Have we figured it out yet?
This is Bard of Ely's other account here and it has never done well. I was thinking that in time it would pick up and it has by a few dollars more a week, and I mean a few dollars, but I need a lot more than that or I might as well go back to oDesk and apply for the jobs at rates that are an insult to freelancers! So I have had to conclude that Tenerife is a niche subject people are simply not searching for much info on and that I was wrong to think they would.
I don't think this account got hit by Panda because if anything it has done slightly better over the past year but financially speaking it is a waste of time and effort!- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago
0All I know is that I have 230 Hubs grouped into subjects like cooking, retirement, living on the cheap, personal stuff, etc. I am not looking forward to hacking and moving some of my "children" to my ignored blog. So, until I'm ready for such an overwhelming job, I will work on my tan. Go with it, go with it. That's all I can tell myself right now. We have plenty of disappointed newbies on this site, but they have to learn that writing is a craft that must be developed. You don't become a writer just because you want to be. Hello? Hello? Anybody home???
Well, I do understand how those who have never been published are quite likely discouraged that, as with any skill or career, it takes hard work. But some of us who are new to this site are by no means new to writing as a profession. I agree it's unfortunate a percentage of people think that because they have a computer and Internet access, they have all the skills needed to 'be a writer' and therefore 'make a ton of money' on the Internet. But not all newcomers to this site are in that category. Those of us with a background in writing generally understand we have a learning curve regarding online publishing, but we fully know the work it takes to write well and be productive.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
Sure. I agree. Some people come to HubPages and have different writing backgrounds. I'm not worried about them because I happen to be one of them. They will either like it here, make it work for them, or go away to greener pastures. I'm fairly new to online, but after two years, I know it's not for me. But at the same time, I don't mind dabbling in it so that it becomes a part of my lifestyle. I've had emails from new Hubbers, and the first thing they say is, "Hey, Arlene. I'm ready to make loads of money." It has gotten to the point where I know who is going to go the distance. I am amazed how hard these people are on themselves. When they don't start making that money right away or don't make the Apprenticeship program here the first time out, they are already down on themselves and are ready to quit. Let's put it this way. If I wanted flat abs, I would be working on my diet and exercise. Probably for years and years. You don't see results right away, but some people want things to happen overnight. It doesn't matter. They want to see results right away, and that isn't possible!
Arlene, I have been here four years and come from a writer's background in which I have been paid for articles in magazines and newspapers and had a book published twice for the same work and by different publishers but here I have found it a real struggle to make money, and then just when I was starting to it all went downhill.
However, when it comes to making money online HubPages has been the best for me and the only site I could count on. That is why I am still publishing articles here.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
I am disappointed, too, Bard of Ely. But I'll give myself time to get over myself. Then I'll bounce back into doing more writing and fixing my HubPages account. The Cream of the Crop on HubPages is the Cream of the Crop for a reason. But I'm not willing to work as hard as Marye and the other writers. I am glad that she started this thread and set us straight on what she is making right now. I like what she did to her profile because she honestly states that even for her, writing and publishing is a risk. But when "ordinary" people read those old bios, they immediately think they can write and make all kinds of money. I would love to tell them that my writing here on HubPages paid for my recent appliances that I had to replaces and my new air conditioning/heating unit, but I get a laugh out of that one. It was enough to pay for a nice dinner and some craft beer after we transported and installed those by ourselves! $61!
Arlene, I am continuing to look for offline work which in my experience is far better paying and able to be relied upon! But I have also just opened a new account here as Green Bard!
Spread your content out.
Keep your Hubpages subdomain focused....Yes, I make more online from Hubpages than anywhere else, second place is Info Barrel, and some types of content seem more suited to that site than to this one.
...Not that I'm the traffic or income master of the web, but I have been doing this a while now, and I've not really lost anything, still slowly gaining. I'm looking closely at what has worked and still works, and I'm going to do more similar things to the successful pages.Marie: You have always been an inspiration to me... I have a few ideas that may help... take them with a grain of salt......
1: You tend to burry your hubs pretty deep. By this I mean that you place them in micro-niches within hubpages. If you look at your Home Canning hub, at the top of the page you can see that food and cooking have 54K followers, yet the next level down (Food Safety) has 1041 followers and you have placed your hub in food preservation which has only 142 followers. If it were my hub I would move it up to level one and put it into Food and Cooking. This should increase its hubpage exposure. They (hubpages) says they receive over 50 Million visitors a month, place your hubs where they can be found easily.
2: Add more original photographs: If we continue to look at your Home Canning Hub, it has only one photograph... its a great photograph but more would be better. I think Google looks at original photographs as a means of judging authority. Also, Make sure you put a source in your photograph...especially if the source is you.
3: Use your author name as a tag. It helps readers to find your work if they look for your name.
4: Link other hubs that you have written together if they are related. Home canning, how to grow tomatoes, how to ... etc. Readers may find your hubs and then want more information. Keep them reading your work by making it easy for them to find your other relevant work. Links work well.
5: Engage Social Media. Post your work on facebook, pinterest, and google +... they work well to grow your brand and to increase readership.
Feel free to email me if you have questions. Like I said... I enjoy your work and I hope this helps!Dave, I have to disagree with a couple of your ideas, which would require Marye to do a lot of work for no return.
The vast majority of external readers do not come to HubPages and browse around categories, they arrive at a specific Hub from one of the search engines. They may then browse, but they're more likely to click on the "what others are reading" section, which is determined using other criteria like keywords. So putting her Hubs into more generic categories would do very little to attract more external readers. The internal HubPages community is small by comparison with the thousands of readers you need to make money.
It's true that more images means more material for Google to search on - but Google's robots can't judge whether your photos are original or not. Sources are important for copyright reasons, but Google doesn't care two hoots about them. If the text of a Hub isn't attracting the search engines, then adding a few more pictures won't fix it.
Tags are invisible to the public and to Google, so adding your name as a tag won't help your Hubs be found on search engines. Search on HubPages already finds Hubbers by name. So this makes no sense at all.@marisa: except that google is not presenting her hubs so that SERP readers can read them. Moving them to a larger following places those hubs on readers feeds which exposes her hubs to a larger internal audience who them may read, share, and like, + or pin...
Re: photos: I hear all of this advice from people about photographs, etc. that seems to contridict what I have written here... the thing is my traiffic has not dropped. It ranges from day to day within its normal parameters and sometimes it shoots up... but it has not dropped.
RE TAGS: perhaps that is a recent change within hubpages...because I used to be able to find all of my hubs by google searching my name... not anymore... that's too bad... another F- for Hubpages!I understand the theory of networking with friends/other Hubbers in the hope they will share, pin etc - every little helps. But can you imagine how much time it would take Marye to edit every one of her Hubs to change the categories? She has hundreds of them. And I'd be willing to bet those follower numbers are overstated, because many members of this site simply aren't active any more - so I bet a large proportion of that "following" isn't real.
But why do you think that has anything to do with your photographs?
Yes it is, it changed with the new layout.@Marisa... I have not said that Marye should change all of her hubs. I have given her some ideas that she can try. I can see that it would be a great deal of work but considering how much revenue she has lost...it might be work worthwhile...maybe. I agree about followers... over 60% of mine have not published a hub in over 8 months...but my readers do not come from hubpages, they come from google.com, .ca, .uk, bink, yahoo, etc. However, hubpages states that they receive over 50million visitors per month.. thats a lot and worthy of attention.
RE: Photographs: google likes original photographs... I read that on googles advice page... They want original content with original photographs/video/media. On hubpages it takes six photographs to make a slide show... so I aim to put at least six photographs of my own in to my hubs... not all hubs... but most.
@ The New Layout- I do not like the new layout...Well, that figure of 50 million includes all the people who visit our sub-domains direct. Only a very small percentage of those type "hubpages.com" into their browser and browse around the site.
so their claim is slightly misleading...
I don't understand what you are trying to say here. Would you please explain and/or expand-upon this?@Aficionada: Marisa and I were discussing the claim by hubpages that hubpages receives 50 million visitors per month...infact, what they say is " Over 50 Million People discover Hubpages every month" ... To me, the word discover means new visitors or unique visitors, and the word hubpages, implies hubpages.com which further inplies that 50 million new visitors discover hubpages.com not davenmidtown.hubpages.com or Aficionada.hubpages.com etc. So my comment was that their... hubpages.com... statement is slightly misleading.
