Subdomains -Opportunity or problem?

1. 67

   Charles Jamesposted 12 years ago

   I have two hubs that perform well, bringing in over half my volume.
   
   I have ten hubs that together equal the second best.
   
   And I have about 70 hubs that are frankly doing nothing. They are probably dragging down my good hubs. So should I open a new identity and transfer the 70 non performers to the new identity? Or the 70 nonperformers and the 10 so so performers?
   Or just remove them and not bother to put them up?

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   1. 94

      wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I think most of us have something like that.  About 1/2 my hubs get very little traffic (<1 per day).
      
      At this point they are all in the new subdomain, but after maybe 6 months I intend to do some tweaking and weeding.  By doing it this way I can be reasonably (although not totally) assured that I'm not removing hubs that might perform well next year.

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      1. 63

         Lisa HWposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I had that kind of thing, but not long before Panda some of those that had earned zero or close to it had started to gradually pick up some low-level earnings.  It go so that combined the low-earners were slowly increasing the percentage of my overall earnings.  So time (and lots of it) was a factor for the non-performers.   For quite awhile now I've gradually trimming out Hubs I don't want, but I don't want to do a big, drastic, reduction of number of them all at once.  I kind of write one, delete two - that type of thing.
         
         My concern (especially now with this "authorship" thing) is that if I cut down 300-plus Hubs to - like - 100 (or fewer), I think there's a good chance I won't have much under the "authorship belt" on here either.   Recently, Paul Edmondson said (somewhere in the forums) that HP has noticed that people with a big mix of Hubs tend to do better.  A big mix is going to mean some of them don't do as well as others. 
         
         If they were mine I wouldn't remove them unless I had somewhere else where I knew they could definitely earn/earn more.  There was an HP blog post once about how having over 50 Hubs seems to work to the advantage of the Hubber.  Every Hub and every Hubber is so different, I'm not sure anyone could really know any better than you what might work best for your own.  I suppose the real question is whether they really are "dragging down" your post-subdomain name or not.   If you know they're decent quality and "what Google wants", maybe it's just the subject, title, keywords, promotion efforts, etc. etc. but maybe they're not dragging down your name.   Basically, if I had the situation you describe I think I'd make the shift fairly gradually (if I decided to do it) (unless, I guess, if you have niche-type thing in mind for the second account and have plans for really pushing the Hubs you put on it.
         
         If you really just want to remove them from your account, I think if if it were me I'd go ahead and set up the second account (don't waste them), provided they get approved for publication (if they have to be because the account will be new).  (Put up a glossy woman actress' picture, give your new self a name like,  "Make Big Bucks Fast", and see if a whole new approach does anything for your poor performers.      )

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2. 65

   2uesdayposted 12 years ago

   I am testing unpublishing some to see what happens - but that is probably not a good idea as they will loose what people call link-juice from the search engines.
   
   I had over 200 hubs published before the first Panda, now less than 150 while I decide what to do. They may be transferred and incorporated into my sites/blogs or they may be revamped and used elsewhere or here. The jury is still out on what I will do with them.
   
   P.S. Do n't follow the above as advice as I think it may be based on something other than logic.

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   1. 81

      David 470posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I deleted a lot of my hubs too actually. About 25-30 recently and deleted some before.
      
      Honestly, I made some articles that had horrible keywords and SEO in 2010.

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3. 68

   lisabeamanposted 12 years ago

   What it is about the 70 non-performing hubs that are making them non-performing? Are there things you can do to tweak or revive them? I may be off on this... but it seems to me that it would be better to improve existing hubs and make them better than to simply move sub-par hubs to another identity or site. But to be completely honest, I'm not sure there really is a right answer. If there is, no one knows it yet. We are all trying to figure this out.

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4. 88

   CyclingFitnessposted 12 years ago

   Do you only classify your hubs based on the traffic they bring in?
   
   Surely if they are unique they will not mark you down in google's eyes?
   
   I'm fairly new to SEO however so maybe I have the wrong idea!

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5. 81

   David 470posted 12 years ago

   Over half of my hubs do not perform that well <3 views/daily.
   
   However, a few of my hubs get between 75-400 views a day. Then there are the other ones that are in the double digit numbers.
   
   If every one of my hubs made at least 100 views, or I had ones that hit close to 1000, I would theoretically be making over a thousand dollars a month lol...

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6. 56

   BaliMermaidposted 12 years ago

   I have 211 hubs.  The top 21 have, in three years produced 50% of my page views. So you can say 10% of my hubs draw 50% of my traffic.
   
   Now, looking at those same 21 hubs since the subdomain switch. Those 10% of my hubs are only doing 30% of my total traffic.
   
