How I got to 2,000 hub views in two weeks and how you can too

1. 61

   Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years ago

   I’ve been reading many questions on the forums about how to get more traffic to your hubs.
   
   I’m a great believer in testing something, analysing the results, refining and sharing, and I approached the subject of how to get hub views in a practical methodical way. I’ll share my techniques below and hope you find them useful. This will be a long forum post, but I wanted to create a good resource. (I may also develop this into a hub of its own at some point).
   
   First, some statistics: Since joining the site two weeks ago, I’ve managed to get around 2,000 views to my hubs and I believe that anyone else can do the same. (I realise that 2,000 views is a small sum compared to how many more established hubs and hubbers get, but we have to start somewhere!)
   My top hub has so far achieved 260 page views (HubScore of 82) whilst my bottom hub (published two days ago) has managed 44 views.
   
   I’ve achieved this without being featured highly in Google yet (only around 7% of my site visits came via search).
   
   For those interested, my traffic came from the following main areas (data from Google Analytics):
   
   HubPages: 31%
   Direct: 27%
   Google Plus: 19%
   Other social media: 8%
   Googe Search: 7%
   Forums / Other Referrals: 6%
   Other sources: 2%
   
   
   The techniques that we need to follow break into four broad areas:
   
   1. Write great content
   2. Interact with the HubPages community
   3. Promote your work on social media by adding value
   4. Share your work elsewhere with interested audiences
   
   I‘ll cover each of these in turn.
   
   
   1. Write great content
   
   The golden rule is that you have to create hubs that are worth reading and, critically, of interest to your audience. You can achieve this by:
   
   -    Writing about an article you have expertise in and are passionate about or where you have a unique approach or perspective: write what you know
   
   -    Theming your articles around a central topic (e.g. most of mine are around small business and entrepreneurship, because I’m a small business owner); both readers and Google like in-depth, expert hubs on a central topic
   
   -    Create long form (1,200 words plus) engaging content that either informs, educates or entertains the reader (If your hub isn’t doing one of those three things, it’s probably not adding much value)
   
   -    Use multiple media capsules to maintain interest (I use images, polls, text and boxout text to break up the flow of longer pieces)
   
   -    Creating unique media for your readers (I create illustrations and diagrams to visually explain key points)
   
   -    Proofreading and editing your hub for good English, spelling, punctuation and grammar (poorly worded hubs put people off)
   
   -    The crucial thing in all of this is to create work that adds value; that’s how you get repeat visitors to your hubs
   
   -    This is where the Learning Center really is your friend.
   
   
   2. Interact with the HubPages community
   
   The majority of visits to my hubs at the moment are from the HubPages community. That’s great as it means my work is of interest to others and also means I can gather good feedback to improve my work further. The secret of getting hubbers to look at your hubs is all about ‘Interaction’. The more you give this community, the more it will give back.
   
   So, how can you interact effectively? This is what worked for me:
   
   -    Asking and answering questions – People on HP want to know stuff! I try to answer questions where I have a perspective or some expertise and I also use HP to ask questions if I’m researching content for a hub
   
   -    Posting on forums, responding and helping people out – If you’ve got an approach that’s worked or you’ve spotted something of value to the community, share it here. Other hubbers appreciate the time and effort that you put into letting them know and may reward you by visiting your hubs
   
   -    Hopping Hubs – HubHopping is part of the HubPages Quality Assessment Process (QAP) – They use this to understand the quality of hubs, which hubs should be featured, which altered and which removed. I like to use the ‘classic’ hopper as it lets me leave comments and feedback on hubs
   
   -    Comment and feedback to other hubbers – If you like a hub, let the author know. Use the vote up buttons and useful / interesting / awesome etc. to let them know what you think. Also, if you have any constructive, useful and practical suggestions on how they might tweak their hubs to make them better, let them know
   
   -    Following other hubbers – If you find hubbers that you like, follow them (and leave fan mail!); they will often follow you back, plus it’s a great way to get exposed to more work and improve our own writing style and approach
   
   -    Sharing / creating resources – Link to other hubbers hubs, write to them and let them know; if you’ve got a great idea that will help out the community, write a hub about it
   
   All of these tips together will help to make you a valuable community member. The more you interact with the community, the more people will come to know you, follow you and view your hubs. Everybody wins.
   
   I wrote an in-depth hub on how to be a great HP community member which contains many more details. You can find it linked from my profle.
   