I don't see how it's misleading, personally. Every single Hub on HubPages belongs to someone's sub-domain. If you don't include our sub-domains, what's left of HubPages to discover?
When Hubpages revealed view stats for tech and fashion pages, I moved my more important pages to a vaguely related category that was out of the public eye. It had no effect on the views they received.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
Good for you, Bard of Ely! I had a couple of assignments earlier this year. I had a couple of assignments earlier this year, and one of them paid extremely well for only two weeks of enjoyable work. Now I know why actors and actresses are always reinventing themselves. Writers are the same way. I don't want to open another HubPages account. The best I can do is work with the one I've got. Ugh! Lots of changes to look forward to because I have to "narrow the focus" on 230 Hubs. That's going to be a job that I'm not looking forward to. Thank you for being such an inspiration.
Very good advice, Davemidtown - I'd not thought of using our names as keywords, but it makes sense!
Its good to see the 'worm turn' with increased traffic for the members of 'success' group who have published recently. Others have also reported increases in recent traffic. A Very Good Sign!!
It would be good to get some feedback from HP with some stats!I personally think that if we want more traffic, we have to look outside of Google. After all it is not the only search engine around, and there is also Facebook and Youtube. What annoys me, is that I do have a successful video on Youtube, it has got so far 400,000 hits, and that is within less than a year, but 90% of this traffic comes from within Youtube. In spite of its success I now hardly get any traffic from Google. This suggests to me there is now a very large bias within Google. It no longer a unbiased search engine that takes you to what you are interested in. It has its own agenda about what parts of the internet it wants you to look at. It is coming to the stage were you wan't be able to get a good ranking in Google unless you are willing to pay for it.
I don't know about bias, but Google seems unable to distinguish original videos from copies.
A few weeks ago, I saw a brilliant video within my niche that had gone viral. A few hours later, as more details emerged, I decided to write a hub about it.
When it came to going over to youtube to pick up the video, I couldn't find it, as half the world it seems, had jumped on the bandwagon and copied it, tagging it on youtube as if it was their own, but I knew from the news none of those were the original which by this time had had millions of views, and these copies had less than 100 each.
In search, Google is good at putting the original item top of page 1, but not in youtube it seems.
Anyway, I eventually found the original but I had to go back through the new stories to find it.wabond: I think you are correct that writers need to look past google to the other options available. Bing and yahoo have done really well for me...but they trail google.
You do realize that Google owns YouTube? Google has deciding shares in many online websites and as such we must adhere to their way of doing business whether we agree or not.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
A lot of my articles ARE on Google, and my traffic is slowly going up. Again. My problem is my account. There are "children" on my account that I absolutely hate. Therefore, I will need to hack and edit the ones that I am willing to work on or get rid of them completely. I am not going to analyze what is happening with the Google gods and their wrath on Hub authors. Or how HubPages and the new layout and profile has affected us. I don't care. They will fix themselves in time. Or they won't. With the new profile coming out, I need to prepare for it by streamlining my list of Hubs. That's all I can do because I won't be creating a new account anytime soon.
@ Arlene: you've managed to collect articles too? It is a hard process to delete writing you no longer want...
William, I know you are not impressed with conspiracy theorists but going back a couple of years I am pretty sure that Alex Jones was making the news for accusing Google of fiddling the results he should have been having. The conspiracy was against him, in other words!
Well I know how Alex Jones feel, Bard. I built up my mermaid blog to getting over a 1,000 hits a day but now because Google decided to make a few changes that has all gone. It does sound as if Google is abusing it's power and is no longer a unbiased search engine.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
@davenmidtown--DAVE, I had about 300 Hubs, but I hated most of them because they were remnants of my beginnings here. I no longer do fiction or book reviews because they don't do well. And a lot of the stuff I hacked were from two 30/30 challenges that I did back-to-back. I am retired, and this girl only wants to have fun. I am highly creative. Therefore, what people do here on the Internet as a way to market their work does not interest me. I am a DINOSAUR. Back in the day, I did my research and interviews, wrote, turned the article in, and it had my byline on it once it was printed the next day. Most of these people on HubPages can do dances around me when it comes to SEO, Google, SERPS, tech, and blah, blah, blah. Anytime anyone offers advice that concerns the Internet, I try to understand, but I am totally confused. I killed my Facebook account last Christmas, and I only learned how to text last year. When it comes to hacking, I'm good at it. But right now, I am dragging my ass because I have a very good idea of what's going to go. I don't want to do it, so I'm working on my tan and hitting the mall. Yeah, that's a writer for you! Big chicken!
@Arlene: I was just up in Grover Hot Springs and thought of you... The pine needles were thick but even better than that... was the quiet... I seem to remember all of this was supposed to be passive income.. it is not very passive anymore...
That's something I'm butting up against, too. My account was intended to be a long term passive income to supplement retirement, but that looks pretty much impossible now. Constant updates, continually fighting to please G, etc.
I am writing a book... at least that is honest work... :-)
Wilderness, I decided long ago that "passive income" was a misleading term - it was never completely passive, and since Penguin, it's definitely dead, IMO.
Even after last year's Panda updates, I still knew people who were collecting a few thousand a month from their blogs and online writing, but since the Penguin updates earlier this year, they've all lost at least two-thirds of their income. Some of them have had their blogs wiped out altogether and are starting all over again.Yeah - it's sad but I think the idea of writing a hub and letting it gather income for a decade while doing very little with it is gone. Big G simply requires too much to keep up for that goal to be even partially realistic.
I suppose it's possible that all the G changes will settle down with time, but I doubt it. Or we can hope that Bing will take over G's spot, but that's even more unlikely.Wilderness: I think so many people are writing content now that something had to change. How many articles does the Internet need on How To Grow Tomatoes? Yet each of those articles represents potential ad placement for Google. I have been a gardener for decades but I do not write hubs in the gardening section of hubpages anymore. That category is so over-saturated that it is pretty much a waste of time. It seems to me that content must now be cutting edge and trending to be ranked in the demi-god list, and even then it is a very short lived success. If that is true then the definition of passive becomes two weeks long and the idea of building a portfolio of quality articles that earn income over a decade becomes a myth.... back to you marisa!
I tend to agree, Dave, but don't always agree with the reasoning.
I recently wrote on the history of halloween. History isn't going to change in two weeks or two years - why should a very high quality hub on that topic not remain viable for years and years? Because someone else gave the same information with different words and google likes fresh stuff? That's a lousy reason, IMHO.
Gardening techniques and plant species change with time and perhaps isn't as permanent as history but it's certainly good for more than 2 weeks! A couple of years, at least. Yet, just as you say, google will probably replace it with an inferior but newer article in a matter of weeks or months.
Although I don't predict it will happen, I could see the net becoming chocked full of short, poorly written and worthless junk (just like HP was) in the race for something new. Should that happen we can but hope that G will take note and run another Panda, starting this fun all over again.Wilderness: I think like many thing on the web success depends on the topic...A historical article about hollween is very different than a how to garden topic aricle.... It is about competition and some topics are just over populated.
wilderness, That was my exact plan too. Yes, Google has ruined that.
It sounded like a good plan at the time - nothing at all to lose and might provide some much needed income after what the recession did to my 401 and IRA.
Now - maybe I can still get some income for a few years before I'm too senile to write (if it hasn't happened already!) but that's about it. Stretch that pathetic IRA a few more years.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
What people are submitting lately is why I don't spend all that much time here. You cannot control what people write. PERIOD. Some people are willing to wade through crap. I'm not. I spent this month doing nothing on this site until now, and still got paid. Big deal. What I'm always looking for is a good read, and I certainly am not finding it here. So off to the bookstore I go. Yes, I am seeing a lot of changes on HubPages, and it's not for the better.
