The Rewards of Actively Participating on Hub Pages - The Hub Score Rewards Components – Secret Traffic Sources Revealed!

Before I get into it I want to throw out there some of the basics most people ask about and give you an idea of what were going to discuss in this article.

This hub unlocks the elusive questions:

1. What is a hub score, what's the difference between a hub score and author hub score
2. what is the benefit of having a higher score
3. How those scores work
4. What makes them higher or lower
5. What components (I believe) are involved in the algorithm
6. How psychology and quality articles tie into the score
7. How to score- Higher.
8. The hidden Traffic sources on hub pages
9. How hub pages is a "Traffic Capacitor and Server"
10. How Leaving comments, reading people's hubs, adding fans and more, all lead to higher traffic flow to your hubs by tapping the plumbing of hubpages.com's vast traffic flow conduits
11. How hubpages is designed to draw in, recycle, and funnel millions of hits of traffic a day and how your hubs can aquire some of that cake.
12. How participation of all users is essential to making this synergy of traffic flow higher, targeted and adding value to hubpages (which ads value to your hubs)
13. more..

Although I have no access or idea what the exact algorithms are I have discovered Theories about:

• What is involved in the process
• What makes the hub scores count
• What Hub Scores are for
• How they are critical to your hub page earning success- Primarily traffic and higher rankings on Google.
• Why you should Worry about your hub score, and participation level and especially your hub's "Plumbing"

In my short time with HubPages so far I've learned alot about how this site opperates. I've paid close attention to how my my hub's, Hub Scores, Traffic, links, and many other things behave.

I take nothing for granted so from day one I've been paying attention and I have learned some powerful hidden (by hidden I mean most people don't realize they exist or how they work) features this site employs to help its members as a whole.

I've come to realize just how powerful this site's very design and infrastructure is at drawing in, funneling, and recycling traffic. The brilliant design of this site is incredibly efficient and lucritive for all on it, not just the creators but each and every author, hub, and feature on this site is efficiently synergized to generate "power in numbers".

This site makes efficient use of:

1. Networking (in general)
2. Social Networking (web 2.0 concepts)
3. Traffic aquisition and flow
4. Monitization potential (potential to earn money)
5. Community Support synergies for conversions of new hub page authors from newbie to expert in a very short time (which is valuable to the whole)
6. Ambition Strategies
7. Link "Plumbing"
8. and more that I'll discuss in detail in this hub.

I have discovered these primarily by watching how my hubs behave and what behaviors have contributed to my hubs higher scoring. This hub is based on my experience and assessment, and research from other hubers on what these scores mean. It's pretty cut and dry if you ask me. Traffic.

Don't worry about the Hub Score when your hub is first published.

Honestly 60 - 71 is the average "starter Score" and if your within this range your doing well. If your score starts out around 49- 60 your still ok- If it doesnt stay that way too long. I have hubs that started out at 49 and are now (by doing nothing after publishing them) at 91. This is called Seasoning or Marinating.

Part of the algorythm is traffic (changes daily all the time), comments, dynamic content, link backs, and the like. So realize that Building that article is just the beginning of the scoring process.

If your article never goes above 50 you may want to go back and retool the ad. Some hubs however stay around this number if for example, the hub is just a bunch of pictures, YouTube videos, and not alot of words or paragraphs (which is allowed as their are very little limitations to what you can hub about..

But its the words that really make your initial score higher, and traffic however can up even a page with nothing but artwork. Traffic is the major contributor to the Hub Score in my experience.

Part of this score where by hubs themselves are concerned happen AFTER your hub is published and seasoned, simmers and acquires traffic. If you don't participate in the forum you may not go above 94 in hub author score (as I've never seemed to breech this score and have done everything but interact with the forum.

I'll explain everything I've discovered about this and show you the facinating world you may have taken for granted. FREE Traffic.

This hub is going to take you through both the theories, of the algorythms, of both what makes your hub page (individual articles) and hub author score higher. I will mostly talk about what affects the experience of the visitor, your interactions with the other hubers, the site, and traffic, but I will leave it up to you to convert this information into what you need to do to your hubs to make them score higher.

I do this because not all hubs will be the same, and since the majority of the hub score is the traffic and behavior of the traffic the formating of your hubs is only a small part of what makes that traffic behave the way they do, including but not limited to going to your page and sticking around to read your article.

Hub Scrores are not affected fully by the format as much as they are by the way you write, the quality of your writing, the attention to details such as how you choose your pictures, how you write your headings, and even how you break your paragraphs so it's more pleasing to the eyes not overwhelming to the tired brains that may land on your page after looking at 100 really badly written pages that lead them nowhere fast.

The weakest link in the chain is always the human equasion and hub scores are no different, although this factor is judged mostly by the traffic and behavior. Hub pages has taken incredible pains to protect your article writing formatting, by limiting what you can do, your forced to stick with the most potent format.

They've offered you the amazing tools to generate a masterpeice, the capsule format.

Traffic will be determined by your efforts in many areas which I will break down here. I hope by the end of this article you understand the hub score as I've come to comprehend it, and will take steps to monitize your page for earnings and traffic exuberance.

Formatting formatting formatting

Their are alot of factors that affect traffic quality that can be reflected by the formatting of your hub such as links outbound, where your inbound hits come from, how many links you have and how many go to one page only.

