Good places to post your HubPages articles for Backlinks + Traffic

1. 78

   Stunposted 7 years ago

   Hello Hubbers! I'm fairly new to HubPages, I've been here about a week now and love the community so far! Anyway, I was thinking, since we all have the same goal; to make money, get readers and help people, I thought I would make a topic for us all to discuss the best places to post our HubPages articles to get good backlinks (to help out with our Google search engine rankings) and organic traffic+readers.
   
   About two years ago I ran a magazine/blog type website so I used to have a ton of good website locations that I would link my articles on. Sadly it's been almost two years since I used to host it so I've forgotten many of them. If anyone has any places they would like to add, please feel free to drop a comment.
   
   1. Quora - I used to LOVE Quora answers. I would follow topics in my niche and then when new questions would get posted, I would leave a paragraph or two helping out the original poster and additionally I would also leave a link to my article in my answer. I left around 50 different answers with my website in it, and only one ended up getting removed. The key is the content has to be almost exactly what they are looking for and make sure you add in at least a few sentences answering his question. Then, add a couple more sentences in a new paragraph explaining why you are going to leave a link to X or Y HubPages article.
   ***For those who don't know*** Make sure to use anchor text that matches whatever your article is trying to get ranked for on Google. For example, if you are trying to get ranked for "Best selling e-books about war" make sure you use that exact sentence in your Quora answer and use that whole sentence as the link text to your HubPages article. You do this by copying the entire length of text and clicking the little "link" button, then pasting in your HubPages article URL.
   
   I'm going to be updating this topic often as more of the places I used to use for backlinks come back to me. I've forgotten almost all of them so I'm sitting here scratching my head trying to remember. As I remember more, I'll either add new posts or I'll edit this original post.
   
   If you have any places you would like to add, please do so! I would love to hear any and all hidden gems I might have forgotten about, or haven't heard of yet! Let's get our articles ranking high together and lets make some money!

   replyreport
   1. 92

      LongTimeMotherposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      That strategy is growing old now, Jacob. The danger is your comments will get marked as spam, and damage you in the long run. For instance, I marked a similarly styled comment on one of my hubs as 'spam' just two days ago from someone calling himself Michael. 

      replyreport
      1. 78

         Stunposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         On Quora you mean or here on HubPages? I wouldn't advise linking your Hubs on other peoples Hubs here on Hubpages, but I found that if you add in a bunch of useful information and a link to your Hub on a Quora answer most people are fine with it.
         However, I'll keep that in mind for Quora going forward if that's what you are referencing. Thanks for the info!

         replyreport
         1. 87

            YouGet1Shotposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            A couple years ago, Google started slapping huge penalties on overoptimized anchor text links, so I dunno if that's such a good idea. The consensus seems to be that it can still work temporarily, but then the penalties hit. And both the site being linked to and the site hosting the link can be penalized if Google detects abuse.
            
            Still, I appreciate you trying to help out. I can't speak for anyone else, but I joined HP to make some money, so I'm with you on that. Good luck!

            replyreport
   2. 90

      Kylyssaposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Backlinks will get you lots of traffic but pretty much only if they are organic. Creating your own backlinks is kind of like trying to be your own fan. The way to get organic backlinks is to write what your readers think you write best and let them provide the links when they're moved to.
      
      Writing a lovely, long, stand-alone article elsewhere and including a link to a relevant hub could start this process if the piece you write gets its own organic traffic, but it's still drawing in readers with the appeal and quality of your writing.

      replyreport
2. 88

   WryLiltposted 7 years ago

   I love Quora! I answer on there regularly. And yes, you are allowed to self promote as long as it's relevant and you provide declaration that it is something you're personally involved in.
   
   However backlinks are a bit old hat - Google is very good at identifying fake ones and algorithm changes such as the recent 'Fred' will make this even more true.
   
   And, as both myself and Marisa Wright have pointed out before, backlinking to a hub isn't going to help half as much as a backlink to your own site.
   
   On Hubpages, they visit your hub... then will likely go read OTHER people's hubs.
   