   
   3. Promote your work on social media by adding value
   
   Social media is a great way to start getting your work out there and noticed, but the trick is that you can’t just spam social media, you have to take part in it and add value to the discussion. That means finding out where interested people are, approaching them in a way that works for them and sharing content that they are going to find interesting, read and share on themselves.
   
   You can’t just spam links to your posts though, people are very weary of this and will ignore them!
   
   If you can build up a good following of like minded, interested people, you have a ready made audience for your posts. If you’re lucky, they’ll also provide useful feedback that you can use.
   
   Personally, I use Google+, specifically the ‘Communities’ areas. Because I am a member of several different small business / entrepreneur community forums (and a moderator of one of the big ones), that’s the social network I tend to use and where I get the best engagement.
   
   When I post links, I also post a description and context for why people might find it interesting; for example, when posting a link to a hub about getting customer feedback, I included this text:
   
   How Small Businesses Can Get Valuable, Relevant Feedback From Their Customers
   
   You know that if you can really understand what your customers think and feel, you'll be able to create fantastic products and services that will delight and engage them. Their feedback can be incredibly valuable in helping you to tweak your business offerings so that both your customers and your business can benefit.
   
   Because your clients are often busy and time-starved, you need to ask the right questions, provide a structure and incentivize them to feedback to you. This isn't as difficult as it sounds, you just need to follow five basic principles:
   
   1.   Be specific in your survey questions
   2.   Provide a structured way to give a response
   3.   Understand who your audience is and how to reach them
   4.   Communicate and incentivize your survey
   5.   Analyze and act on your results
   
   This article will tell you how to go about that and provide a basic framework for you to start getting the feedback that matters from your customers.
   
   This means that when people see my post, they immediately know what to expect if they click on the link, driving up their engagement.
   
   This approach has managed to get me 130 +1’s for my posts (equivalent to Facebook 'Likes'), together with reshares and comments, all of which drives traffic.
   
   4. Share your work elsewhere with interested audiences
   
   HubPages and social media sites aren’t the only places that you can let people know about your content. There are dozens of forums dedicated to every subject under the sun on the web.
   
   Join forums in your topic area and develop a presence there. You can then share your relevant content, together with a good description to help add value.
   
   As an example, I interviewed a life / nude model last year and wrote a series of guides for people interested in finding out more. I joined a couple of forums about life modelling and posted links to my HP guides there. I also wrote to several of the website owners for life modelling sites and let them know about my guides and they have offered to publish the links.
   
   Often it’s just a case of asking and offering something and letting other people take you up on it.
   
   Perhaps your content answers questions that someone might have? That’s great, if so, go to Quora, search for questions in similar topics to your hub. Answer the question and include a link back.
   
   
   This is all only a starting point though and it’s what worked for me; there are lots of other ways to promote your work.
   
   If you have any tips on getting traffic prior to getting indexed by Google through organic search, please add them below.
   
   I realise this has been a long post and thanks for reading it through, I very much hope you found it useful.
   
   Remember: write, test, analyse results, refine, repeat! That's what will drive more views, and revenue, your way.
   
   Good luck!

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      You may be new to HP, but you clearly are not new to online writing...I've never seen a newbie who knows as much as you do about this subject.  Personally, I don't promote my work as I don't have time and don't really know how to do so effectively.  My numbers are not great (37,000 after one year on HP) but I do make some money and thoroughly enjoy the writing and commenting.  Your analysis is excellent, however.

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         Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         TimeTraveller, that may be true - I've been running an editorial business for a few years, do provide some private consultancy and spent ten years as a communications and customer satisfaction manager, so that does give me a bit of insight; nonetheless, I do think these are techniques that people can learn and apply without too much difficulty. Thanks for the kind words!

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      Sophia Angeliqueposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Interesting. I never did any of that. From day one, 98% of my traffic came from search engines. I never had any desire to get traffic from HP because they weren't allowed to click on the ads, so it was pointless.
      
      With regard to G+, etc. been there since day one, and I find that if three people click on a link, it's a lot. In addition, my traffic has varied from about 200 clicks a day to about 20,000 clicks a day. Depended on a lot of factors.
      
      In the last month or so, I've had more than 100,000 hits. Over a two year period, counting the one's I deleted, it would have been more than 500,000.
      
      You were saying?

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         Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Sophia, my article was aimed at people new to HubPages who hadn't yet been indexed by the search engines. I appreciate that over time, organic search engine traffic can drive many, many hits (in fact, I stated in my article that to some more established hubbers, 2,000 would be a tiny number).
         