As I continue to study the landscape following two years of membership, it's almost impossible to discount one of the severe difficulties HubPages is faced with going forward, and that is being pigeon holed in a negative way for attempting to carve out a rather unusual, highly risky brand centered almost entirely on the underlying business model philosophy of "Everyday Experts" - If I had known this unwavering dedication and commitment would take precedence over everything else, including "Cleaning Up" all the amateurish, grammatically incorrect, and even atrociously written articles, I probably would not have invested such a substantial amount of time, energy, and resources here - But I did, and even though expectations of unrealistic, inequitable, unjustifiable monetary windfalls of thousands per month were not anticipated, unlike some who might feel he / she is woven from a batch of superior cloth as to warrant such grotesquely astronomical premiums, I will continue to expect and anticipate fair, reasonable compensation for my contributions -
This brief descriptive phrase "Everyday Expert" of course implies anyone who has access to a computer or tablet and infinite energy source, regardless of writing ability and or other essential attributes which typically define and distinguish the consummate "Pro" from the "Amateur", is allowed and encouraged to publish from this platform - Therefore, it is totally understandable that there is a daily concerted effort made by HP staff to downplay the very best writers / artists in favor of promoting the "Everyday" or below average writer mainly due to the fact that the latter are so abundant in comparison to true experts and of course HP needs to deliver content in massive bulk to have any chance of future success -
It's unfortunate, but it appears as if HP Staff are under the impression that if they were to acknowledge the genuine experts or professionals here, it might discourage the mediocre writer therefore, they would be less inclined to contribute - End result? A site which on average, produces sub-par articles -Nothing in the tagline "everyday expert" states that the contributor must be an expert writer. To me it pertains to knowledge of the subject, not necessarily writing ability.
Quite frankly, I'm glad that HubPages is not in the business of "cleaning up" accounts. They aren't the grammar police nor can they be subject-matter police. And honestly, I really could care less about what other people on this platform produce. It has not affected my ability to gain traffic and earn one iota. However, I do like to see people succeed so I do my best to offer meaningful advice when I can.
I think you're forgetting that HubPages is not a destination, like perhaps the Wall Street Journal is, where people poke around to see what there is to read. Most readers come to HubPages via the backdoor - to a specific sub-domain and URL via a search query.
In the end, the only opinion of my work that matters is that of my readers. My sole focus is the reader/user and making sure my content delivers the information they are seeking. Period. I attempt to meet this goal not only through words, but through photographs and videos as well.
A hub that follows all grammar and spelling rules but is over-verbose, no matter how profound the writer's command of the English language is, is pretty worthless if it makes the reader "run" for the back button. However, a hub that may have a few errors but delivers insightful "everyday expert" information that the user is searching for may be quite valuable.
I'm not in the business of getting into debates in these forums; my sole purpose in contributing to this forum prior to this post is to offer Marye some sort of advice to her predicament based on my web experience and HubPages experience. I'm glad that each of us is individually in control of whether or not we rank well on Google. That means when there is a problem or change in an algorithm we need to find a solution or a new way of doing things and implement it.
Just to back up my claims, in the last 30 days 6% of my traffic has come from HubPages, 12% from a direct referral from a magazine which found my hub on a search engine, and the majority of the remaining 82% of traffic has come from search engines (mainly Google).
Here is a graph of the last 6 months of my pageviews taken from Google Analytics. There is a slight dip in April, but otherwise it's positive. I have published 27 hubs during this same 6 month period and have 77 total for the last year I've been here. If poor quality, poorly written accounts impacted other sub-domains then this wouldn't be possible. And this is why I offer Marye and anyone else who asks some straightforward SEO tips - because I do believe we control our own fate.
"Nothing in the tagline "everyday expert" states that the contributor must be an expert writer. To me it pertains to knowledge of the subject, not necessarily writing ability."
At least you admit and acknowledge adequate or above average "Writing Ability" is not a prerequisite to publish on Hubpages and therein lies a major problem - If that's how you interpret and perceive the tagline, I guess you believe it's too much for HP to require both "Expertise & Above Average Writing Ability" from a publisher? -
Despite the overt attempts to discount the importance of this critically relevant art form, it's called "Writing" for very good reason ktrapp -
If an individual has something he / she feels is earth shatteringly important to reveal to the world but has difficulty communicating ideas or knowledge, I would recommend transmitting the content to an expert writer who possesses more than adequate English language ability for editing, proofreading, and subsequent publishing to avoid embarrassment and potential detrimental harm to the site as a whole -
How many researchers or information gatherers do you think are lost every day simply because they see the Hubpages brand attached to an article and will not enter to read on - I would assume on average, HP alienates many more than it gains based upon pure "Name Recognition" -
FYI - I always prefer a low key existence and usually do not participate in this type of forum "Debate" either, unless of course a political theme strikes me as intriguing, however, sometimes I feel compelled to action especially when I see injustices occurring and or notice other pertinent issues which may affect the integrity of my work and compensation paid for said contributions -
FYI II - I believe the extent of "SEO" consists of writing expertly crafted, top quality literary experiences containing valuable information pertaining to topics which interest the general public accompanied by professionally captured and edited original images - This procedure of course must comply with any and all rules, and or specific guidelines established by entities outside Hubpages which catalogue and coordinate my work for future look up and retrieval - Anything beyond this common sense approach, in my estimation, is based solely on speculation -And exactly how do you think HP would go about being the grammar police or English professor? I think it is a lot to expect that of HP. They're not claiming to be Time magazine or The Wall Street Journal. They provide a tool that anyone can use free of charge to publish and share ad revenue. That's their business model in a nutshell.
Of course they have a vested interest in encouraging good writers and that's why they have the apprenticeship program and the learning center etc. But the wheat will naturally separate from the chaff. How long do you think a low-quality writer that earns pennies will keep this up?
The thing is quality writing is only one part of the earning equation. The other part is SEO (which does not have to detract from writing at all) and that's often the issue of why people lack pageviews.
But my interpretation of the tagline or your interpretation does not matter at all. Who cares? The point is that the quality or lack of quality of other sub-domains does not impact the ability for my hubs or your hubs to be found via search. And I doubt the HubPages brand is maligned by low quality hubs because the low-quality hubs probably are not even appearing high enough in SERPs to even be considered.
To me this is all good news because we're not necessarily helpless to fix problems when they occur. Just to use Marye as an example since she started this forum; obviously her quality of writing is not the problem. And I'm sure that in fact she knows a lot about SEO as IzzyM stated, but search engines have changed, so as writers we have to keep up with that part of the web-writing business as well. There are small tweaks she could make that I believe could have a huge impact (see my post back on page 9) that may not have been necessary even six months ago but certainly may help now. But there may be something else going on too which I am still trying to figure out. So I am going to go back to looking at that and probably not post here again unless I have something of value to add to the original point of this forum."The point is that the quality or lack of quality of other sub-domains does not impact the ability for my hubs or your hubs to be found via search. And I doubt the HubPages brand is maligned by low quality hubs because the low-quality hubs probably are not even appearing high enough in SERPs to even be considered."
I think these points are debatable - I think HP as a whole and all the subs are tainted by the poor quality stuff - see the letter from Google to HP in Paul E's recent HUB. Otherwise why would HP try to implement quality standards - dups etc. The directories on HP ties all the subs together which stops them being fully independent as the subs are in Blogger for example. The independence is partial and this pulls down sub and page rankings and reputations. Just my opinion!I probably should have been more clear when I was talking about quality. I was merely only responding to Alternative Prime who was discussing writing ability/quality. Clearly HP should have quality standards regarding duplicate content and what not, as they do. I just don't think they can police writing ability.
But even though our sub-domains are not in complete isolation from each other, it's my opinion that the interconnectedness of the site is not to blame for the sudden and dramatic drops in traffic that some Hubbers have experienced. Otherwise, I guess we would all be in the doldrums and that's not the case." I guess we would all be in the doldrums and that's not the case."
This returns to the topic of the forum - for which we have not really been able to provide an answer. Some of the 'success' hubbers have seen their traffic recover recently which is wonderful to see!! Not sure why? But most have published hubs recently !!! We need analysis and stats. Bye for now!Agreed. Without analysis and stats it's hard to see patterns and analyze the possibilities.
Thats what you can do with Google Analytic's, this helps you analyze traffic and patterns and stats about your hubs.
"And exactly how do you think HP would go about being the grammar police or English professor? I think it is a lot to expect that of HP. They're not claiming to be Time magazine or The Wall Street Journal. They provide a tool that anyone can use free of charge to publish and share ad revenue. That's their business model in a nutshell."
