after longtail keywords?
                     
                     Sometimes,you just have to let go lol.

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                     LongTimeMotherposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     Mark, I had a similar problem on another account. I hit 'unpublish' and took a few days (sometimes a few weeks, lol) to rewrite and restructure them. Then published them again. Hey presto. Moved to niche sites.
                     
                     Don't change your url. That has value ... including the 'first published' date which remains the same. You can change the title of the hub if you want. Just make sure the topic is still appropriate to your original url.

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                        DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                        Thanks I am going to try this with a few today and see the response. I like Marisa´ idea about deleting them but my page already has a lot of red copyright symbols and I know that HP only picks up a small percentage of them.

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                           Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                           I suggested deleting because I was pretty sure that unpublishing wouldn't do the trick.  Looks like I was wrong, which is great news!   I'll be watching for LTM's reply too.

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                        DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                        I just unpublished three to see if they are moved when I publish them again. I already edited them last month--what is your opinion as to how long I should leave them unpublished?

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                           LongTimeMotherposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                           Mark, what you are suggesting is very different to what I did. I unpublished, then rewrote and restructured, then republished. But it sounds like you are suggesting just unpublishing ... and republishing without any fresh edits. I have no idea what to expect in that case.

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                              DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                              I did some severe editing on all of my hubs left on HP last month. However, I feel that my hubs can always use improvement, so I will edit them again before republishing. (I think all of our work can always use improvement, which is why I was so surprised to read all of the "how dare HP edit my hub" comments when the HP editing program was introduced.)
                              Not sure how long I should wait before editing though.
                              LTM, on a totally unrelated subject, I am just back from my cocoa plantation. I took photos of my eucalyptus trees and our termite nests and will mail them tomorrow when I have time to download them. Thank you again for all of your help.

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                                 Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                                 I'm not sure that editing them would make any difference, if you've already put in a lot of effort to improve them.
                                 
                                 The reason unpublishing might work is that when you publish it again, it will have to go back through the QAP - whether it's been edited or not.   That's all you're trying to achieve.

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                                    DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                                    That is good to know.
                                    I already edited one, and found that I forgot to make the videos full width. (I asked about this last month and the consensus was that full width videos would not slow down my page load time since they are cloud hosted.) I can always improve so I guess it would not hurt to edit the others again too.

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                                       Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                                       I've unpublished a bunch of mine and will re-publish them one each day, and we'll see what happens.
                                       
                                       Of course I could be shooting myself in the foot - while they're unpublished, the moderators who are trawling the parent site can't see them.   I just had another one moved to HealDove this morning, I edited and improved it about two weeks ago.  Good thing it wasn't one of the ones I picked to unpublish!
                                       
                                       Agree about the videos.  As you know, I like to keep my right-floated capsules provided I've checked they pop up in the right place on Mobile preview - but right-floated videos don't look good in any layout IMO.

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   Will Apseposted 7 years ago

   The signs are that rehashed info is not going to cut it.
   
   Something I made earlier:
   
   http://hubpages.com/community/forum/138 … ill-a-site

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      Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      No one is talking about rehashing info they've taken from other sources.  DrMark is talking about deleting his OWN material and then recreating it for the new sites. I'm sure he will improve it in the process.

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         Will Apseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I'm obviously nobody then, lol.

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            Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            You're being deliberately obtuse again!   I'm sure you realise what I meant.  Your comment about rehashing content is true, BUT it seemed irrelevant to me because I view the discussion in chronological order, and we had moved on to discussion of DrMark's Hub
            
            From your later comment, I understand you to feel that Psycheskinner's Hub is rehashed content but you could have made it clearer what you were referring to.

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      DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I can understand that but I had three moved last night and one of them is just another hub about dog breeds from another part of the world, in this case Japan. I try to make it interesting but it is not too original.
      Some others, that have recommendations on which dogs to buy, based on my experience, or my recommendations on how to deal with a medical condition, or naming some very unusual dog breeds, have not been chosen. They are definitely not rehashed.

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         Will Apseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Betta fish are one of those subjects that has been done to death. Japanese dog breeds, less so, I reckon.

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            psycheskinnerposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            No one was trying to get the Betta Fish hub onto a niche site.

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8. 88

   Will Apseposted 7 years ago

   I think you are up against it with the subject but this is what I would suggest.
   
   Cut down the intro and get to the main issue as fast as possible: betta fish care.
   
   Do the usual 'choose a healthy fish', 'get the right size tank and heater' etc
   
   Then deal with substantive issues. What are the mistakes that owners make, what diseases are a problem and how can they be recognized and treated, what are the behavioural problems etc. Use fish keeper forums to get ideas of where beginners struggle...
   
   I don't think the page will fly as part of a series. Get it in one.

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9. 70

   stephenteacherposted 7 years ago

   Was looking for some help on pet or animal hubs. I just started one today on some feral kittens we rescued from our backyard.
   http://hubpages.com/animals/two-cool-cats
   
   I'm not putting any links in it. I am doing some youtube videos. Not even sure if I want amazon on it.Just a clean personal hub.
   
   Perhaps if you do a personal page on some betas you have, tell a story, etc., it might be the way to go.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      The question is, what are you hoping to achieve when you write Hubs?   Are you seeking to engage with the HubPages community, or are you seeking to earn some income from your Hubs? 
      
      If you're happy with readers just from within HubPages, then your feral cat Hub is cute and will doubtless be enjoyed by other Hubbers.   If you're seeking to earn income, then no chance, I'm afraid.
      
      You can't make money from a Hub unless you can get it ranked in the Google search results.  If your Hub doesn't provide information that's helpful to people, that won't happen.  Let's face it, the general public is not searching for information about your cats.
      
      What would work is if you rewrote the Hub and called it "How to Tame Feral Kittens".   Then expand on the paragraph "How we caught them and what came next" to make that the main part of the Hub.  Finish off with those videos and details which show how well they're doing now.
      
      Just to be clear, HubPages wants writers who can write about topics from their personal experience, because that adds value.  But they don't want Hubs that are purely personal because they don't attract an audience.

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    LongTimeMotherposted 7 years ago

    Here's how I look at it, Mark. Republishing will run your hub through QAP, as Marisa quite rightly pointed out. But there's a bunch of 'unknowns' when it comes to just how each hub is assessed, and I doubt HP will be sharing the exact process any time soon.
    
    There is a distinct possibility the current moderators/editors will be drawn to a newly published hub (including re-published hubs) before they'll be drawn to a hub that's simply been 'edited'. That makes perfectly good sense.
    
    There is also a remote possibility (just how remote, I don't know) that software allows them to quickly and easily view your 'before' and 'after' versions. In which case, I suspect a thoroughly edited/changed hub is more likely to be viewed favourably when you republish.
    
    Also worth remembering ... if your current hub has pretty average traffic statistics, then it is absolutely logical to take a fresh, new approach to the entire hub. Check your hub's Stats for sources of traffic, and Search Words/Phrases if you're getting some search engine traffic. If you're not getting results from the keywords you're expecting, you know you're doing something wrong.
    
    Either rework the hub to better promote your chosen keywords ... or change the hub to take full advantage of the keywords that are currently performing. As for timing, I'd wait at least 2 days before republishing.
    
    I will add, just quietly, that I will be incredibly disappointed if lazy hubbers just start unpublishing and republishing their non-performing hubs in the hope they'll somehow manage to get a poor performer onto a niche site. That would be a waste of everyone's time.

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       Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       That would be my fear, too.

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