         However, what I was trying to do is offer advice to other new hubbers like myself to get traffic in the early days; and I do believe that getting other hubbers to look at your hubs is good, because you'll get CPM impressions even if they don't click your ads, and you'll get good feedback from them.
         
         I appreciate too that other people will have different experiences with different social communities, and of course one size doesn't fit all. Google+ has been teriffic for me because I spend a lot of time there and have built up a great circle of people that I can share with.
         
         Ultimately, different approaches work for different people and I am glad your techniques have worked for you. However, for some people, the techniques I have mentioned also work.
         
         That was my key message.

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            Sophia Angeliqueposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            That was from day one. I didn't take time to accumulate it. I was at the top of Google from day one. It didn't take long. That said, I have been on the web since 1995 and had figured out how to write niche topics that hadn't been written about but that was searched for.

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               Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Indeed, there is a *lot* more competition now (also Panda and Penguin haven't helped), hence having to use these other techniques.

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                  Sophia Angeliqueposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  Paul, My articles still get to the top of google. How on earth do you think I was able to garner 100,000 hits in just over a month with a handful of hubs? They weren't old hubs. They had been written recently.. I've removed them now because I'm leaving hubpages. The current hub in place is just a 'holding hub' until I get paid what is owed end February, then I'm out of here.
                  
                  The 53,000 hits was actually for the first  nine days of February when someone decided that it was published somewhere else first and that the products advertised was not relevant. I just removed it and put it elsewhere. I've lost track of the number of times I've had to email HP to tell them that someone is mistaken. Yes, it would have been reinstated - they always are, but at that point, I'd rather have lost the money than fight this - again.
                  
                  
                  

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                     AMFredenburgposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     Sophia, just curious, do all these views result in a good income? (Views don't necessarily equate to cash, unfortunately.) Just found you on Wizzley; interesting content!

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                     superfly47posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     Why are you leaving?

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                        Casimiroposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                        Yeah, Sophia Angelique is no longer a Hubber. Smells fishy to me!

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         2. 74

            Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Paul, I've been here for about 3 years now and you still had 2 tips I hadn't tried yet.  Thanks for being helpful.

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      Li Galoposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Paul, thanks for the info.  I've been here about 10 months.  I'm doing okay but I'd be doing much better if I'd had the knowledge you shared when I first started.  I do know what you listed but it took me about 5 months to figure it out.  I think you've done some folks a favor and I appreciate anyone being helpful like that... And, most people are cool here so just ignore the haters!  You're doing great.  Keep it up!

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         Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         thanks for the kind words Li

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      tmouse1posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you, Paul.  You've provided some guidance and inspiration for this newbie!

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      Kristinmcrposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I'm new and will be following this advice. Thanks for taking the time to share it with everyone!

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   Reality Bytesposted 11 years ago

   This would have made a good hub.   I think you might be exaggerating the numbers a tad, your profile claims you reached 1000 views, five days ago?

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      Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Reality, as of now, my hubs have received 1,997 views. And you're right, I think I will develop this into a hub. I've already written one on being a great community member that explains a lot of point 2, but will develop the other points further.

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   Pearldiverposted 11 years ago

   Wow.... how long did you say you have worked at this site? 
   
   
   I learned sometime ago that it is also prudent to measure my 'Value' as a community 'member' by the frequency of three things. .. 
   
   1 - the number of times I am ignored in the forums, when my candor upsets the 'Spin'
   2 - the frequency of my 'Valuable Community Member' accolades are taken away childishly!
   3 - the frequency of being banned in the forums when my opinion is too direct or too subtle!
   
   Perhaps your self promoted 'membership' length, may be a bit too short... to appreciate the 'value' of this post objectively! 
   
   Nice to meet you... I haven't seen you in the forums until now! 

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      Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Pearl - I've only had good experiences as a community member, so perhaps the sheen hasn't worn off yet! I am, by nature, an optimist! Either way, I hope that the article is useful.

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         Pearldiverposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         We are ALL optimistic mate!
         And don't be in a hurry to rub your sheen off too prematurely! 
         
         Just appreciate the true value of honesty and reality!
         eg: With another oar, used efficiently and more professionally, this once great site may well Stop circling the sharks! 

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         Pamela Kinnaird Wposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Paul,
         
         I'm very surprised at some people's reaction to your good start here.  I certainly started much slower.  And thank goodness when I started I didn't have any rude remarks thrown at me or I surely would have left. 
         
         I guess it's as my father used to say -- It takes all kinds of people to make a world go 'round.
         
         I wish you the best here on Hubpages, Paul.  Most of the community members are very friendly and helpful.