   On your own site, you can get them reading more of YOUR articles, subscribing to your email list, following you on Social Media etc.

   replyreport
   1. 78

      Stunposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah I understand what you are saying, I used to run a website that had thousands of long tail keywords ranking first on Google search and it was nice getting a lot of traffic from Google, having people subscribe to me and such.
      I don't mind if people visit my sub and go to other peoples subs, as long as they are clicking on mine in the search results first and reading it! Haha. I read in the FAQ that HubPages recently will start to lower your hub scores if you aren't receiving at least some search traffic from Google, which is why I came up with the idea of posting this topic. (For new hubbers I think they mentioned you only have about a month to start getting search traffic, whereas longtime hubbers have a year or more.)
      
      Any information on that you might have? I think it was in the FAQ or the help pages, but since I'm new on HubPages I'm still learning stuff over here!

      replyreport
      1. 88

         WryLiltposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I see what you're trying to achieve, but I think you're going about it the wrong way. I've very rarely seen a backlink increase traffic within a month. Plus, if the content is in a saturated niche, a few backlinks won't help it beat out the high competition, authority sites, which have been receiving backlinks for years.
         
         For newbies who wanted to raise their score and get fast Google traffic, I'd recommend finding high traffic, low competition keywords and not worry about the backlinks; why spend hours backlinking ONE article when you could've written 10 in that time? The brilliance of low competition, high traffic keywords is that there's very little need to compete anyway - in many cases you can easily appear in the top 3 results as soon as Google craws your article. Being a unique topic and one of its kind will often generate organic backlinks with much less work from you.

         replyreport
         1. 78

            Stunposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            To each their own I suppose. Backlinking takes me around 30 minutes whereas writing an article takes 4-5 hours for me because I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to articles
            
            If you can write 10 articles in a few hours or so, certainly better to avoid back linking at all.
            
            See my strategy is to do extensive keyword research and target a whole article around one keyword that averages 2$-10$ PPC that gets 500 or more monthly searches. If I rank in the top three for that, at a 2% ctr, I'll be averaging $20-$100 per month on that article. If you are targeting keywords (or more likely, not targeting anything if you can write 10 articles in a few hours) the click cost per article will be drastically low.
            
            I tend to go for lower volume, higher quality vs high volume, low quality.
            
            Everyone has their own strategy though and if that works for you, I'm glad. I've found over the last eight years that my strategy works best for me

            replyreport
            1. 88

               WryLiltposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Ah you use the Google keyword tool. I hate that thing - I haven't used it in 3-4 years. I use Google suggest There used to be 30 minute challenges in the forums once upon a time and everyone had to write a hub in 30 minutes. I can write 1,000 words in that time, so I am very much a churn-out type of writer. We all have our own styles!

               replyreport
               1. 78

                  Stunposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Ah yeah, for me it takes hours upon hours for one article LOL. I write and rewrite and proofread and rewrite... Sometimes it ends up sounding worse than when I started. Haha!
                  
                  For me doing the keyword research and doing the backlinks are the "fun" and easy part. Writing is not my specialty

                  replyreport
                  1. 88

                     WryLiltposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     I'm the opposite I don't even like images. I've reached the point where I'll give my husband a list of topics and he'll set up entire blog posts for me, prefilling with title, subtitles and images. Then, all I have to do is log on and write. I also dislike Instagram but it seems a gazillion people disagree with me on that one, too!

                     replyreport
                     1. 95

                        theraggededgeposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                        I wish I had a husband like yours! I agree though... the writing is the best part - all the rest is trimming. I've only ever gone onto Instagram to follow the progress of one of the Guidedog puppies we trained. Never used it to post photos to. Now, Pinterest is something else - I love Pinterest. But if anyone can tell me why I need Instagram, I'll gladly take a closer look.

                        replyreport
      2. 86

         Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         It's a case of doing the cost/benefit analysis, as Wrylilt says.
         
         If you've been out of the loop for a while, you may not be aware of some of the changes that have happened with regard to backlinks in recent times.
         