If several of your hubs are linking to one particular page this is known as a behavior pattern of linking and you lose points for this. If you link more than two times to the same domain in one hub or overlink to one domain in a series of hubs, you are breaking hubpages terms of service.This is known as over promotion.

Although part of the score is your formatting efforts the majority is how your visitors behave on your pages so what we need to control here, to raise the hub score, is traffic, which I assume is the point of the scoring system. Your score is based not only on raw inbound traffic but by where it comes from (if its coming from hubpages or from outside the site).

Awareness comes when you start asking questions about the hub score. The next step is inquiring other hubers hubs on what they've found out about how the system works. Seasoned hubers have experience in some areas new hubers don't but because they share this experience in hubs its easy for even new hubers to learn from their experience and wisdom. This is part of what makes this site so powerful.

This hub would not be possible without the many who helped me understand it.. I learned alot of behaviors of the hubscore algorythms watching my own hubs but reading the many available and concise hubs on every aspect of the hub score helped me comprehend and know what to watch for.

It's like reading body language, which requires a "key" to understanding what your seeing. Only with learning hub score your learning how to write so that your hubs generate the key. The Hub Score.

A major factor in your hubs that will either drive a guest to read your article or click out of your page is appearance, organization and appeal.

If your topic is interesting but they see a long stream of endless text and no pictures, many will leave. A very small percentage may stay but the majority will leave. Let me explain:

This is due to the overwhelm effect of too much reading. Many people landing on your hub are there for research purposes of one kind or another and the pictures, movies and links out help them navigate this research with less trouble.

The pictures and movies give the reader a chance to relax, and even with a huge hub pictures and videos can make the page more appealing because the pictures tell a story, at least they should. You can actually gauge your articles "flow" of information if your pictures are added with intelligence. This will help you to edit and it will help your reader simultaneously.

Another tip I learned in a hypnotic writing course is break all paragraphs every 6 lines or so. The longer your paragraphs the more the perception of "heavy reading" is felt by the reader.

Also people often stop reading to get a drink or use the restroom, its nice to know that you can finish a thought/paragraph then go do that but the concept of finishing a LONG paragraph when you really got to go.. Is daunting and infects their perceptions of your work.

Be careful what pictures you use, they must focus on the story or articles theme, not just be there for appeal.

Formulating your pictures just right helps your readers. Adding random pictures for "window dressing" but with no relevance to your hubs details is not a good idea because it can inadvertently trick your reader. Insulting your guests intelligence (even if not your goal or intention, remember perception is reality- Their Perception) is a sure fire way of "infecting" traffic on hubpages.

All traffic to your hub is potential traffic to other hubs and thus we are responsible to not infect this traffic with a bad impression of the page, its formats and its usefulness

Traffic that flows to your page will potentially flow to other pages which means we all have a certain responsibility to take care of our guests for everyone's sake. When a guest visits our page this becomes a filter through which they see the next or contrast the next page against.

When a guest is infected (upset, feel betrayed by the page etc..) this reflects on the site, and they may bounce out of the page feeling they wasted their time.

They may feel like one does when they realize their knee deep into a page that was really spam but made them think it was real info because they thought your pictures were about the paragraph and yet they find out their just there for no real reason having to do with your writing. This leads them to think you felt your writing was so boring or uninteresting that you had to dress it up with pictures.

The other thing that could happen is if your page is poorly written, poorly formatted or just annoying, and they go to a better page within hubpages network, this will make them not want to return to YOUR pages or to see your other works.

A visitor can view all hub pages in the infected view of your page because we all look alike, changing only in pictures, some minor changes in layout and the words we write.

The law of association can come into play and visiting any page that is formatted like yours that they feel betrayed them and wasted their time could be seen through a bad filter. This is what I mean by infecting them. Since all hub pages are generally formatted alike this could be a bad thing, a loss of a potential visitor and even a potential hub page author sign up.

Infected visitors bounce out and may not return, as they see the pictures and headings format in a negative light when it's actually supposed to be a useful tool. No one likes to waste their time, especially when this takes them away from their family. Although this is not a huge problem it is a potentially serious problem you should be aware of when building your hubs.

Hubs written like blogs score low

Don't build them like a blog build them like a hub, a professional and quality information "hub". Every piece of your hub counts in one way or another. Theirs no such thing as a benign feature or piece of your published page.

Hub Score exists to help you marry concepts that generate lucritive and valuable hubs.

Hub pages very format is designed to enhance the end result and this is why the hub score exists, to help you realize where you stand in the creation and end result of your hub. Too many people worry about the score being low or high but don't put a lot of thought into what it all means. They think of it as a punishment or reward system but in reality it's a way to help you calibrate your hubs and potential on hubpages and much more. Hub page author score is a different animal and we'll get to that later. Together the two scores create a synergy of quality articles that make money, traffic and interaction which fuels the traffic capacitor.

I do however like how it makes people ask questions and improve their experience, ability to write better hubs and become a more valuable part of the hub pages team of authors. The scoring system is brilliant for motivating authors to better themselves, their articles and to participate in the system more (which is highly valuable traffic wise as well as synergistically as I'll explain below).

Building a useful Hub requires two layers of genius. Layer one is the "scan" layer, Layer two is the immersion layer.

