Not Ranking or Barely Ranking (losing hope)

1. 81

   David 470posted 11 years ago

   Perhaps someone can shed some light on what is going on. Since the sub domains were introduced in 2011 my traffic skyrocketed and was doing very well in terms of rankings/traffic etc.. but whenever there was a google Algorithm early last 2012, my traffic took a hit. Since then I have never been able to recover or make hubs rank.
   
   I can't even find some of my hubs on Google!!!! I remember I used to get on the first page of Google for many hubs and a few were even at the top of the page!
   
   Has HubPages truly lost it's ranking that much or is it something else? I would like to continue writing here, but my work basically just goes to waste. If no one can find it then there is going to be no traffic.

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   1. 88

      Simone Smithposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Traffic on HubPages varies widely over time and from user to user. We definitely have seen widespread hits ever since the Panda update has come, but have been taking a lot of action to reduce the risk of seeing more hits to Hubbers' traffic in the future by vastly improving the quality of the Hubs that are showcased on the site.
      
      I can't say our traffic is great now, but I *can* say that we're doing everything we can to ensure that our Hubbers maintain, and eventually re-gain and grow readership over time.

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      1. 81

         David 470posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Is there anything we can currently do to improve our rankings? It seems that basic SEO and using the correct keywords in a niche you are targeting is not quite enough anymore.

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         1. 59

            sleepylogposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Getting links that point to your hubs on other websites is one of the best ways to improve your google rankings. Facebook, Stumbleupon, pinterest, red gage, Twitter are great places to start as are forums related to your hub's topic. Some forums allow you to place a signature in your posts, you should use this as an opportunity to create a link to a chosen hub as your signature.  If you have friends on Facebook or followers on twitter, get them to 'like', 'share' or 'retweet' your posts because you can only post them there yourself a couple of times before you'll be called a spammer who risks having his accounts on those sites suspended.
            
            Try to use text links and vary the text you use for them to make them appear as if they've been posted by different people. Similar text links only look like they've been posted by the same person, the website's owner, and google will see those as spam and mark them down.
            
            Don't use referral links when linking to your hubs, google can tell the difference between a normal link and referral link, and the latter are always ranked low by google.
            
            I hope this has helped you.

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            1. 81

               David 470posted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks.
               
               I might try posting some of my hubs on facebook, but I don't know if this will help rankings that much. Some hubbers say it does not make a difference even if someone shares your hub.
               
               What about making a facebook page on a certain theme?

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   2. 86

      aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It really sounds like your subdomain was sandboxed by Google for some reason or another.  The "I can't find some hubs on Google" sounds familiar.  This has happened to a couple of really good writers, they do a lot worse than most hubbers. 
      
      Google also appears to apply a temporary sandbox to some domains.  This has happened to me twice.  All of a sudden a lost almost all Google traffic, and also had problems even finding myself indexed.   The first time, it lasted a week, and then everything was fine again, my hubs that ranked on the first page were back on the first page.
      
      The second time it lasted two weeks.  I know other people have that happen to them (SimeyC started a thread about this, sometime in December I think)
      
      I really can't figure out why Google would do that, and why some people are let out of the sandbox after a week or two but others aren't.
      
      As to a solution-How about starting another account with another subdomain.  You could maybe even transfer some of the hubs that were bringing you traffic but are now dead into the new subdomain?  You would have to unpublish them and wait for them to be de-indexed obviously, but it might be worth it.
      
      Obviously it would be good to check over your hubs and make sure they don't violate any of the panda/penguin no-nos.  Do you repeat certain words too many times?  Google can consider this keyword stuffing, but sometimes it is hard to avoid even if you are not trying to stuff.  For example I've just written a hub about laptops, and honestly, it is so hard not to keep saying "laptop" all the time!

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      1. 61

         Hollie Thomasposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I really can't figure out why Google would do that, and why some people are let out of the sandbox after a week or two but others aren't.
         
         My theory is that they're testing the good stuff v the new stuff! They have to test the new stuff somehow in an age when they are not wanting to rely upon links and shares alone. I kind of 'get that' if I were Google and wanted to test, I'd use comparative data. But that's just me.
         
         Perhaps some established domains are superior to the new stuff, hence, they get out of the sandbox.  The problem, however, as I see it, is that a lot of the good stuff has been scraped. Therefore, you have decent authors competing with their own content, and the thieves who stole it in the first place!

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         1. 86

            aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Yep I've also thought that Google is 'testing' things'.  Like "if we wipe out this whole subdomain, will people be less happy".  Pretty cruel way of doing it!
            
            That is  avery good point about scraping!  David you should definitely check to see whether you're a victim.

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      2. 81

         David 470posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I may have very well been sandboxed. The thing is, some of my extremely successful hubs lost traffic naturally, but never really lost traffic completely from any of the Google Algorithms etc. The main difference is when I publish new hubs -- they never seem to get ranked like those older hubs that I published back in 2011 did.
         
         I remember focusing on niches and publishing a hub and getting a few hundred views the next day or even getting a couple thousand on really successful hubs. Now I am lucky to get 5 views from search engines on a new hub.
         
         As for keyword stuffing -- I am not sure if I use certain words too many times or not. Many of my hubs are 450-800 words long. And generally you want certain words being repeated if the article's length is longer.

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   3. 72

      relacheposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      You write a lot about video games.  That is one majorly competitive topic.  How are you making your Hubs unique and useful, more so than all the other pages on the exact same subjects?

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2. 59

   paradigmsearchposted 11 years ago

   I finally got around to checking Quantcast. Looks like HP fared quite well.

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3. 84

   Marisa Wrightposted 11 years ago

   The whole idea of the sandbox is theoretical, and it's being mentioned less and less.
   
   I think it's far more likely that your sub-domain was Panda'd.
   
   The Panda algorithm assesses your whole sub-domain and assigns it a score based on the worst Hub in it.  So even if you have some excellent Hubs, your whole sub-domain can be wiped off the face of Google because you have one or two cr@ppy ones.
   
   I experienced this with my ballet website.  It suddenly disappeared from the Google rankings.  I took a hard look at it, and realized that I had a series of posts which were basically a video and a short commentary.  Google hates short posts, so I guessed they might be the problem. I revised them, adding more content and combining some - and bingo, at the next Panda run, the site recovered (Panda is run about once a month).
   
   The big problem is that it can be hard to work out what Panda didn't like.  Google's definition of quality isn't that obvious.   Look at Izzy and Randy - they both write good stuff, yet obviously one or two of their Hubs triggered a bad Panda score, but which ones?   However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't take a good look and see if you can work it out.  It's better than doing nothing.

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