SEO versus engagement: Links in the body of the Hub

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   promisemposted 8 years ago

   "Use Hub Groups instead of linking to other Hubs in the body of the Hub."
   
   The above recommendation came from the HubPages Weekly newsletter. I'm not taking sides one way or another. I really am just curious about whether one way, the other or both is better.
   
   Quite a few SEO experts think that a contextual link within the body of an article is valuable. On the other hand, it tempts a reader to leave a Hub early and go to another Hub, which is bad for engagement.
   
   What do you all think?

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      Writer Foxposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I do both, but you only get two in the group function.  The best for SEO is the contextual link with great anchor text.

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         promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I do the same. Why do you think HP wants us to drop the body links? If the links already appear in the group, do you believe dropping the body links will hurt your rankings?

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      peachpurpleposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      i use hub groups for all my hubs, don't know anything about SEO

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   chef-de-jourposted 8 years ago

   It's tricky knowing which is the best. Not being an SEO expert I guess a balance between group and text is best for the hub and gives the reader more choice. Perhaps the question has to be - How to optimise the number of links within the text without going overboard? Some articles I read online are just peppered with textual links which, for me, is off putting.

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      promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Agreed. A lot of people believe that too many links is not only off putting but also bad for SEO because the page leaks "link juice."

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   janderson99posted 8 years ago

   The other point is that the font size and images in the NEXT and PREVIOUS are so tiny that hardly anyone will see or click on them. There is no heading or any explanation for them either. So very underwhelming and inefficient way to suggest what an author has published in the same group/topic.

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   calculus-geometryposted 8 years ago

   From the newsletter:
   
   Use Hub Groups instead of linking to other Hubs in the body of the Hub. Hub Groups are a good way to indicate to your readers that you have written other related Hubs on the same subject. We highly recommend putting all of your Hubs into Hub Groups rather than adding links to related Hubs inside the body of your Hub text.
   
   I think what they mean is they disfavor sections that are just links, with a heading like "Related Articles," as many people do. Their wording is ambiguous though.  I'd be surprised if they meant they don't like contextual links.

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      promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      If that's the case, they might want to clarify if they mean all body links or just blocks of them.

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   LeanManposted 8 years ago

   I have a large number of related hubs and I use a lot of links within the body of my different hubs to highlight hubs that can provide more information about a subject.
   
   I also use text boxes justified to the right in blue to draw additional attention to other hubs which have additional information alongside where the subject is being discussed in the main text.
   
   I get 15%- 20%+ of my page views from people that click these links..... So if you have related hubs and you don't use links between them you could be losing out on a lot of views!
   
   But make sure they are actually related or it is spam and the reader is not going to click the link anyway!

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      promisemposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      I get plenty of clicks from links on my other hubs as well, but can you tell which links produced which clicks? Can you distinguish between body links and text boxes with links?

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   janderson99posted 8 years ago

   +11111

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   alltechguyposted 8 years ago

   got it sir..

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