When a researcher lands on your page after reading a hundred other pages, they are at this point probably going to scan down for headings and pictures to assess if this page has what they need. Like a TV commercial the pictures and headers work together to tell the pages story. The movie "trailer" in this analogy is the pictures and headers and the "movie" or details are the paragraphs.

another way to think about this is:

Commercials for movies take the best points and draw you in to wanting to see the rest of the movie (details). So should your hubs using proper and powerful headings and pictures.

They should be formatted in a way that one could remove the headings, and pictures in order and could actually write a commercial about your hub as if it were a movie.. You've seen those commercials that flash a line of text then a powerful image, then text again.. this is the idea I'm going for.

For this reason capsules, layout and quantity count towards the score of your hub I'm noticing, but although not a huge chunk of the scoring I believe they are very important.

Build your hubs in two layers. Pictures/headers (scan layer: overview of the articles meaning) and the rest (immersion layer: paragraphs, links, rss, etc..). Personally I write the whole hub in word then I insert them into the format keeping in mind the first layer, pictures and headers are important.

I don't spend a lot of time initially worrying about this as I can always go back in edit mode (after waiting a day from completion to clear my head and read it more "refreshed" like my visitor) and do the scan thing to see how easy it is to feel out the hubs "movie" in the once over. Don't be in a hurry to publish your article, you will get more "sticky" traffic if you take your time and do it right. You want each visitor to return or look at your other work. A quickly created hub could turn them off forever to your work.

Usually you can pick out key capsules (text) that need to be adjusted. Your ready to publish when your hub is well written AND when the picture/heading scan can accomplish the "Movie Trailer" effect of your page. Your page is of little use if people bounce in and bounce out without reading it. Your goal should be to want clicks not just hits.

Note on Hub Author score and its potential to hurt you if it dips below 70

HubPages is a well respected site for the quality it generates, so releasing pages that are not built right, or that don't fit the high standards of most hub pages can hurt you and the synergy of the site itself. This is partially why we have the hub author score as well as the hub page score. The site will step in and flag your hub if it becomes a quality problem, and if your hub author score dips below 70 this affects all of your hubs.

One thing it affects is outbound affiliate links to other hubs. For example you can link to other hubs on the site and use your affiliate link so you get paid on a percentage of the traffic you generate to their page through your link. If your hub author score dips below 70 that affiliate link becomes a standard link (meaning it still drives traffic but your not allowed to profit from it).

Your pictures and headers should tell an exciting story about your article so the reader can't wait to dive in to the "details" of the work. They alone can be responsible for bounce rates or people sticking around to read the whole thing. The headers should be formulated to summarize the paragraphs in the capsule (text capsule) but also be key worded for Google.

Keywords used in your headers should also be used in your entire capsule for consistency. Using synonym keywords helps avoid appearing to be keyword stuffing or just stuffing keywords all over the place with no real purpose.

Appeal is very important to your pages performance traffic wise and as far as it making you money. The appeal is not directly a part of the hub score but rather what is important to the hub score and indirectly to the appeal (the customers view of your page) is the format or back end of the appeal. Think of it like a person.. beauty is skin deep but their personality is what you really judge their external beauty by..

With your hubs it is well known that if you format your capsules and keywords a certain way the chances of your article being easy to crawl for Google spiders is pretty good. Traffic is the real score generator however as I think things like how long they stay on your page (showing the page is intuitive and interesting) may have a part in the play of your hub score formulation. I believe even tags both what you choose as your keywords in them and how many you use (not too many or too little) have a part as well.

Since everything on hubpages is formatted using capsules, as a way to help the user both build the page with little experience in web design, and to assure the page is built for SEO (search engine optimization), they can easily track the steps and formats you use and determine how closely you follow the "plan" for high traffic formatted hubs.

I noticed right away when I added two capsules to my blank template with nothing on it to judge but the heading (main title at the top) that my score went up 4 points.

This means they encourage you to use a lot of capsules to separate blocks of text (and because doing so helps you remember to focus the paragraphs down, and use descriptive headings that Google will see and use to rank your page), and to use them for pictures, videos and so forth for several reasons.

In my experience I noticed that the page is constantly being ranked, even while you edit it. Every time you preview it or click "done editing" the page is sent through the algorithm filter (notice the long time it takes to load the preview and to save the page?)...

This can help you when building the page and tweaking it just so. But don't try to tweak it to a high score as this is not generally useful because like I said the traffic and marinating of the page do that for you.. part of this is links coming into your page. Where the traffic is coming from, is it from hub pages or off the site.. I believe is a piece of the algorithm.

Everyone of your hubs has a statistics link that you can see the traffic and where it came from, so I assume that on and off hubpages traffic adds to the algorithm that determines the score. Since off hub pages traffic is important to the sites growth I believe the more off hubpages traffic your hub generates the higher your score.

Traffic is not just yours, its funneled throughout the site. You receive traffic from the site in many ways that we'll get to but the main fuel of this being possible is you doing your part to bring in traffic from outside the site not just enjoying what's here.

I find a lot of people don't indulge however in the amazing amounts of traffic on the site anyway because their not building the "canals" to allow it to flow into their hubs. We'll talk about this in length later in this hub.

Google pays close attention to your headings more than the paragraphs so be sure to use keywords that Google will see and use to put relevant ads on your page.

