The two year Squidoo slap......

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   ryankettposted 13 years ago

   Did you know that Squidoo got a slap in 2007 and it lasted until 2009?
   
   There was uproar when a few things had to change, many people deleted lenses, dissapeared, etc.
   
   Some others stayed, many recovered by going on backlink sprees. Their loyalty or patience was repaid in 2009 when the site slap was lifted, and many made more money than ever before, things went mad for a while.
   
   They have held up better than Hubbers this time around, because of the legacy of backlinks built the last time around, I have lost a lot of SERPS places to Lenses.
   
   But, just goes to show, that is a LONG sentence, but we must be prepared for it. We have a precedent set, we have seen how people recovered on Squidoo, they backlinked.
   
   And that is what we are going to have to do. I want to be one of those who one day reaps the rewards, and as such I am going to be backlinking my Hubpages for 10 hours a week for the rest of the year.

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      Nelle Hoxieposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      You sound soooo British. I'm hearing you with a Winston Churchill voice. What about lost opportunity costs, if your hubs do nothing for two years. You could have been writing elsewhere and having immediate gains. As Keynes said, "We're all dead in the long-run."
      
      And I thought you had been backlinking like crazy already? What if Google says, "It might have worked for Squidoo, but not this time around."

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         ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         I wish that I could speak like Churchill, I am a mumbler most of the time, more like Gordon Brown (unfortunately).
         
         Pre-algo I was working 30-40 hours a week on Hubpages, half of my typical working hours.
         
         I am prepared to invest 10 hours per week on strengthening my existing portfolio, but 20-30 hours per week which would previously have been dedicated to publishing on here is going to be dedicated to publishing elsewhere.
         
         So whilst I take your point, and it is very valid, I will be focusing my efforts elsewhere when it comes to writing. I am just prepared to invest 10 hours per week in my Hubpages backlinks. I can backlink alongside my backlinking for my micro-sites etc too.
         
         I have put too much work into Hubpages to pull it all out too quickly, I intend to squeeze as much as I can out of my portfolio between now and the point where it becomes a trivial income source. Which isn't quite yet.
         
         I think I can squeeze another half decent Xmas out of my hubs, albeit with a lot of work between now and then, and 9 months will come quickly. By 2012 I suspect that I will be earning enough elsewhere.
         
         I do understand your reasons though Nelle, particularly when it comes to branding

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         darksideposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         HubPages HQ has been far more proactive.
         
         They got rid of the adult hubs long before Squidoo cleaned up their adult lenses.
         
         In fact, for a long time they had Adsense ads on their X rated lenses. When I say long time, I mean at least a year. I was surprised they even got away with it for a week.
         
         Changes at Squidoo took a while to be implemented. It was only in 2009 when they limited people from linking to the same domain down to 'only' 9 times.

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            ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            Darkside, whenever I am sarky to somebody on the forum I get paranoid that it may be your wife
            
            What's her username again?
            
            Squidoo is still full of crap wih no text, hence the reason I don't 'write' there, if you can call it writing.
            
            Whenever I stroll onto the site I get put off by the ghastly colours. Whenever I click on their 'best' lenses they look like complete spam.
            
            BUT, Seth removed some stolen content for me within two hours the other day, so fair play, no problem with them.

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               darksideposted 13 years agoin reply to this

               She hasn't been on here often. And if anyone got sarky with her it would only be because of an opposing point of view, and in life I've never found opinions to be harmful provided people don't try and enforce them with some kind of sharp weapon or firearm.
               
               There has been some great content on Squidoo. And of course plenty of mediocre. And then there are those that just spam the hell out of it because they think (whether rightly or wrongly) that they can make a quick buck from it. The same can be said about HubPages, but I feel there have been measures in place that makes it hard for people to misuse and abuse the site.

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   lrohnerposted 13 years ago

   I think that's a good thing, Ry. Just stick to that schedule and I'm sure everything will turn out well for you.
   
   I haven't seen PCUnix around the past few days, but when he does get back and sees all of these posts about backlinking, he's gonna have a coronary I'm sure!

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      frogdroppingposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      *nods* oh yes is he!

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      Peter Hogganposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Ah yes, should make for an interesting post or two me thinks.