You are absolutely correct ktrapp, although it could be with proper focus and clean up, and there are a few top caliber writers here, of course HubPages as a whole at this point in time, is not the "Wall Street Journal", a periodical which has earned a reputation for publishing first rate information written by consummate professionals orchestrated in grammatically correct sentences and paragraphs, and that's why it deserves preferential treatment - So yes, we agree this is not the "WSJ" and once again, you are doing quite a good job of presenting corroborating evidence to support one critical aspect of my virtual case, a case which will hopefully encourage HP to pursue a re-think of current policy -
You seem to be suggesting the "Cake & Eat it Too" defense - HP would like to be propelled into the convenient yet unjustifiable situation of allowing plentiful junk to be published from its platform while at the same time, receive the exact same benefits as a "Clean" site such as "Time Magazine", benefits consisting of huge volumes of visitors as a reward for said faulty business practices - I really don't think it works that way ktrapp - Traditionally, the type of quality neglect which HP currently allows, results in the denegration of reputation not enhancement, thereby leading to deeper chronic problems developing -
Just because junk production is virtually impossible to limit, or HP has not yet implemented essential quality check components like the "WSJ" and others to control or reduce the amount of sub-standard articles circulated, the site gets a "Pass" resulting in bushels of visitors coupled with the advantages of an enhanced reputation? - I'm not so sure it works that way, several years of experience and success working within the high profile industry of celeb-artistry leads me to this conclusion -
I've asked this simple question on several occasions - How do you reconcile HP, which produces an abundance of poor quality material, with a desire to be recognized and designated as a site which demands preferential consideration? -
I wish I had more time to read some of the great writing here. I have hubs show up on my feed and in my notification email that I consider worthy reading, some of it is excellent. I often think how unfortunate it is that some of the writers here don't have more of an audience. I thank phdast7 for sharing many great hubs with her followers. That's often how I find them, hubbers I follow or a few of my followers share hubs.
Sure, there's plenty of average, below average writing, but there are also excellent writers to be found here on HP. Even average writing can be decent reading. Some of the current best sellers are hardly excellent writing! lol
I think you're correct. I don't publish as often as I used to because of time restraints, but I've also thought about what you've posted. I don't want to be writing simply to produce content. I think the future will fall into two categories, video and mobile content, and to some extent, already does.
Part of it has to do with the economy. I realize that views wouldn't be an issue but people have less money so they are buying less. Some have less free time to read articles due to having to work longer hours or even take on a second job.
Even Google has taken an income hit; when they lose so do the rest of us.
http://searchengineland.com/are-the-ana … =feed-mainAnd as if we didn't have enough to worry about they are doing another update.
http://searchengineland.com/google-pand … 3-9-128529@ktrapp. you obviously know what you are doing, and here's hoping everything stays good for you, BUT you have obviously not yet come up against the 'Google HP drop syndrome'.
Let's assume Marye knows what she is doing. She has been here long enough, and been successful long enough, to know how to optimize hubs for the search engines, Google specifically.
I'm guessing she could teach us a thing or two!
In the last year, there has been some catastrophic traffic drops on some accounts that no-one has been able to figure out. Mine was among those.
I have since made many changes,and made at least some of my hubs popular in other search engines, but not Google.
When they drop you, they drop you, period.
It takes another algo change or 'flux' for them to change their minds.
They have not yet changed their minds over my account. I have some awful hubs that I personally hate, but Google still sends them traffic.
So what I think is awful and what Google thinks is awful are not necessarily the same.
I think the advice you have offered is great for people with slightly less successful hubs, but in my experience, when Google slaps you, you remain slapped until Google lifts whatever traffic embargo it put on you.
I say this with the experience of having several subdomains, some of which do well, and others less so. Oh and several blogs and websites. But mainly Hubpages, where there is something wrong, but no-one knows what it is.I don't know why HP does not run some analyses and produce some real stats data on what works and what caused the plunge. They have the data, they have the staff - surely its in their interest to provide definitive data and stats comparisons. Correlations are still meaningful even if cause and effect can not be established restropectively. What I have found is that most writers have their own 'formulas' which apply to most of their hubs, so sub by sub analyses should be useful. I did some preliminary analysis that is shown above. How about a reply HP moderator?
I personally would prefer if official HP staff didn't comment.
I am still smarting at being told my traffic dropped because my hubs did not read well aloud!
HP staff read the forums, of course they do, but they are also privy to overall hub stats and they can see newbies doing well while oldies stats fall.
I am pretty certain they will not share their analysis with us.
These forums are open to the web and anyone can read them.
It would be nice if we could all work together for the common good, but HP have shown a reluctance in the past, and I see no reason for them to change now.
Meanwhile, we can work on, share ideas, share knowledge and history, compare stats, and eventually it would be nice if we could sort the problem ourselves just by collating data.It should be done anonomously. Without analysis and stats we will all remain floundering - groping around with blinkers on in the dark. This forum illustrates how frustrating it is to work anything out, and hope to find a solution without stats. I can't see the point of going on with this!
I believe that "did not read well aloud" was clearly just a euphemism for "be beware of using too many keywords". I welcome the views of HP staff. They have the stats and are experienced and have the know how. Clearly they would never say: "this is how you trick Google" even if they knew how! They give hints and tips, which means reading between the lines sometimes.
There is a limit to what hubbers can do on their own, for sure - there is probably as much, if not more bad advice out there, than good, and at the end of the day you just have to take a calculated guess on what is the right path based on the info that you trust most..."did not read well aloud" was clearly just a euphemism for "be beware of using too many keywords".
Simply not true! in my recollection of the bedtime stories hypothesis
Guys,
I think alot of you are missing the boat here.
You can use Google Analytics to get all the trends and stats you want until the cows come home, as you can spend literally days going through and wading through the data supplied.
History on your own account can also provide you a guide as to where you need to spend your future efforts on this site.
But the underlying statement has been glaring us right in the eyes since February of last year. That is, if you ONLY use HubPages as a source of (main) income, you will suffer. If your here to write only, then whatever money is earned is inconsequential.
Lissie expressed it better earlier, if your here for a hobby fine, if your here to earn as part of an income generated online, do not make HubPages your only place of work. (happy to be corrected if I am off base here Lissie). Thats what the initial Panda update has taught us.
Marye obviously uses HubPages as a big part of generating income using the internet and she is faced with a huge hurdle of having Google slam dunking her account big time. How long Google deems her in the penalty box, who knows how long?
Ive had it happen to me and an 60-70 % traffic drop is never a good slap in the face, especially when it lasts nigh on five months.
I also need to suggest to people that Google is not the only form of generating traffic for your Hubs, but it can also be a big part of it. You can also use Google off of HubPages too. Traffic generation is available in many forms, you have to look outside the box and stop relying on just Google if thats your current strategy.
Another issue I found is that one doesn't always need to cahnge/update one's hubs as a knee jerk reaction every time there is a Google Panda/Penguin/<insert other algorithm animal here> Update.Oh! No I don't use HP as the major portion of my income. Good Lord! I would be in a tailspin. No, Since the majority of the money from HP was PASSIVE income I enjoyed being able to turn down potential clients and work 6-8 hour days.
When HP income went down I just added clients. I make a comfortable living on the Internet and as a food writer/author. BUT.... Now I have gone back to having to work 10-18 hour days and sometimes 7 days a week on top of being a mom, homeschooling, and the other things I do. My income is fine...I just miss having free time.
Izzy has repeatedly highlighted the power of internal linking between hubs and provided links to other Hubbers that are promoting this. Links within the text of the hub itself, not standalone capsules with just a couple of links and no text.
Many of the people who are complaining about accounts that have dropped out of the SERPs have very few if any links between their hubs even though they have many hubs that could be related.
Google wants to eliminate content farms and promote authority sites and writers, think about the difference in writing between the two...
a content farm will have many articles of similar size written by many authors with no links between them. So if you have many articles of similar style and size without links what do you look like?
A good authority site will show many links within the text to related articles - Wikipedia can't be that wrong! But note - RELATED articles.
Just pointing externally is not enough, after all most people spam free to use sites like hubpages just to get links for their own sites, if you only point out and not within what do you look like?
People that have put in the internal links have all started to get more traffic across the board. If nothing else it is another way to get potentially more page views and improve your stats.
Just think about how Google can tell if your page is for the viewer or the search engine...My traffic dropped drastically right around the holidays, which was annoying, and stayed down into just recently when it has come back very strongly. I could never figure out the exact reason for the drop, so I'm just as puzzled by the return. Not that I mind the return...
From the posts I've read on this board, I've not seen anyone mention the possibility of the poor economy as being one of the causes of the decrease in traffic.