Although the keywords in your headings are used to contrast against keywords in the paragraphs following them up to the next heading so don't think for a second that the paragraphs are less important than the heading. The headings are simply seen predominately first and then used as a cipher to determine consistency of your paragraph (amongst many other factors).

Hub score in part is determined by how easily your page may bring IN traffic to the site, and many "algorithms" are in place to determine this part of the score. You are very much in control of your score, but most simply have no concept or idea of what the algorithms are based on.

Their is no worse waste of Adsense use than to have bad keywords on your page or lack of them, or lack of or bad tags. If you neglect these areas you will be served ads that no one will click simply because someone (for example) looking to read about passion doesn't want to go look at a play station advertisement..

But an ad about checking out more information on pheromones would. This has nothing to do with your hub score but I thought I'd throw that in as it is important. But using several capsules helps your score I noticed. May not be much but it does do something in my experience.

The major beginnings of your hub page score are in the title you choose for your url and for the title of your page (they can be different). You want your title to be unique but to use keywords that are also unique. You can reach a hub score of 70 (or higher maybe) just by picking a good keyword rich and formatted right title url. They mention the importance of this in the PDF file you got when you signed up and the score being so drastically different for me when I make new hubs before I ever add anything else backs up this claim.

Your organization is important as well. How your page is laid out affects your score and affects the way Google spiders crawl your page. You want to make it easier for Google to crawl your page so set up is important.

An example is Google will look at your "headers" based on tags highlighting them in the html of your page. If you have your headers rich with appropriate keywords for your pages context and theme, then in your paragraphs you have used them a lot as well (and its good to use synonyms of keywords in your text as they mean the same thing yet are different words and you don't get hit with keyword stuffing and yet they become more valuable (I read this on an SEO guru site))

Google will see that your title keywords match your paragraphs "context" as the keywords are there with synonyms etc.. and will mark your page as consistent which is valuable to the end visitor they want to send to the info your offering. Organizing your page this way is a good idea, but I recommend you write your pages context first then go back and upgrade words in your writing to keywords.

Do not just try to use keywords in sentences and base your article on this structure as they will know. The flow won't be unique and this is a vital part of their mission as well.. One source said they asked Google and Google told them, write the articles for the visitor not Google and you will be rewarded.

Writing it then keyword optimizing it is ok as the context will be natural and consistent not generated from a list of keywords. You can also use these keywords in your tags so this helps you to create tags too. Doing it this way is not trying to cheat really its trying to optimize your articles to help Google spiders not have to work so hard hence they reward you for your efforts.

Google is in the business of selling quality information, their very product is quality pages like yours, so if you want top ranking you have to write your articles with utmost quality and appeal. Below I'll introduce you to the concepts in making a quality and seductive page that will keep guests commin back over and over again with anticipation for what you have to show them next (*smirk* )(*wink*)

After this we'll dive into some of the other areas of interest to the hub score and how this powerful machine called HubPages.com is built to help your success in many amazing ways that depend on your interaction to really extract its electricity.

The system is plug -n- play but I must emphasize "Play" meaning interaction in all areas of the basketball court so to speak. People sitting on the bench tossing the ball back once in a while when it slips out of the players hands won't get you much traffic, but playing the game actively will. This hub will open your eyes to the game's blueprint.. Then it's up to you to activate your power.

Let's talk about the appeal of your hubs and how they relate to the relationship you have with your visitors or "Guests". I had a lot of fun with this next section and I hope you find it funny not offensive.. It's meant to drive the point home in a very funny (and unique?) way.

Attraction is key to keeping visitors on the page to read it all, to get them to book mark the site (this and value of your information and uniqueness), to get them to tell a friend, and to really give your visitor a unique mental dining experience they will remember and cherish. A good article stands out in many ways.. Like this next section, you'll probably not find another like it on hubpages.. so here goes my contribution to a unique dining experience *smiles*

The Hidden traffic sensations inside hubpages will excite you and make you want to hit up your partner hubs with more anticipation, teasing and vitality.

You will want to direct more of your efforts to stimulating those fantastic hubs of theirs.. You've ignored their needs long enough.. Let's give them some now and they will give you some later... Traffic that is... (Where is YOUR mind?)

Learn how each movement in the building of the whole act synergizes with the whole, and how each movement causes the score to rise and the end result will be pleasure and productive at the same time. Knowing is half the battle. Knowing how each part works to make the whole thing exciting, productive, and synergistic gives you the power to bring about any result you want.. Just by tweaking each movement just so.

In this hub I'm going to introduce you to the not so openly discussed parts of hub pages, the intimate side of this money making engine.. and how the oil goes in and lubricates the gears. That oil is TRAFFIC. So the HubScore and HubAuthor Score is the oil pressure gauge.

If you remember one thing you will grasp fully the hub author and hub page score's mission. Social Networking, and Traffic Networking.

If you grasp the social networking aspect of building your pages, making them both unique and content rich (evergreen), organized and useful, informative and easy to read, navigate and a pleasure to look at..

That's the first step.. The second step is to network with your fellow Huber's and their are many ways to do this on this site that directly and indirectly drive traffic to your hubs for your efforts. Think of this site as a community of writers who are here to make money helping one another and you'll grasp the scoring aspect of the hubs and hub authors.

I think of linking to other hubs, hubtivity links (explained later in this hub), comment links (in hubtivity and other places), and the vast networking vehicles built right into the hubpages site like electric plug outlets all over your house.