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      shazwellynposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, well, we have all tried his way and... errr... the only way is by quality backlinking and quality content. 
      
      The question is, do we resusitate once he has the heart attack or not?
      
      *thinking......*

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   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   I am 99% certain that we won’t be subjected to a long-term slap. If that were the case I don’t think Google would be guest blogging here.
   
   Think Positive!

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      ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I'm not suggesting that we will have a two year slap, although I wouldn't rule out a slap for the rest of 2011. An October recovery would be nice, I was hoping to squeeze one more Xmas out of my hubs
      
      My point really is that the Squidoo slap was a serious one, the similarities to the events of the last few weeks are uncanny, the big IM's were fleeing at the first sign of traffic loss.
      
      Some of IM's stayed and slogged it out, worked hard for a lens-by-lens recovery. This time around, Squidoo as a whole has lost traffic, but many lenses have actually gained SERPS positions. I know this because I track around 50 searches and many of these compete with Lenses. I have seen Lenses overtake Hubpages and various other content farm content.
      
      Most of these Lenses are older, 2008 or 2009, and have a long legacy of backlinks from a variety of sources. Basically, if I want my hubs outranking them now I have to work hard for the ranking, just like they have. It makes no sense for me to move my backlinked hubs anywhere, as I would have even MORE work to do then I have currently.
      
      If this sites internal links ever do recover, I'm not holding my breath, I want to cash in like the Squidoo lot did in 2009

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   2uesdayposted 13 years ago

   If you look at their list of the top 100 lenses they never seem to change. Not sure how that works.

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   skyfireposted 13 years ago

   At the risk of getting attacked by 'so-called no-backlinking dun group', let me drop 2 cents.
   
   - Almost every successful lensmaster at squidoo runs backlinking campaign.
   - There are no "anti-backlinking' folks on squidu.
   - Squidoo CSS/Templates stuff is still spammy and on point of aesthetics they can get penalty any time in future. (Meebo/Infolinks is very annoying)
   - Many categories are removed from squidoo after this slap. (For exmaple, WFM, drugs etc).
   - Adult content has splash page and there are no adsense ads on those pages.
   - Squidoo is diversifying within their domain by creating channels like squidlit, paws, recipe, rocketmoms etc etc.
   - Even after slap, seth never enforced moderated publishing, which is good thing as there are very few open platforms left on the internet. 
   
   Okay, let me wind up and go to sleep, 3:00am here.

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   Nelle Hoxieposted 13 years ago

   Okay, I understand Ryan. And don't forget, I've still got a ton of hubs - just not so visible.
   
   I must admit that I'm getting the urge to backlink to the Cape Cod site, but I'm not doing it, except for my profile here. But that might end, if I think it's upsetting Google. That link was basically done so that people could understand the direction I was going in - and thus avoid conspiracy theories about my vanishing hubs.

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   jrcemailposted 13 years ago

   If you link slowly with like two to five links a day, I think you're fine.  If you space that out to a few links a week Google will probably think you're boring-er than watching grass grow - which is good though!
   
   Not that I'm advocating backlinking (wink wink), just mentioning something I heard.

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   brandonhart100posted 13 years ago

   Yep, I agree 100 percent and here are a few more things that HP could consider doing in the future to improve Hubbers visibility.  Leave existing hubs all on HP...
   
   Future Hubs could be broken up under different HP site categories...
   
   For example if you are writing about cameras, then your hub might appear on
   
   cameras.hubpages.com/hubs/(your title here)
   
   I have seen several other sites do this sucessfully and I have a feeling post-algo they are feeling REALLY good.
   
   Imagine writing about Christmas at
   
   Christmas.hubpages.com/hubs/(your title here)
   
   I only mention this as I feel that many of our hubs have essentially been dilluted by the massive amount of hubs.... imagine what google thinks about PR being spread to all of those hubs...  (Yes, I know it's a slightly different theory than what you've heard before).
   
   Check out toptenreviews.com for an example of what I mean...
   
   BTW I have no doubt they are one of the sites that is smiling from ear to ear after this.

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      ryankettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      How would one do that without first unpublishing, would the change in domain result in existing backlinks being compromised or would a redirect solve that?

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         brandonhart100posted 13 years agoin reply to this

         As I mentioned above, existing hubs would stay where they are... this would be moving forward.

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