Though some people would like to think otherwise, the economy, job market and housing market is still in the slumps. So many people out of work and overall depressing economy for a lot of people. So perhaps all that factors into the downward of a lot of writing sites. If it was just HubPages it would be one thing, a lot of different writing sites are experiencing a slump also.
Good luck to all.
This is a video from last summer of Rand Fishkin at SEO Moz. If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching. How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles- … ard-friday
The link includes a video and the text.- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
It is unrealistic to ever think that an online site can supplement your income or even help you out in retirement. I knew that when I got back into writing. I come from a different era. When newspapers meant something. Now, they are pretty much gone. People talk all the time about the money they are making with their online projects, but they aren't giving up the fact that they are writing for numerous employers and need to take records each time they reach that magic $600. Freelancers work like dogs to make that money. I know that so well, and I am forever grateful that I am retired and have a pension. I don't want to work that hard! And when it comes to benefits, those benefits have to come from somewhere else because you sure as hell won't get it from an online site or a content mill. It is beneath me to work for some online jerk who most likely doesn't have any writing or editing experience. Or skills with people. He will only see me as a writing machine that can be replaced. I don't care to analyze the activities of the Google gods or play with charts, but others have the talent for it. So go for it. I write for the pure joy of it. More and more, I am leaning towards writing a novel. For the same reasons given by DAVENMIDTOWN. I'm flattered that you remembered the pine needles, Dave!
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
Since joining HubPages, I had to replace just about every appliance in my 70s home. Dishwasher, stove, refrigerator, water heater, dryers, and the air conditioner/heating unit. I would love to tell you that I got into my PayPal account and paid for all of it with my payouts. Naaawwww! It ain't happening. If you write for HubPages with an understanding that your earnings will probably not pay for your kid's braces or take you and your honey on a Hawaiian cruise, then you are being realistic. Some people just love to write, and this place is their platform. Hub authors are really disappointed right now because of what is happening to their accounts. I'm disappointed, too. But I have not been hit as hard. At the same time, I know I can't survive on my payouts. I don't do anything to my Hubs but write them and throw in my photographs and videos. That's it. I'm not interested in doing anything else to them. For what? More online pennies? Is that what I have to look forward to if I did more research and reading?
There are still plenty of people making a lot of money here but you won't see them much in the forums. A lot of people only come when they have something to complain about. Not surprising, really.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
That depends on what "making a lot of money" means to you. That term is so vague, but so widely used. If you're clinging to the idea that you can support yourself, your family and your lifestyle on this site and this site alone, that's your call. Go ahead and cling like peaches!
Arlene, if I could make $500 or 600 a month here or by writing online anywhere I would be really happy! I have heard people say they make double that here!
I've just been on a website about how Google makes its money and this is what it said. -
http://www.dailycommonsense.com/how-doe … ake-money/
"Google doesn’t sell any tangible product and that’s the beauty of their business. They sell something that doesn’t really exist. They really sell traffic. It mostly comes down to this: They get paid for sending traffic to other websites."
This suggests that Hub pages wasn't willing to pay Google what they wanted, so their traffic went elsewhere like Squidoo, who perhaps was more willing to pay what Google demanded.- Marye Audetposted 12 years ago0
Well I have started another account here for a specific niche - we will see what happens.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
Green Bard, I would celebrate right along with you--no matter how many pennies I've made here. LOL! It sure wouldn't be enough for me to keep records for the my accountant. As usual, I'm different when it comes to earnings. I keep most of my pension, and pay very little taxes on it. I made $5,000 that first year in the content mills, and I found out the hard way. The year before, I was buying equipment, taking classes, going to conferences, etc. But the year I made a little money, I didn't have all that much to claim because all my expenses were from the year before. Auuugh! The Hub authors who make the money here--more power to them. They aren't the Cream of the Crop for nothing. I am content to bumble along, though. If I made $500-600 a month here, you wouldn't see me on the Forums or commenting on Hubs. Forget about the bills! I would be blowing my earnings on travel!
A few thoughts, reading through recent posts.
1) While Google does check grammar and spelling as a very minor component of the over 200 ranking factors it uses to rank a webpage, and they are also a component of the Panda site evaluation factor, I do not believe they are a large part.
Google is not actually interested in providing its users with quality content. It is looking for the best content to satisfy their search: the most relevant and USEFUL content that will satisfy a user's query. Sadly, there is a difference.
2) The difference between writing for fun and writing for income is that when you write for fun, you write mostly to satisfy yourself, whereas when you write for income, you must learn how to satisfy readers.
3) Yes, you can make a thousand dollars a month online writing articles like hubs, supplemented with nothing more than some Amazon Associate sales. I'm doing it, and I know other people doing it.
4) Unfortunately, I don't know of anyone still doing it on Hubpages since Hubpages got clobbered by Panda and Penguin. And personally, I'm finding that Hubpages gives me a poor ROI, although it's a fun platform to write on.Greekgeek, I have always admired your insights into online publishing. I like the distinction you made between quality content and useful content; in another thread, someone (maybe you?) made a similar distinction, using the word "effective" versus "quality."
I guess the use of those words depends on exactly what one means by "quality" and, since we don't always enter into a discussion of what we mean, I am now thinking that "quality" is too vague a word, too open to personal interpretation and bias, even though I myself have lauded it from time to time. (As a simple example, a classical musician, a street musician, a businessman, and a consumer would likely have different opinions about the quality of the music used in a commercial; but its effectiveness is something that can be measured concretely.)
But, in regards to your last point, how do we even know whether anyone is still earning a lot on HP? How do you go about researching that information? It has always seemed to me that many of the high earners here rarely visit the forums and they may, or may not, update their information on the Success Stories pages. Is your statement based on specific knowledge or is it a generality based instead on your very insightful inferences?You might have missed the earlier post pointing out that you can see the traffic graphs for the success stories on the front page of the site.
Everyone's traffic is down. Some people have seen an absolutely disastrous decline. Some have seen a decline from a spike in December which still leaves them with plenty of traffic.
The important point is that there are still people with several thousand views a day both inside and outside that success stories group.
How much money they earn will depend entirely on how their pages are monetized. An affiliate page getting 50 views a day, can outperform an info page getting 500 views a day with only HP and adsense income.Do you think being on that success page can make one be more susceptible to excessive and unsolicited junk backlinks that the search engines are now seeing as negative SEO?
I think so.
I think that some of the reason hub traffic dropped was because some of the links disappeared when the crappy sites were taken out by google.I have a feeling that those graphs are pretty representative of accounts across the site- for more long term hubbers anyway. Mine looks similar, but as I said earlier, I am not in the disastrous group as yet.
It is possible the success stories group suffered more than the rest of us from plagiarism.
I wouldn't think bad backlinks were an issue but who knows?I wish many other hubbers can comment on their data so that we can validate that statement? I am asking that because in my case, my graph seems to deviate from that consensus as from 1st May 2012, or thereabout.
I had another website hit by Penguin on April 24th - If you traffic fell on this date it was probably penguin
Aficionado, you're very right that "quality"and "effective" can be the same thing, depending on who's talking.
When I make that distinction, I'm thinking back to my own earlier web career when I discovered that my best-written pages got little traffic, while pages I thought were insipid and poorly-written drew thousands of hits a week. (On Squidoo, you can see the daily traffic of any article.) I had to eat humble pie and realize that more people wanted Barbie-themed birthday party supplies than wanted my diary of a trip to Greek archaeological sites. The Barbie article may have had 100 words of text and 3 comma splices, but it solved a harried parent's problems in a hurry. (Note: this is a hypothetical example; I'm not referring to a specific article, but a genre.)
As for the earnings issue, I confess it's based on scattered impressions rather than systematic data. My impression is that the featured success stories on the front page of Hubpages are still the same ones I saw a week or so after Panda was first launched, when I came here to try and understand why Panda was hitting some sites harder than others. I also know a few people who used to make good earnings on Hubpages and saw a significant Panda drop (see Janet21, e.g). There have also been a couple threads about earnings -- plus answers to submitted questions, plus Relache's survey hub -- that give me the impression that many hubbers who used to do well have taken a hit. If Relache's poll numbers are true, 2% of hubbers are earning above $1000 now, whereas that top echelon was 4% before (hard to tell for sure, since her poll results are from August to August, whereas Panda started in Feb 2011). But no, I don't know. That's why I said "I don't know of any" not "there aren't any."