All you have to do is write a powerful article then monetize it by plugging in both the normal external traffic monetization stuff (keywords, getting them bookmarked etc..) but more importantly (at first especially) other hub pages.

The outside world of traffic is hard to get your share of, competition is seriously fierce but on hub pages people don't realize the odds are better yet the traffic flowing through this site is phenomenal and is coming from mostly Google and other search engines!!

Realize people that this traffic is acquired via the synergy that is 100,000 hubpages users efforts to drive traffic to their own pages. By design if you don't go out and lay the plumbing in your hubs and through your hubtivities.. your vetoing your rights to that free traffic by way of isolation of your hubs from it.

Your hub is like an island in a very populated area but if you don't build those bridges to the main land well.. people aren't going to swim over are they?

These efforts are by the design of the hubpages "canal" efficiently being funneled (recycled?) to other areas of hub pages, other hubs, and even profiles (which due to the hubtivity section creates amazing hyperlinks to other sides of the universe the visitor is on and otherwise wouldn't have found!).

It's kind of like how water enters your house through a main pipeline then gets routed to the toilet, the kitechen sink, bathroom sink, sprinkler systems outside, pool, and so forth. Water that goes down the drain gets routed back to the resevoir, but in hub pages traffic terms this traffic isnt routed back to google.

The Extra traffic is routed back through the hub pages community targeted and thirsty to read your articles. Usually your traffic comes from like hubs (the power of imitating a hubs concept in your own words is shown here).

If you just funneled this traffic on the site here you would through them acquire the outside traffic, book marking and so on.. in a much easier way. This site is a traffic capacitor and server and people are looking more towards the outward traffic but ignoring the potential inside.

Think of it like water in a dam of a city.. all you need to tap that water supply is plumbing to the filter plant. Well hub pages has ways to tap that flow of traffic FREE, once you set up the plumbing (links to other hubs and more ways described below) it becomes not a one way link out, but a two way link exchange. Your comments on their page work as a link exchange stimulation if you think about it. Your leaving a comment does several things:

• It plugs your hub page onto their hubtivity as leaving a comment, and that link has your hub page link and the comment link in it
• The comment box inlcudes a link back to your profile where they can check out all your hubs
• Leaving a comment is actually like spraypainting your link back on their hub, so leave kind and fruitful comments that compliment them and show your a really nice guy/girl.. the very way you write your comment may prompt someone to visit your hubs/profile.. language is powerful stuff!
• see the power of a simple plumbing fixture called "comments"? I go into this more below.. it will blow your mind because theirs more to it..

I'm not saying you should ignore outside traffic, by no means am I suggesting this as this is what brings the traffic in, each persons efforts waters the plants of traffic vehicles, and keeps the canal wet with flow..

All I'm saying is that you should monetize your hubs ALSO to make use of this internal traffic which is very substantial, so much so that their are thousands of hub authors here for no other reason than to drive traffic from here to their website outside of hubpages!

They follow the rules, write good hubs but their doing it all as a collective effort to funnel some of this "easy" traffic to their site! Which is fine as long as they help us out at the same time with quality articles and so on.

It's like most hub pages authors have a huge gasoline reservoir here in town and their working extra hard to import gas from over seas.. again they need to sure, but not with as much effort as they are, some of that effort should go to juicing up their hubs to draw more hubpages traffic. You do this by raising your score.. you raise your score by all of the factors in this hub (and I'm sure many I haven't discovered yet)..

The power here is in numbers. Your small contribution (investment) of writing your articles so google ranks you higher bringing IN traffic, and your bookmarking efforts, linkbacks, writing to other blogs to get more traffic and so on..

All help you but imagine the bigger picture here, your doing this and 100,000 others doing this creates one hell of a flow of inbound traffic, and hubpages is designed to funnel this traffic, recycle it and integrate it (sign ups which by the way could happen when they visit your page/profile so have your sign up links on your hubs!!!! don't let money slip through your fingers!)

Links to other hubs are also (if you affiliate link them) sign up links, so the very act of promoting others hubs also becomes your way of building potential affiliate sign ups AND making some revenue from your traffic that clicks ads on their page! its a win win my friend.

The plumbing system is the key here and its not that complicated, but it does require you to know what your doing. Your plumbing system helps others because as you draw in traffic you also funnel it out when their done with your hub.. so not having a plumbing system (links out) is robing your fellow hubers of that traffic potential, and its a disservice to the traffic itself. A waste of resources if you ask me.

You realize the Hub score is a barometer of where you stand in acquiring free traffic from hub pages, but simultaneously where you stand in relation to having a good franchise hub that has the potential to earn you top dollar. It's also (the most widly understood meaning) a measurement of how good a huber you are in the community.

The score is benign in and of itself. It means nothing really on the surface, but when you go deeper to define how that score is made, what it means at the component levels.. Ahhh then you realize the hidden power of this site..

To both drive traffic to those who act selflessly, and help one another.. to those who work hard to build a quality product for search engines (and ultimately for the people using those search engines which makes Google like hubpages more which helps hubpages help you help other Huber's help you (its an endless but lucrative cycle here) ) .

Speaking of franchise, realize that is exactly what you got here. A turn key operation, an opportunity handed you by hubpages authors and creators to use as a launch pad, for your writing career.