         One important one: no matter how many backlinks you get from one website to your site, Google will count only one or two of them.   So on Quora, for instance, there are already tons of backlinks from Quora to HubPages.  Your Hub account is not a separate website in Google's eyes - it's just part of HubPages.   So you can add all the new backlinks you like from Quora, Google won't count them.   
         
         So, the only benefit you get from a backlink on Quora (or other similar sites) is if real people click on the link and visit your Hub.  You have to ask yourself how often that's likely to happen and if it's worth your effort.

         replyreport
         1. 78

            Stunposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Do you have a link to a Google blog explaining this? I find that hard to believe as backlinking is an integral part to getting ranked and it has been since the beginning of Google. I know they are making social links carry more weight but I can't see them not counting backlinks whatsoever. I do client SEO and get people ranked very often, so I'm unaware what exactly you mean lol
            
            If you have a blog post from Google explaining the changes to their algorithm with changes that backlinks do nothing, I would love to read it! Thanks

            replyreport
   2. 84

      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I tried backlinking a few articles to my blog and HP made me delete the links!  So much for that!  Brought in good views for the few days they were posted, though.

      replyreport
3. 95

   Kierstin Gunsbergposted 7 years ago

   So far I only really utilize Pinterest. Following so I can read later - I have to go wrangle the kids for bedtime

   replyreport
   1. 78

      Stunposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Ah yes, I'll have to use pinterest again. Totally forgot about that site. lol thank you!

      replyreport
4. 97

   eugbugposted 7 years ago

   Getting a backlink mightn't improve a hub's ranking, however sometimes it can be useful for generating direct traffic. I sometimes post on forums relevant to a hub. Usually this is disallowed on forums, but it can happen that if you suggest the text of a link, but don't actually post the hyperlink, the moderator may add the hyperlink if they approve of the hub and think it could be beneficial to the discussion.

   replyreport
   1. 78

      Stunposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      high quality dofollow links definitely should help google ranking, even on hubpages. my old site before i came over to hubpages was getting around 40k unique visits monthly all from google. mostly from ranking for long tail keywords. this was only about a year ago so i doubt their ranking algorithm changed too much. but my site was a niche site in the money making niche hosting only that sort of content. im not sure how well hubpages domain ranks on google, being that it's such a broad spectrum of articles. their sister sites like toughnickel should rank better. backlinks should help though as far as i know.
      
      of course they can't be spammed, or automated as that will end up hurting you long term, but manually built white hat links on similar content sites should help!

      replyreport
      1. 81

         katleighposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         You write about very niche topics though for the most part - good quality, I've read them! Would you mind throwing up a number for your average traffic a month? Also, have you qualified for Adsense yet? I'm getting a little discouraged, granted I have only 5 hubs so far.

         replyreport
         1. 78

            Stunposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Yeah, I've had both Adsense and amazon affiliate for years. I only started Hubpages six days ago so as far as monthly traffic goes, I'm not quite sure yet lol :-D So far I only have 242 views on my six hubs put together, made around 15 cents so far in the six days that I've been here. So I'll only be making probably 60 cents or so every 1k views. Although it might go up a bit once it averages out and I get ranked on Google, I tend to pick decent paying keywords (though I'm not sure how hubpages determines your adsense earnings yet. I'm assuming it's the same as a website would, minus their cut. If so, my earning should def go up.) I used to make anywhere between $8-$13 per 1000 views on my own website. Hubpages will certainly be less but I'm not sure how much less.
            
            One thing with articles is that you have to put in a TON of work before you start making real money, For example on my most recent site before I sold it I was only making around $550/month on adsense each month after six continuous months of hard work around 50-60 hours a week. The good part about that though, is that it is residual-passive income. I could have kept the site and never written on it again and continued to make 400+ a month for the next couple years at minimum. On one website I had I took a trip and didn't touch the site for a month and a half, yet when I came back I had made like 600 bucks for doing nothing. Lol.
            