My impression is also based on my own ROI comparisons between my hubs and lenses. ~90 hubs can't quite crack Hubpage's payout threshold every month, whereas a 100-lens niche account which nobody knows is mine (so it gets no traffic based on my rep or online activities) nets about $400/month. Most of that niche account's pages haven't aged much more than my hubs, yet it's drawing twice the traffic and eight times the income.
I've come to realize something very simple: Google is a business. They will do whatever is necessary to make increasing profits. This is why they constantly change their algorithms. I think writers who've been around for awhile are getting clobbered because their old work doesn't fit with the new guidelines.
Rewriting isn't just a matter of redoing wordage, it's a matter of using newer writing techniques so that your work will be seen.
Just my two cents.
I think that is the most likely problem why your traffic has dropped that much. It’s rather odd that 500 hubs should get you only 1.6K views per day.
Unfortunately, the bad backlinks may still be pointing at your hubs. How to identify and remove the bad links should be the problem to solve.Do I understand that Hub Pages requires you to write 100 hubs before they will give you a payout? I thought payouts were based on earnings, not number of hubs. Please respond as I am in a position where I need to know asap. Thanks.
Payouts are based on earnings, not number of hubs. It's explained well in HP Terms of Use and FAQ.
Links are at the bottom of each page.
Unless things have changed very recently, payouts are based on earnings, not number of hubs. However, there is an minimum payout you must meet.
Thanks. I have reached my first payout level but nothing is appearing in my paypal account. Isn't today the day they are supposed to make the payouts?
You get your payout one month after the month in which you reached the minimum threshold.
Thanks. I knew that, but wasn't seeing anything when I posted. The payment showed up late in the day. Now I'm wondering when they're going to catch up with the page views for the past four days!
Came across a web-page where the author claims that squidoo is now being hit by Google. It looks like there is no where to go to escape Google's attack on the small time authors. The big business is now taking over the Internet.
http://www.earnersblog.com/squidoo-rankings/Google filters Squidoo Lenses?
11. Jul 2007
Maybe a little out of date.that's a really old article.
Squidoo has been performing very similar to HP in terms of traffic.
see http://www.quantcast.com/hubpages.com
vs http://www.quantcast.com/squidoo.com
both have shown an overall increase since 1 July ( just after last Panda )
Sorry I didn't look at the year. But I'm glad to hear there is some increase somewhere. All the hits of my hubs and blogs have been going down over the last few days. My most successful blog is going down to the lowest it has been in years. So I'm afraid, I'm not experiencing any increase.
Back to officially say that I, for one, definitely have not figured it out.
I thought I'd beaten Panda in April, when my traffic came roaring back.
There was another Panda update on July 24/25. My traffic has dropped by 70% again, back to where was before the April update.
The thing is, I haven't made any changes since April. So goodness only knows what the problem is. None of my sites are having this roller-coaster ride.Maybe this is why HP was so slow in updating this week?
I have been systematically correcting and updating my hubs and my page views have increased 29% this month. Although my views are nothing compared to more experienced writers, they're starting to impress me. I took a bad hit a few months back, but I went away for three weeks and just let everything sit.
By the time I got back, I was on track again. Go figure!Marisa => Who knows - we need stats.
Could lack of recent hubs be an issue?Something seems to have gone wrong with the related hubs feature (or it has always been wrong but I just never noticed before).
All I know is that my hubs that perform well have related hubs at the bottom of the page that really ARE related. But the hubs that don't perform have some bizarre related hubs - for example a hub on finance featuring a related hub on relationship advice (!) as well as a hub on flea markets. I had one hub on back pain featuring a related hub at the bottom on how to have a better relationship with your teenage son or daughter! I know my text and tags are correct, so I can only conclude that the related hubs in question have been trying to game the site by using inappropriate tags.
Marissa, I had a look at one of your hubs, and I can see the same problem. It's this hub:
http://marisawright.hubpages.com/hub/Perfect-bra-fit
You would think all the related hubs were on bras, how to choose them, the brands, the styles, girly stuff. But one of your related hubs at the bottom says "do you have male breast, Yes try breast reduction for gynecomastia". Another says, "Mastopexy - Cosmetic surgery for sagging breasts and male breasts".
As a result when G spiders the page they probably see words that ring alarm bells. They've probably got enough data to know that women searching for the perfect bra fit arn't interested in male breast reduction.
I don't know why this is happening - I guess hubpages have screwed up on their algo - but when I find my hub is linking to an unrelated hub, I click through and down vote it, regardless of how well written it is, as they must be using inappropriate tags to get their pages to feature on unrelated hubs and I don't want it anywhere near my own. And I get particularly alarmed when it's a dodgy topic that's being linked to such as relationship advice, or any of the spam topics.
I wish hubpages would let us choose for ourselves which hubs we want to feature as related hubs (Squidoo allows this, and if you don't choose they choose for you, which seems fair).Thank you, Silver Rose, I have been pointing this out for months. It got better at one point (no more automobile-related hubs!) but now seems to have gotten worse again. It has partly been my fault due to my trouble understanding and using tags correctly, but now I am told that tags are being phased out.
http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/101018
I suggested that HP please inform us how related hubs are chosen, so that writers can do as much as we possibly can on our end to get properly related hubs on our hubs, and Simone promised to get to that when she can.
http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/101018I didn't realize that those hubs listed at the bottom were actually links to my own. I also have no clue as to how they get there. I often see ones that don't relate to what I've written, and I wish HP would stop linking like that as it endangers my numbers and everybody else's. If I want to link to somebody's hub, I'll ask their permission and do it, but I rarely link that way exactly because of what I just mentioned. When I finish updating my hubs, I won't be linked to any but a very, very small number of hubs that have been written by other hubbers. I'm glad you guys pointed this out.
I have a series of Hubs about ISO 9001 quality procedures and the like which are all business type information hubs - the related hubs are about boob jobs and nose jobs! I guess the word "procedure" is to blame here but there must be a better way to choose so called related hubs..
What I've been doing is clicking through and down-voting the inappropriate hubs. I felt bad about doing it at first, but then I thought, they shouldn't be featured on my hub.
They disappear a few hours after you down-vote and are usually replaced with something else - sometimes appropriate, sometimes not. Keep iterating till you get hubs that actually are related.I think that voting down is an unfair approach. Unless one can be positive that the unrelated hubs are appearing as link through some fault of the writer of the hubs that are shown.
How about we take it one step further and vote all the hubs that offer competition to ours down? Of course I do not advocate that. I am saying if votes are used in this way where will it all end?Is that fair? So, if one of my hubs, regardless of its quality, is featured below yours (which is a decision of HP, not mine), you vote it down - have I got that right? Therefore, through no fault of my own, what could be a great hub, is being penalized.
Not sure if I've understood this correctly, but it doesn't seem the best way to deal with it.I agree, down-voting is not the right way to go about it. That is why I have been on the forums trying to get it fixed or at least explained. I just kept getting feedback from other hubbers that I was improperly tagging, so I tried fixing that but didn't see much change. It appears that words from our titles and text are being used to pick up related hubs at least part of the time, which is fine in many cases, but many of these words ('benefit' and 'procedure,' for example) apply to hundreds of subjects across the board. I can understand why SilverRose is frustrated at this point, because I am, too, as this has been going on for some time with no real answers. But down-voting is not right.
If Google does not penalize pages for having unrelated links, then I don't care so much whether or not the links are related. However, I keep reading that having relevant links is important. After all, writers are not allowed by HP to place unrelated links in our hubs, I'm assuming for that reason.It's not that YOU are improperly tagging - it's that the other hub is improperly tagging, probably because they want their hub to be featured on as many other hubs as possible. They get link juice out of it, but when your hub is assessed for what is on the page (Panda), G finds all sorts of inappropriate text and a flag goes up.
Silver Rose - is there a way of telling that people are improperly tagging? I can't see how because as far as I can tell, tags no longer show up on hubs. Where should I be looking?
Silver Rose - is there a way of telling that people are improperly tagging? I can't see how because as far as I can tell, tags no longer show up on hubs. Where should I be looking?
I doubt this very much. Voting down a well-written hub because you don't think it's appropriately placed is unfair to the other hubber and serves no useful benefit to anyone.