Here your given both the training by other Huber's, the forums, the help files and more, your given the tools and traffic, everything you need to run your writing franchise and all for free. It's set up to make Adsense, eBay, Amazon and possibly soon yahoo revenues very simple.. Just plug your account in and go write.. Learn the keywords and link backs and so forth but mainly just write..

Unlike most franchises you pay no fees (other than 40% of your page views but if you make nothing theirs no bill to pay like most franchises) and you can write new recipes and revenue earning articles without asking permission to do so.. You just are asked to follow the franchise format (for your own good and to assure they get all that traffic to funnel to your hubs if you help play the game to keep the flow of traffic coming in and moving throughout the site.)

How do you do this? This is the next fascinating hidden trait of Hubpages traffic flow... Traffic is the main reason for the scoring. Traffic is everything that matters past the hub pages articles themselves. But without traffic their just articles with no value.. traffic gives your work value and opens the doors to potential revenue. Traffic being the main currency on hub pages the scoring is how they divy up the collectively generated flow of traffic to the site!

The synergy of hub page articles and efforts work like traffic magnets, but hub pages has created a "canal" for this flow of traffic in such a way that for example say you bring in a hit from your bookmarked page.. while this visitor is on your page they can access other hubs from it:

• From the "Related" hubs listing on the right border of your article
• From your profile if they check it out they can see "hubtivity" which lists several of your fan clubs hubs
• Their are links to hubs in every corner of this site, in various parts of every page.. They may link to one hub from your hubtivity, then see another in their hubtivity or on the related hubs box.. they could be there for hours just surfing hubs from links within a hub article itself or more.. this is why we should link to each others hubs, one for money, and two to give hubpages a "track record" for google to see and send us more traffic by ranking our hubs higher automatically! The third one I beat to death.. plumbing, the pipelines of seemless traffic flow.

By it's very brilliant design, this site reaches out to the web and is optimized to bring in traffic. Alot of this traffic is based on the content on the site. This means you are an active part of this process.

The way the hub building tools, the community training newbies, and the design of the entire construct/infrastructure of hub pages creates almost automatic quality hubs. The tools help you to focus to high ranking standards by limiting what you can do and how you can do it.

The features not available in the hub pages creation tools such as colors fonts, and so forth are limitations that help you build more professional hubs that bring in a more intellectual audience. In the information age most of your traffic is intellectually focused individuals.

The capsule concept is brilliant as it helps you realize to seperate your paragraphs into seperate capsules also means adding new headings (whcih google loves) for that block of text. It looks great too. It also is such an involved process your more inclined to tweak your article just right to a high quality feel. It makes building quality hubs in format almost intuitive.. and writing the article more focused becomes automatic over several hubs..

Hubs are practically built with quality by the very design of the sites creation tools, and this makes more than not a high percentage of the hubs produced high quality which makes google really like the site and rewards such quality with more traffic in the form of higher rankings automatically. This took hubpages authors 2 years to do and they've made this site a very high traffic site. WIth all this traffic being brought in (30+ Million hits a day) hub pages wanted to offer some of it to the people who helped make it happen. YOU.

But they wanted to assure the traffic was given to those quality hubs not the spam producing authors they didnt catch yet, or thos hubers who werent an active part of the system. You see hub pages is part organic in that its a living breathing entity. The traffic is not by any means automatic or automated. It's the continuous building of hubs, the traffic funneling via the actions of the over 100,000 users and the satisfaction of the search engine traffic that makes google want to send us this valuable traffic.

Hub pages is no longer just about the creators and their efforts, its about us and ours too. If it werent for us the site wouldnt get all this traffic, so its a synergistic effort of all of our work. Part of that work is done in our participation. It's one thing to build fantastic pages but its quite another to get those pages recognized in the search engines. By our very reason for being here- to make some money, were all working hard to get top ranking on the search engines, primarily google. All these efforts collectively are part of what is bringing the traffic in. HubPages team are also doing things to tune this hubpages.com engine up so that all the parts are naturally by design bringing in traffic as well and targeting that traffic better.

Once this traffic comes in, no matter where it came from, hubpages wants to make these people happy, which makes google happy. To do this the site is designed to give them options, and to help them move about the articles in an intuitive sort of way. Funneling the traffic helps google recognize what sites are valuable to the traffic it sends there. They are paying attention to every hub on the site, as every hub has adsense on it and those pages are crawled daily so how the machine works is as important as how much traffic it generates. How this traffic is efficiently helped counts for alot.

HubPages takes great pains to funnel traffic efficiently and effectively and thus the impressive design of the site is based on this very complex principal simplified for the users.

When someone finds one of your hubs interesting and valuable they often join your fan club. Sounds benign right? It's everything but.

Fan clubs both being a part of someone else's and them being on yours is a very powerful tool in traffic building within the hubpages community (remember also that their traffic visitors are potential hubpages author conversions!)

You don't have to be logged in or even be a part of the community (member) to see hubtivity on someone's profile page..

This means your hub could be advertised on their profile hubtivity screen to anyone who goes to their profile.. so their profile may have the visitor their but they may scroll down to "browse" this profile and pass it to the hubtivity section and lookie there..

They left a comment on one of your hubs (or one of their fans did!) and so your hub is linked to that traffic.. Hub pages gets tens of millions of visitors a day and is designed to make efficient use of those hits, in much the same way your page should.