            I've been doing this for about eight years though roughly, give or take, so I know what I'm doing for the most part. I'm not a millionaire or anything but I plan to be before 35, so I'm working my butt off to reach it haha. If you want advice for keyword targeting you're welcome to send me a message and I'll help you out. To really maximize your earnings its a pretty complicated job. Eventually I'll start doing amazon affiliate sales on here too to boost my earnings. Adsense is one of the lowest ways to make money, it should be used as additional cash flow, certainly not your main income earner. Most sites usually only make like 1-2 bucks per 1k views, it takes a lot of knowledge in order to target specific keywords to get that higher, while still maintaining a large readership.
            
            Let me know if you want help and I'll give you a rundown.

            replyreport
            1. 81

               katleighposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Yes that would be great!
               I'm a writer, professionally, I'm getting my English degree right now but I have sold articles for $100 a pop. But being a busy student and quite frankly fed up with deadlines other than my own, I love the idea of residual income. I was hoping for a, "write good stuff about what you like and you'll get extra money to save for retirement" approach.
               I know what SEO means and what a niche is, and other than that I'm lost at sea. I appreciate any and all advice. I've been writing since I was 15, (18 now) but only marketing since say, two weeks ago.

               replyreport
5. 95

   JR Cuevasposted 6 years ago

   You can link your hubs in StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a social networking website where you can bump into random articles or materials related to your interests. I already had views from this site and never had an issue linking my hubs. You just have to create a profile, add a page, and input the link of your hub from HubPages.

   replyreport
   1. 96

      DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Do you realize how this can affect your earnings here on HP?

      replyreport
6. 94

   Alison Grahamposted 6 years ago

   Can you expand on that DrMark1961 - is it good or bad to put links on StumbleUpon, etc - I really don't do anything like that now but I did when I first started writing as I thought it was the right thing to do! I am wondering whether I should!

   replyreport
   1. 96

      DrMark1961posted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Alison. If you are just looking for page views, Stumbleupon can be okay in the short term, but people that visit that site are likely to just glance at your article and then bounce out quickly. They do not stay long enough to gain you an impression, which means you are not earning anything for that page view.
      Also, I have been told but not able to confirm that views from sources like Stumbleupon will actually decrease your page rank with search engines like Google. Since the bounce rate for those visitors is so high, and their visits so short, Google thinks that the article has less value. (I have also read that the page rank is determined by the bounce rate from people who search for your  article on Google, not on social media pages. I am not sure what is true anymore.) If this is true, over time your page will gain less views, and since those views are from the search engine, and are people searching for an answer, you will have less impressions in the long term and lose money.
      Edit: I think this holds true to visitors from Flipboard too. I have had a lot of visitors from that site some days but did  earn much more than on a normal day. Facebook and Pinterest?

      replyreport
      1. 86

         Marisa Wrightposted 6 years agoin reply to this

         DrMark is spot on!  Stumbleupon is not only a lot of effort for a few extra visits, those visits can actually do more harm than good.
         
         I'm not sure about Flipboard.  The big problem with Stumbleupon is that most people using Stumbleupon are randomly surfing, and they don't stop to read.   However I'm guessing that people who read a Flipboard magazine are genuinely interested in the subject, so they are more likely to visit with the intent t read.  However, not familiar enough with Flipboard to know.

         replyreport
7. 94

   CYong74posted 6 years ago

   Stumbleupon is not what it used to be, but it does still bring in some traffic for me. However, you do need to be very consistent and proper in your usage of it, otherwise, whatever you add will not be stumbled. Not upon. Not in an entire year.

   replyreport
8. 86

   ReViewMeMediaposted 6 years ago

   You also need to make sure your article is in the right category, before I figured out how to use it, I had no idea how to tag articles there, I fixed it and got a big influx of traffic.

   replyreport
9. 90

   aesta1posted 6 years ago

   I think that the best thing you've said in your post is to use the anchor text that matches whatever your article is trying to get ranked for in Google. With more people searching by voice, you need to make sure this anchor text is also what people use for voice search.

   replyreport