Category-based subdomains

1. 64

   nightnightposted 10 years ago

   Hi everyone I'm quite a new member to HubPages. So far I love it, there is a great community of writers and I feel that publishing a article is really easy and fun to do.
   
   However I spent some time exploring the forum to see what a lot of Hubbers out there were saying and I came across the google problem all the time. Everyone is screaming out that they are losing traffic and therefore losing the will to keep publishing on Hubpages, and the only reason they want to stay is because of the great community of writers. Obviously I am generalising a little but thats the picture I got from a lot of forum surfing.... So what do I suggest?
   
   Well from my personal opinion I feel that people wouldn't be as badly affected by all of these changes that google makes, and will continue to make for years to come if they published on niche websites related to specific topics. So my idea is based upon making hubpages special in terms of moving away from the content machine that search engines sometimes see these types of sites as.
   
   My idea.... I think that if hubpages could create a whole portfolio of websites specific to a range of topics    and then publish our content on them we as writers would be better off because google wouldn't effect them as badly, and it would build a diversity to your collection as writers. So for example your history hubs will go to a website specifically for Hub writers writing history, and your social media hubs will go to a technology website owned by Hubpages. Basically a group of partnership websites.
   
   This domain hubpages.com will still be the place where we create our content and use the forums and see how much we earn. The only difference is that hubpages will move our articles around helping us not have all of our 'eggs in the same basket'  and earn a better income by a higher chance of getting better traffic. This way we get the feeling of blogging for niche websites with the security of a large company.
   
   I think that if companies like Hubpages and Helium don't make these kind of changes they will always be fighting to be on top of the search engines constantly changing their algorithms.
   
   This is just an idea I had that I thought I should share. I literarily just came up with this so there could be some flaws.
   
   Let me know what you think!?
   
   All the best
   
   nightnight

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   1. 95

      cryptidposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      What you're suggesting is what Triond does.  I'd really hate to see HP follow that model.  To make the websites decent staff would have to spend some time maintaining them (which seems to happen at Triond on an extremely minimal level) or else the whole thing just reeks of spamzilla.  This would probably mean HP would have to hire more staff just to take care of the darn websites. 
      
      Also, like at Triond, there is so much content constantly published your Hub would only show up on the site for a short period of time before newer Hubs pushed it off the page.  So you wouldn't get as much of a views bump as you'd think.  You'd still be relying on search for most of your traffic.
      
      It's a nice idea, but I'm not sure it's so easy to implement the right way.  Probably better off making your own website with your niche articles. 

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      1. 64

         nightnightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Sure I get what your saying. I'm sure Hubpages would have to get a few more tech guys on the scene to make sure that all of the websites would be running ok.
         
         However I don't think it would be masses of staff, you could assign staff to certain categories and the volume of content is not changing. The only difficult bit is assigning hubs into categories.  Also I don't fully agree with the bump off page idea. This website still has your profile so people can find your content on here, and your hubs get buried here anyway? With specific websites there is less chance of getting buried I would have thought?
         
         Regarding search engine traffic…. I would have thought that search engines would favour specific websites with high quality articles then just one major hub.
         
         Again just my opinion but thanks for your feedback anyway

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         1. 58

            SOEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            We already have subdomains of our own and the ability to create multiple accounts. I really believe people can do that themselves already if they really wanted to. For example, I only write about games, and am going to eventually work on making one main index hub, that links to each game's set of guides, which links to more pages about that game, etc. Thereby essentially building my own website with a complete link hierarchy just out of my hubs.
            
            If i suddenly wanted to make cooking hubs, I'd do that on a new account, completely separate from this one.
            
            Problem solved.
            
            I notice a lot of people just like writing on a wide range of topics under one account. That probably has something to do with the current effects, granted only in part, but worth taking into consideration.

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2. 64

   nightnightposted 10 years ago

   I think your right. i like writing on a range of topics, and I cant really be bothered to make lots of accounts for different topics. Maybe in the future this will be more appropriate.  Well it was just an idea.... thanks for the feedback.

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3. 76

   derek gulbransonposted 10 years ago

   Hi nightnight. Thanks for the suggestion. Category-based subdomains is certainly something we've considered and continue to consider. Part of the problem with them is that the performance of content you publish to the category subdomains is susceptible to being adversely effected by poor content that someone else publishes to that subdomain as well. Until we get a better handle on how to automatically identify the general quality level of published content, we take the approach of user-based subdomains so that you will not be affected by your neighbor's poor content.
   
   Another approach we've considered is are more hand-currated category-based domains for some key topics, but this involves and editor and a fair bit of manual effort.
   
   (I hope you don't mind, I changed the heading for this discussion to better reflect what you're suggesting.)

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   1. 64

      nightnightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the information. No not to worry my title was quite drastic!

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