How to Create a Hub Summary
85Creating a Summary for your Hub
Nothing makes one want to watch a movie like a good preview. These brief introductions do a wonderful job at piquing audience interest and driving viewers to theaters. The same goes for online articles.
The summaries that accompany Hubs when they're listed in search engines and other popular Web services can often make the difference between people passing them over or clicking through to read more. We therefore encourage you to enter a brief summary of your Hub before you publish.
Why is your Hub summary an important part of your Hub creation process?
After your Hub is published and indexed by search engines, the summary will show up under your title in search results from search engines like Google and Bing. Having a summary that is different than the text in your Hub has shown to be beneficial to your rankings, so we advise all writers to write unique summaries. The summary you give to a Hub will be used as a hidden "meta description" tag- something many search engines and web services use as summary/preview text for your Hub.
Writing a custom summary takes very little effort, but doing so can help your Hub gain extra visibility among some search engines and websites, so consider adding this activity to your regular Hub publishing routine.
Please Don't Write Summaries that...
- are keyword stuffed
- are repeats of your title or other sentences in your Hub
- are self-promotional
What Should I Put in my Summary?
Summaries should:
- be three or four short sentences.
- be different than any sentences in your Hub.
- give a general overview of what your Hub is about.
- contain two or three keywords that searchers are looking for (remember, any keywords that you use in your summary should be used in your Hub. Your goal is not to trick readers to come to your Hub, but to provide a useful overview of what your Hub contains. In other words, don't overdo it!)
- draw your reader in. Let your readers know that it's worth it to make the click to visit your Hub. After all, you've written a great article, let them know!
The Summary Box
Where do I input a Hub Summary?
You can input your summary while in edit mode of a Hub. Simply click on the Summary tab to the right of your Hub capsules and input your summary! The tab is under the Add More Capsules and Tip boxes (a screenshot of the Summary tab is to the right.)
What is the "A" Symbol on the My Account Page
The "A" symbol on your My Account page lets you know which Hubs are still in need of summaries. We recommend going through all of your Hubs that have the "A", clicking "edit" and updating your summaries. Thanks to our engineer Edward Zhang for creating this useful reminder!
Wondering why we chose the letter "A"?
Our resident graphic designer, James, chose the letter "A" as the symbol because it is the universal term for text in the Serif font.