The system in place is designed to help every Huber acquire traffic to their hub where possible. It's truly a brilliant networking system that makes amazing strides to make your hub's visible. It's uncanny what most people don't see happening here but make note of this:

participation gets you some or a lot of that huge hits a day of traffic to hubpages.com

Hub pages is designed to reward you for participating, this means leaving comments, acquiring fans, helping and interacting in the forums. Although many will tell you this is a good way to raise your hub author score, realize that's nothing compared to the rewards you get when you do these things in relation to free traffic to your hubs and profile page.

A not too publicly known fact about hubpages is its built in networking traffic funneling features. Many of the features are plugged directly into this machine but unless you realize how it works you may never completely use it to its highest potential. I hope to break open this concept in this hub.

Once you learn the concept modules and how they all work together to synergize traffic to your hubs (which you can convert into sign ups, revenue, and more) you can utilize routines to tune your traffic engine daily.

I might add you can utilize this as a routine you do when you first log on to "warm up" for writing. I get on hubpages and go first to hubtivity, click on links of interesting hubs then comment on them after reading or at the least skimming them.

I try to stay on the page at least a few minutes reading so they don't get a "bounce rate" from Google (if someone goes in and quickly leaves this is bad for their rankings). I especially like it when a Huber whose page I visit (but am not interested in at all) puts a video on there.. This is my way to stay on the page and not bounce right off..

So I suggest you add videos if for no other reason than to keep each uninterested visitor there longer for your rankings sake. Also realize that Google likes it when your visitors leave your site via a link on the page itself. So have outbound links on there that will help the visitor continue their research.. this makes your out bound links valuable and keeps your "bounce rate" low. I assume bounce rates are a bad thing.

A great way to do this is to find a joke on YouTube relating to your topic (i.e. if its political in nature I wont read it as I hate politics myself but the titles of some political hubs don't clue me into this right away but if their was a political joke that was funny I'd watch the video because even political jokes can be hilarious.

Then I got into the forum and read some posts to catch up on any new developments. Personally I'm not allowed to post in there so I'm short this capability (I lost my cool in their once upon a time, so don't do that) but I still go in and read to see if anything new is afoot.

If I want to help my fellow new Huber I can just click on their picture in the comments and offer my advice, unfortunately no one in the forum will read it so my contribution is limited but to the Huber in need of help I've helped them (and this does help my traffic producing activity). I also add new interesting Huber's based on their interactions in the forum, and their hubs. I often use the hubtivity or forums to pick new Huber's to befriend or become a fan of theirs.

This helps you and keeps you in the loop simultaneously. These are but a few things you can integrate into your "warm up routine" that will help your traffic while helping you get your writers engines going. Often reading a great hub will inspire you to a great topic to write about!

Often you'll find inspiration in other people's hubs. Someone will write a poem on love and you'll get inspired to write a poem too on love.. Nobody owns any topic but you cannot duplicate their work exactly, you can write your take on the same concepts though.

This is especially true here on the web. When I see a hub about something I really feel passionate about I often know another way of putting what they wrote, or a new angle or want to suppliment their ideas with my own that arent in their hub. Writing a hub around the same concept helps you both. Google likes hubs around a specific topic and being unique in concept helps too, so your hub and theirs will get grouped together.

But to force this better and to make both hubs valuable to one another you contact them about a link exchange. I did this with jewel eye a hub I wrote based on antoher persons hub on body peircings. The eye ball implant/jewelery was facinating to me so I researched that part which they barely tapped on and wrote what turned out to be a very popular hub.

We linked to one anothers hubs and the traffic to mine and hers saw both hubs, as hers was on peircings and mine expanded on the eye bling thing. Expanding another concept is a great way to go, as it compliments their hub in an expansive way offering more value in many ways, some are:

• Linkbacks (google likes these)
• Link outs (google likes these)
• Helps the visitor with their research efforts and fulfills a curiosity not fully explained in the first authors hub (you both may get a book mark for this by law of association)
• It suggests a coalition between two hubers efforts and generates traffic for both, two hubs are better than one!

A higher hub score and higher hub author score does bring in more traffic but the mechanics of how that score is determined is what you need to worry about not the over all score but how each component in the system works to bring that traffic.

I like to think of it in terms of Karma. It's one thing to tell someone Do good things and you'll get rewarded with good karma. But what is more powerful, that, or telling them exactly how to do good things, listing the good things you can do daily, like smile at people, acknowledge people, help the old lady with her groceries, help your neighbor, do a kind act over and over with a lot of people, give away money don't loan it, things like that.

The former just is too broad and although it works it doesn't motivate them to what to do so they skip things they didn't realize would be considered "good karma" where by listing things gives them a map to go by and ideas to formulate. From that list they can invent new ones as it gets the concept in their head.

Same thing here at hubpages, hub score is fine but explaining the components is what really drives newbie's to excel at high traffic, as they know what to do and get ideas to do it more efficiently. It promotes them to want to read hubs for one, and since you need to learn anyway what a great way to do it, kill two birds with a single stone so to speak.. (or is it advertise two hubs with a single click/comment?)

Knowing this you can both acquire a higher score and tune up the entire engine not just the spark plugs. Its simple really. The quick answer?

