How to Write Hubs That Will Attract Visitors from Search Engines

What are the best subject areas to Hub about if you want to receive a lot of traffic? That's a good question! We've pooled the expertise of our staff and the community and have these pointers to offer:

Here are some tried and true methods utilized by our staff and community:

• Robin Edmondson recommends visiting the Answers section on HubPages to find good prompts for Hubs.
• Paul Deeds recommends writing about what you know best. What is your career? What are you good at? Hub about it!
• Maddie Ruud recommends utilizing Google Trends to see if any hot topics might be bubbling up that are not already well-covered but are nonetheless evergreen. This is a great way to enjoy a first-mover advantage.
• Marina Lazarevic advocates writing down all Hub ideas down in on place.
• Marina Lazarevic also recommends going through old school papers to see if they might be adapted into rich online resources.
• frogdropping and Susana S recommend taking a hint from the auto suggestions seen when composing searches on Google. Use the long-tail queries as a starter. You know people are searching for them so why not try and see if they're worthy?
• rebekahELLE recommends taking note of people's everyday questions and problems to get an idea of what people might search for online. This is a great way to spot new trends and grab an online niche before anyone else does.
• Shayla Ebsen uses rebekahELLE's method along with the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to add some quantitative analysis to the research process.

What's more, you can always find something to write about by joining in on Weekly Topic Inspiration- a special program in which a new search-friendly topic is selected each week for the community to discuss and Hub on as a group.

In the world of online writing (at least when it comes to earning an income), some subjects and topics are better than others. The subjects below are considered the best:

• Anything that is not yet currently well-covered online
• How Tos and product comparison guides

Local and hyperlocal topics also do relatively well, but Google has changed the way that it displays search results so that with many local searches, all of the top slots are taken up by Google Map results, local results, and paid advertisers. Check your search term before writing on a local topic; if the search results are cluttered with maps and the like, go for a more long tail topic, e.g., from San Francisco Restaurants to Pet Friendly San Francisco Restaurants- notice the difference in the way results are presented.

Generally speaking, these topics do not offer a lot of long-term traffic or income online, so if you're out to be found or to make some extra cash, you might want to direct your time away from these subjects:

• News (only likely to get traffic for a short period of time)
• Viral internet videos or memes (they have a short shelf life)
• Reviews of low-cost products (people don't tend to research these much before buying)
• Entertainment subjects* (these subjects tend to have lower ad revenue)
• Anything personal (people are not searching for your personal blog posts)

*kerryg can tell you that, at times, entertainment-related subjects can be so popular that they still manage to bring an income to an author even though the ads on those pages do not earn a whole lot - the sheer volume can be enough to overcome the low revenue topic.

For further reading, check out the blog post by Jason Menayan that inspired this guide!