Smart and Fun - The situation you describe is different from Silver Rose's scenario. You, like me, assume that the problem is with HP's method of picking related hubs - that the algorithm picks out words in the title and body of the text which have something in common with the other "related" hubs - often with eccentric results. Nothing to do with the tags (which as far as I understood are being dropped by HP anyway).
Silver Rose, if I understand correctly (apologies if I've got it wrong!), is assuming that people are deliberately adding deceptive tags to their hubs in order to get them wider exposure. Therefore, she votes them down.
Hope to God none of mine ever appear on your hubs!
I can't believe anyone would vote down a hub simply because it was wrongly linked by HP. You blame people mis-tagging hubs, but there have been numerous issues recently of hubs incorrectly linked where they never even had a tag in common.
HP has recently decided to promote this really crap hub on nearly all my shark hubs, but I will not vote it down because it doesn't break any rules even though the writer has pretty poor English and some of his/her 'facts' are dubious.
As the related hubs are now linked at the end of hubs, and something like only 3% of readers ever actually read that far, I doubt if it will affect anything.
The question is: is the Goolgebot any cleverer than the Hubpages related pages script? Does the Googlebot realize that the links are poorly related or not?
Yes - Google has several dozen patents on language, synonyms, patterns of usage, words that have a high probability of occurring next to each other and so on. They definitely know that a hub on finance shouldn't have a link to relationship advice on it. Or that a hub on business procedures shouldn't have text on boob jobs on it.
I don't know how voting down a hub would solve the problem of unrelated links, but I agree it's a problem. I suspect it's a combination of words in the text that appear related to yours (and the HP bots picked up the match) or hubs indexed in the same categories. Our categories could use some tweaks, by the way.
I doubt an author would try to game that system - how would you game it? We have no idea where our hubs are showing up. If you have a hub about lawn care, and you use words like, 'Sometimes it can be a pain to care for your lawn' the hub could be linked to a hub on 'best ways to stop pain'. That's how capricious the system seems to be.This whole issue could be resolved if HP would simply stop adding the links to people's hubs. Why aren't they doing that? If I want to link someone's hub to mine and it's OK with them, that's one thing. However, random linking like what they're doing now isn't fair to anybody. Even if they relate, they still may be bad hubs or hubs carrying bad links that will reflect on mine. I hope the Hub Gods listen to us and get rid of the linkage along with the tags.
Too much linkage causes problems, and we don't need any more problems!Before the related hubs algo changed I was getting good traffic from a couple of hubs that other writers had written, because a hub of mine was listed as related. I would like to think they were getting traffic off of my related hubs as well. Readers were definitely looking at the teasers and clicking over. While I would love to get that traffic back, at this point my main concern is that HP in general and also all of our subdomains are being penalized by Google for having all these crazy unrelated links on our pages.
I'm interested to know exactly how you know that those links were where your good traffic was coming from. How do you ascertain such a thing? Please share!!
They were listed as traffic sources in my stats. So I went to check them out, and sure enough, there was my article listed as a related hub.
These were articles that were truly related to each other, however, not just randomly thrown in. It made perfect sense that readers would click over.
That's very interesting. I've often wondered how you would know whether your work had been linked if a writer did not ask your permission to link it. Learn somethin' new ever' day, huh??? Thanks.
One way you get traffic from someone's hubs, has always been when a hub of yours shows up on their page. The name of the hubber may appear in your traffic sources.
However, I think this is happening less now than in the past.
One reason why you benefit from the hubs shown relating to yours is that the reader may stay on Hubpages rather than bounce back to Google. Apart from the fact that Google may or may not see unrelated links on your page.
I suspect the links are there to prolong the readers time spent on the site.Yes, that was it, it was the hubber's subdomain, not the specific article that was listed in my stats. However, it was easy for me to determine the specific article because the subject matter was so closely related. Also, of course, because there was my hub, listed on theirs as one for further reading.
I've followed some of the "related" hub links on my hubs and have found a few which were really bad. One had only one hub and joined 2 years ago- no activity in those two years since writing the hub. I've flagged a couple of "sub-standard" hubs, too.
It would make sense to let the hubber have the option to choose, because they would try an hand select the best hubs to feature for their readers.
I guess for now (instead of hub hopping) I will just follow the links on my hubs and when I can and vote up and comment on those which are worthy and vote down or flag those which are sub-standard. As for those which are "good" hubs but un-related (flag and hit other and explain) maybe the moderators can check the tags or at least remove the hub from mine and move it to a related hub..... I'd hate to see my hub on a hub that is not related this would only reflect poorly on me and probably be a factor in facilitating a high bounce rate:(
Sorry SmartAnd Fun, I may have edited that post while you were posting. I have an awful habit of thinking of a better way of explaining my idea - after I have pressed the submit button.
Unrelated Hubs appearing alongside the main Hub was a problem at times even before the changes. It just seems to happen more now or maybe it is more obvious to the reader and writer because of the new layout. I know that it happened in the past. I can recall that I took down a page as I was annoyed at the selection of hubs being shown alongside it. I they were totally inappropriate to the subject of my hub.
I really think very few people would have the time or inclination to try to game the system by using deceptive tags. How would it earn them traffic/visits if the reader found it unrelated to the search term they used? Their time then would be better spent promoting their pages in other ways.
If you think about the terms that have more than one meaning such as lawn. - If I write a hub on the subject of making a garment with cotton lawn fabric - is it not likely that hubs will appear with the subject of caring for your lawn or how to get rid of weeds in your lawn.I agree. I do think lots of Hubbers use 'deceptive' tags, but it's out of ignorance, not deliberately. The tag suggestion tool used to throw up a lot of tags which were too general, and it was very common for newbies to accept the lot.
- Marye Audetposted 12 years ago0
July 17 I started changing the hubs I hadn't unpublished; updating them,changing images, and generally following some of the good advice found in this thread. When I checked the last half of July against the first half of July there had been a 3.5% increase in traffic to the remaining hubs. This is especially significant to me because I unpublished over half of my hubs for various reasons. I know this doesn't seem like a lot and it may just be coincidence but it is the first positive thing I have seen in awhile. That comes after a 17% loss from May to June
Mary: I am still fairly new but realized I needed to do something to improve my numbers. I have been dumping articles I don't really like or that I won't be able to link to my other hubs (19 so far), upgrading, rewriting where needed, changing categories as needed, etc. I started doing this about two weeks ago and have seen a 30% jump in readership. It's a tremendous amount of work, but once I'm done, I can start writing again...this time much more carefully!!
Glad to see that your traffic is rising. I hope it continues!!!
If you are technically minded it may be worthwhile using a tool to track your SERP position and how it responded to various actions. I know that a lot happens very quickly but this may be the only way to get feedback on what works. Having a group of pages that you modify and others that you don't may help. My preliminary results have shown some startling insights!!! But time will tell.I have absolutely no idea as to how to do that. I have tried several times to link to Google Webmaster Tool but can never seem to do it, even though Google tells me I've been successful. Just don't understand the technology, although I would love to!
see this forum
http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/101230
I don't spend too much time looking at my hubs 'Discover More Hubs' section, but I wouldn't flag a hub because it wasn't 'related'. I think the moderators have enough to do with getting rid of spam and sub-standard hubs.
It doesn't appear to affect traffic on the hubs I checked.Maybe you are right rebekahELLE. I suspect this is not the best use of the moderators time, but if it was something off the wall as to reflect poorly on my hub (such as boob jobs) for a hub I was writing about
ISO 9001 quality procedures then this looks like spam to readers...I'm tempted to flag for moderators to consider moving - It doesn't help the writer of the hub on boob jobs nor does it help the writer with the hub on ISO 9001 to have these "related links". I see your point however and I'm thinking of a better way....I have not had many really off the wall ones, but enough to sympathize with others concerns.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
Whatever! I'm not touching or voting down these so-called "inappropriate" hubs that happened to be linked to mine. Why should I waste my time doing this when I feel that my Hubs/my writing will stand on their own? As for my own Hubs, I went from 320 Hubs down to 190, and I am still getting rid (unpublishing) of the Hubs that I truly believe are D-U-D-S. Quite a difference when it comes to my traffic doubling right now, but we shall see how long this progress will last. I am back from my month's vacation from here, so it's time to get busy. The last thing I'm going to worry about is the Hubs that share space with mine!