Utilize every feature of the site consistently and correctly. Be a team player not a competitive mindset. Read, comment, respond, answer requests, interact in the forum, write quality hubs, follow the flagship description for writing a flagship hub and your hubs will be optimized for traffic.

You don't have to make a flagship hub to use the advice on this description. Flag ship hubs are the apedimy of how to write a high quality hub that will get traffic from Google and other engines, and also will raise your hub pages score.

Even if you don't use all the suggestions (say you use one video not 3 for example or you only write a 1000 word hub) try to use this as a contrast to your hub so you know how to write hubs better.

Even when your hub is years old if someone sees it and leaves a comment that comment shoots your page to all of those fans of the hubs networked through the fan club feature and hubtivity to the top of those many pages/profiles!!! You will be surprised how often your hubs that have seemed dead are being viewed..

It just takes one comment to put you to the top of the hubpages profile hubtivity pages.. Although not Google in proportion its pretty valuable and FREE traffic. When you show courtesy in leaving comments you're giving them the idea to look at and comment on your pages. It's simple law of reciprocation.

When you get your weekly newsletter it doesn't tell you why but every thing in it is a clue to how to get more traffic.

They show you the top Huber's, the top request fulfillers (who writes hubs to answer requests), the top hub page Readers!!!. The top forum inter-actors (they actually tell you how many posts you read and posted) and so on.. Notice the top people in all those categories are gaining heavy traffic and are all star earners.. Being in this community and being a part of it are different things. Be a part of the community and you'll get free traffic. Read other hubs, comment on them, utilize the forum (interact), write hubs, add fans, get fans.. Its all part of your mission to grab your chunk of that 30+ million hits a day! (I think it's getting much higher than that now maybe even 100 million).

Use this as your opportunity to learn monetization, hub page improvement, how to's in writing, linking and so on. Doing this improves your share of traffic to your hubs and helps you learn and earn, and earn to learn. It's a magnificently efficient site this hub pages!

Someone may click it just based on the title of your hub! Think of it like eBay, why do people click into an auction? THE TITLE!!!

This is one reason (and only one) to name your hub very effectively and exciting names.. Google isn't the only place they see it! Too many Huber's take the hubtivity and comments for granted when they are traffic builders. So when you visit anyone's hub LEAVE A COMMENT for yours and their own good. Comments do a lot of things.

• 1. They make the hub your reading fresh to search engines as the comment is added as new data to the page!
• 2. They drive traffic to your page as they show up in hubtivity
• 3. They help raise the Google rankings of that page and the hub author and hub itself, score which helps that author get more traffic (higher hub score is higher traffic potential as it pushes your page to the high traffic hot spots on hubpages)
• 4. It is good karma as it may lead to them visiting your page (out of gratitude) and leaving a comment on yours which does items 1-4 for you too)
• 5. I become the fan of all my commenter's anywhere.. for many reasons, one If their willing to leave a comment we may have like minds hence like the same information, two adding them may hopefully get them to add me, and their are many more reasons I wont go into yet.

This helps you get your new hubs (on anything) out to more people on hub pages. Your fans see your hubs the second their published in the hubtivity module that shows up when they first log in. What most people don't know is that theirs more to this than just you seeing your fan club members hubs (people whose clubs you joined).

This helps you in several ways not obvious at first. One is if they go to your hub and leave a comment, this shows up on their hubtivity. When you go to ANY hub and leave a comment this is considered hubtivity to the people who made you their fan. Now hubtivity is viewable to anyone who can access their profile (this means anyone online), but the power is usually shown in other hub page authors.

As a way of hubpages members keeping up on their favorite authors activities, including, releasing new hubs, and viewing and commenting on hubs (their interests as they may be related to your own hence why you joined their club to begin with) hub pages allows people to see your new hubs and what hubs you liked

Its a lot like how amazon.com shows you what other titles the purchasers of this book liked but here its more powerful than just what other books or hubs are cool.

When you go to any hub and leave a comment for example, that shows up on your entire fan bases hubtivity screen. (as well as your own hubtivity on your profile)

This means that inadvertently when leaving a comment anywhere your advertising that persons hub to all of your fans. Since this act is considered hubtivity its posted i.e. "Jerrico Usher left a comment on Name of hub" so all your fans sees this and can either click on the hub title and read it, or they can click comment to see what comment you left. This works in reverse too.

This means when they leave a comment on YOUR hub even though your not on their fan's list it's considered "hubtivity" meaning it gets listed on the hubtivity listing for them and their fans (people who never heard of you will see this comment left on YOUR hub by THEM and they have an opportunity to see what the person their a fan of wrote on your hub).

This sends traffic to your hub. Hubtivity is actually 100% public on all authors but when you join a fan club you are focusing the hubtivity of those who you became a fan of to one spot.. but realistically you can access anyone's hubtivity on their profile, just scroll down. In hubtivity they can see the comment (link to it is there) and the hub it came from (link to it as well).

They can click the comment (and it shoots them down to the comment this person left you) or they can click you hub title and just read your hub, either way their on your page unsolicited other than by that valuable comment. This is the ((hidden)) value of comments and "hubtivity".

Networking is Power and hub pages creators are no dummies when it comes to networking.. Brilliant huh?

I know this was long but I didnt have the patience to edit it down (and segment it into several hubs) and its been sitting in the unpublished que for months so here it is.. I thought I'd share my insights on hub page building and score..

Please excuse the mess..