   That means my traffic, which since sub domains is up 50% is spread more evenly over all of my hubs, on average.
   
   Plus I don't believe you can make much of a decision on traffic from the months of mid july till end of August. For me it has always been very slow and this is my 4th August.

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7. 67

   Charles Jamesposted 12 years ago

   Quite a few of my hubs are sweet little stories from legal practice, like the time I was literally left holding the baby, my first day in court, and amusing anecdotes about clients.
   
   I am grateful for the suggestion that I should revisit the hubs and make them SEO savvy, but I doubt it would make much difference. I will probably collect them together one day as "Tales From The Inner City" and sell them on Kindle for buttons.
   
   I thibk I will revisit the 10 soso performers, because there I have something to build on. It will also give me more of a clue what people are looking for - that I want to write about.
   
   But do I move the 70 nonperformers? Are they dragging down the good and the soso? Does anyone know?

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   1. 87

      IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      This is someone no-one seems to know the answer to.
      
      I am in the same boat with hundreds of non-performing hubs. Each one of them occasionally sparks a bit of interest, and some are seasonal and so don't get traffic for 10/11 months of the year.
      
      They are unique, and I quite like most of them, even if they don't get traffic.
      
      Each of them count towards the total # of pages within my subdomain indexed with Google, and generally the more you have, the better your site will perform. So they are quite weighty in their own right, even without traffic.
      
      I am one of those who saw severe traffic losses in the last few days, but am reluctant to experiment by moving hubs that have been there a long time. (the 301 re-directs still point to their old domain and all the weight it carried).

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8. 67

   Charles Jamesposted 12 years ago

   What is a 301 redirect?
   
   As the hubs are not doing anything I was thinking to take them off for a couple of months and then put them up again in the new identity - or ask HP to help me move the relevant hubs en masse, but not publish until I can avoid allegations of duplication.

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9. 61

   SunSevenposted 12 years ago

   Since HP has forcefully implemented this change, I hope they will address your concerns at the soonest.
   
   May be not.
   
   Take it if you can, we are all Guinea pigs!

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10. 67

    Charles Jamesposted 12 years ago

    What I really need an answer to is whether my non performing hubs are damaging my better hubs.

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    1. 0

       writeronlineposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I don't have any clearer idea of the answer than anyone else who's responded. TBH, I think much of what we Hubbers discuss is really like the blind being led by the partially -sighted (NOT intended to offend).
       
       But, it's interesting to ponder the well-established equation from business case studies; the 80/20 Rule, which states that for almost any endeavour, 80% of the 'business' (ie; sales) comes from 20% of the customers.
       
       If we were to substitute 'sales' with 'page views', and 'customers' with 'readers', perhaps we'd conclude that the business reality of the 80/20 Rule applies as well to response rates for Hubs..?
       
       In which case, you'd leave all your published Hubs up (except for any real dogs), on the mathematical basis that  the bigger the base number, the greater the actual value/number of responses drawn from the 80% driving the 20%.... but, like I say, I don't really know.

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    2. 85

       Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       No one really knows, Charles, including the HubPages staff.
       
       The change to the sub-domain structure is the result of HubPages' CEO suggesting it on Google's public forum and being told "yes, that sounds like a good idea".  As far as I'm aware, there's been no suggestion of behind-the-scenes discussions with Google to flesh out the best way to make it all work.
       
       As Paul has said, we're all in a unique position now because we each have a sub-domain BUT we are all still interconnected to other Hubbers' sub-domains by the category and tag mechanisms.  That makes it difficult to know what to do for the best.
       
       If your sub-domains were totally separate, like they are on blogger.com or wordpress.com, then you would treat it like your own blog and follow the advice given for that.  The decision still isn't easy because there are two conflicting pieces of advice to follow - one is (as Izzy says) the more pages the better, but the other is that Google will rank you much better if your blog is focussed around one subject area.  So you need to make a decision about what your subject area is, and then you could consider deleting irrelevant Hubs which aren't performing. 
       
       However, our sub-domains aren't totally separate, so it's not clear whether that advice applies. Our Hubs still get some visibility by being included in categories, and people like Michael seem to be getting good traffic even though they're not focussing on one single topic.  So Writeronline is right - even the best internet gurus are still making educated guesses!

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11. 68

    Michael Willisposted 12 years ago

    I am taking the Sub-Domain as an opportunity. It is too soon to make any realistic judgments, but I know I have had a huge increase in one niche especially already.
    The others topics are doing well, but I will have to wait a while longer before I can tell if the singular sub-domain will help those hubs or not. If it becomes necessary to add another account, then I will.

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