- summerberrieposted 12 years ago0
I think the concerns are about how google sees these "poor" links. I would guess if they are hurting our hubs then HP would come up with a better system, such as let the hubber select which hubs their readers "might also enjoy". So my guess is they do not hurt our hubs and can be ignored. However, I do think questioning outlandishly "un-related" hubs at the bottom of ones hub is a valid concern and whether or not google penalizes a hub for them is a valid question to ask HP. As a new hubber, I suspect I have been helped more than harmed by having my hubs appear on the bottom of others hubs. When I read hubs at the bottom, I judge them based on merit and act accordingly. However, I am puzzled with what to do on those occasion I happen on a hub at the bottom of mine which are obviously "un-related"? It would make me feel better, if I knew for sure they did not hurt me in the eyes of google.
You have got it spot on. The whole strength of the site is dependent upon its multiple interlinking. Our hubs are not truly 'stand-alone' in the sense that these 'related hubs' are what gives our subdomains and the whole site itself, power.
I also would like to know if unrelated hubs appearing in the 'related hubs' section, is harmful.
I suspect not, but don't know for sure.I'd be curious if there's even a way to analyze the impact. Several things point to inappropriate links causing a downturn of rankings, and poor-quality links having the same effect. So why risk it? I understand the benefit of driving traffic, but I'm not clear yet on how unrelated links can help either Hubber. Even Hubbers who's unrelated links appear could get dinged because a Google computer decides it violates one of their SEO standards.
Marcy, good point. I tried to make it earlier but was not as articulate as you. I would think unrelated links reflect poorly on both hubbers no matter how "good" either hubber hubbed a hub- see you were more articulate. This is all pure speculation though- would be nice to have analytics and facts if and when they might be available.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
LOL! I have a hard enough time getting motivated to write a Hub!
I don't know Arlene V. Poma with 190 well written hubs under your belt in just a little over a year- you seem like to poster child for motivation. I think I'm just procrastinating. I'm going to assume all is well until told otherwise and get back to work. I agree with IzzyM- the interlinking is what makes hubpages strong and as a whole is a great system that works to my advantage.
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 12 years ago0
Thank you for the compliment, summerberrie, but as you already know, quality vs. quantity. After a year on HubPages, I had close to 400 Hubs. Two back-to-back Challenges gave me plenty of Hubs to hack because these Hubs were written in haste. Having a lot of Hubs looks impressive to most people, but I can tell you right now that they are a PAIN to keep track of. I don't even want to update them or tweak them. I certainly do not envy these Hubbers with 500+ Hubs! I don't believe in Writer's Block, so it is pretty easy for me to write. I used to be a features reporter, so you have to believe that what you write today is at the bottom of someone's birdcage tomorrow. Google has made things so uncertain for all of us as online writers. If you really want to know, I hate most of my online "children" because this is the way I was taught to think. Today's writing is what counts. Yesterday's writing is as good as in the trash. So far, I have eliminated the Hubs that show no signs of life (traffic). LOL! LOL! I can't really say I will miss them. I will probably move them into a storage stick, and then lose that stick. LMAO!
I am no where near making a living from hubpages, but plug away at it, happy to have just gotten my first payout.
I think that quality is always a priority where possible. I also wonder if there is a temptation to react too strongly, too soon to changes? I'm not saying this is the case, but rather that I don't have the experience to eliminate the possibility.
I also wonder if there is a line between 'good practices' in terms of SEO and trying to 'game the system' and that there is a point where we 'try to hard' and would have been better off with more organic content?
From my side of things I really dont have the experience/background to say..
- Marye Audetposted 12 years ago0
As of Sunday my traffic is up a tad... and my Google traffic is up about 6% (from equivalent time period in July). I am taking this as a happy sign.
I deleted over 400 hubs in late May/June and the traffic didn't change significantly. Since there were 50% fewer hubs I am guessing that it might have risen slightly. I began reworking the ones that were left on July 15 and since then have seen the upswing... although not the dramatic, overnight change I was hoping for.
I moved as many images as possible to the top and made them full width. I removed ebay capsules on any hubs that hadn't had income from eBay. I trimmed down the amazon capsules but didn't get rid of them... when things were "normal" I was making 500.00 a month from Amazon so I hate to lose that potential. I added images when I could...added video... added quizzes and polls.
I checked the tags and keywords and removed tags that were not bringing traffic to the page - I added any keywords (that weren't also tags) that showed high in the rankings. I rewrote summaries to keep them at 150 characters and made those characters count. I unpublished most of the articles that were not focused on sustainable family living/homesteading and started another hub account for the ones about food. I am not sure what I am going to do with the ones about antiques and collectibles. I took out links to anything that wasn't top level quality or .gov/.edu sites. I rewrote some of them, re-arranged others. It is taking forever with my limited time. I am also going to be looking at my unpublished hubs and reworking the ones that have had high traffic in the past but lost it over the last year or so.
I have been doing a lot of research about the updates from this summer and there is a pretty good consensus that if your stats tanked and your work was quality then there is a strong possibility that the sites that linked to your article(s) were knocked out by Penguin. Since there would be fewer links you would automatically drop in the rankings. I know that my best trafficked hub went from 4,000 to 7,000 visits a day to about 700.... and I also know that a lot of the links were from crappy sites but I didn't put the links there. When those sites went down my site lost the linkage.
Anyway... thing generally pick up going into September...so good luck everyone. I was just looking through your pages and found myself getting engrossed in several. It is depressing when genuinely good accounts get hit by Panda (I reckon it's Panda).
The only thing that worried me was the long lists of ebay items at the end of most pages. I know you say that you only have them on pages that people do genuinely buy from, but perhaps the layout is not ideal.
Paul Edmondson recently said that long lists don't really work well for sales and I think they could be seen as spammy.
Anyway, best of luck. And at least I have learnt something interesting about bain maries and coffee roasting!My experience has been similar to Marye's. A lot of work moving/deleting, updating, etc. No dramatic recovery but traffic up about 20%, which is still way down on what it was in April, but better than nothing. I am having more success elsewhere at the moment, which is a pity in some ways, because I genuinely like HP!
My few hubs are doing fantastically well. Unbelievable, in fact. The way I'm going is definitely the way to go!
I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the "less is more" philosophy is what Google is looking for. I'm still reworking my hubs and am about half way through them. My page views have more than tripled since I started renovating, but I must say that my articles are SO much better now that I've been reworking them. I just hope this continues as I'm finally making some headway!
I'm finding that about 300, well written words of utter drivel works best. My model is eHow -- the search engine results are swamped with eHow articles.
I thought the site had a lower threshold of at least 500 words? I'm not being critical, just trying to make sure I get it straight. I've been working on writing shorter hubs (mine are usually 1,000 - 1,500 words and up). But it's been hard to get my mind around the shorter way of doing it.
Marcy, If it take more words to write what you have to say, my experience is that Google does like the longer hubs. I've done well with shorter ones only when there wasn't very much competition.
I've been reading the comments above. Maybe I'm wrong and working hard for nothing.
Why would anyone want to add 300 words of more drivel to the web?
From all that I have read about Google Search, Panda, Penguin and SEO stuff, that is not in a writer's best interest.I think ultimately you will find that 300 words is not a good idea... but i am still trying to figure out how to recoup my traffic as well. When you rework articles you may have a brief increase in traffic because they have been reindexed but if it isn't the quality/word count Google is looking for then it will drop like a rock as soon as they update again.
When I wrote for Yahoo they wanted short articles...that's what I wrote and my views were awful! I think Google is more interested in quality than quantity...in other words (pardon the pun), if you can only say what you have to say with more words, say it!
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that it is best to get the primary information in the first text box, maybe 250 words or so. Then flesh that out with maybe another 800 words (or so) with additional information. That way the people that are looking for the short version have it while those that want more information can get that as well. That's going to be my new strategy anyway.
HP seem to be saying that we should be focused on video and photos as much, if not more, than text, as far as I can make out.
I almost feel like I lost my Google credibility when I was slapped, now they will only give me my traffic back slowly, as they don't fully trust me! (I know that's anthropomorphising, but that's how it feels sometimes!)You have been a very bad boy and you must stay on the naughty step until you are really, really sorry for what you did. lol.
LO! First time I've heard Naughty Step - gonna add it to my list of phrases; love it!
Hey, I use the word "anthropomorphising" and get no credit. Will uses "naughty step" and people love it. Life is so unfair!
Your word might be appreciated here: http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/101675
I think that sounds like a sensible strategy.
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