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            Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Pamela, thanks for the kind words. I was a little surprised at some of the remarks, particularly as my original post was made with the intent of helping others, rather than being about my own success. As you say, people have their own interpretation, and as long as I know my intent is good, and that (hopefully) the post helps others, then it will have served its purpose.

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      Sarra Garrettposted 11 years agoin reply to this

        Hi Pearldiver!  I too get ignored in forums or banned when my opinion doesn't meet with the masses.  I don't get on them much anymore because I'm tired of the politics and the questions about God and Athiests.  Geez.  I even turned off all my accolades as I don't think it's anyone's business.  Not to mention that I've reached over 22,000 views and it still shows a 10,000 accolade.  It's all about pets and yet I keep writing because my views have been soaring in the last month so I must be doing something right.  Numbers don't mean anything as we are all a number anyway.  Maybe I'm just getting old and know what really matters now. 

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         mistyhorizon2003posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Just in case you didn't realise, the next accolade that will show after you hit the 10,000 view one is 100,000 views, so don't worry that you haven't seen it update since you hit 10,000.
         
         http://hubpages.com/faq/#accolades

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   seanorjohnposted 11 years ago

   Great achievement Paul. You should hit the 10,000 milestone very soon. Just looked over one or two of your hubs and you certainly practise what you preach.

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   CashFlowsToo.composted 11 years ago

   Very good Post.  I'm still learning here.  Hubpages has been an account I've had for years but never effectively utilized.  I see it as useful. I just need to stick with it and be disciplined as you have.
   
   Thanks for your inspiration.  Please check out my post and give me feedback when you can. 
   
   God Bless.

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   donotfearposted 11 years ago

   You are off to a whopping good start.  I'm lime green with envy!

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   ketanmposted 11 years ago

   I just joined HP and sincerely loving it... Great advice from you on how to start.... I believe the key is to enjoy writing, rest all usually falls in place. Your first point "Write great content" is the hardest :-) Anyway Thank you for sharing this post.

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   Rosie2010posted 11 years ago

   Congratulations on achieving 2,000 views in such a short time.  Thanks for all your helpful advice.  Putting this in the forums rather than writing a hub, or followed by a hub, is a great way to get more traffic to your hubs.  Good job.  Cheers!

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      Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the kind words all. I hope that through having this in the forums it does get a bit more visiblity, and I know that there have been lots of questions from new hubbers on how to drive traffic; I just wanted to share what had worked for me.

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   Greekgeekposted 11 years ago

   Excellent post, and it should indeed be a hub. It's refreshing to see a newbie expert who really knows what he or she is talking about.
   
   I was recently honked off by someone barging in and claiming that 285 views in six weeks was an amazing accomplishment, proof of his SEO prowess. He hadn't used a lot of the techniques you describe -- minimal social sharing, he said (although I wonder how much was minimal) -- so that did make it more difficult, but he also claimed you HAD to have a keyword in your account name to succeed.
   
   Well, I took him up on the challenge when he threw down this gauntlet, "Write on a saturated topic such as removing viruses without antivirus, without promotion, and without a related keyword as your account name, and you may get 1 or 2 hits a week if you're lucky." I relied solely on the techniques you mentioned under #1 -- your section on content. Also, I had 7 hubs, since that's what the challenger had.
   
   Result? NOT as good as yours, since I was not using any form of social interaction or social sharing, and I was starting with an unknown account name with zero online reputation or recognition.  At six weeks, my views were 1,470. Now it's up to 2482 at 2 months. But there's a catch. Good content gets found, and Hubpages made one of the hubs "Hub of the Day" and featured it on the front page, since it was a trending topic that they wanted to cash in on. (I've had the Greekgeek account how many years and never had a HOTD? Sheesh.) After that, the account started getting followers even without any attempt on my part to promote it, which killed the experiment, but proved that good content can work on its own.
   
   Of course, you don't want to do that. That's fighting with one hand behind your back. The promotion and social techniques you mention in sections 2-4 will build traffic faster and more sustainably.

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      Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks very much for posting this very thorough reply. I completely agree that ultimately it is content that matters. The funny thing is, it doesn't matter how often Google states that, people still think they can 'game' the system. In reality, Quality Trumps Everything.
      
      Interesting point about account names as well. I do have a blog with a 'business' name and brand, but when writing here, I made a conscious choice that this would be about the things I was interested in (hence using my own name). I didn't want a 'keyword' in my account name as that might limit what I chose to write about.
      
      I also think that as Google Authorship becomes a stronger ranking signal, subdomain names won't matter as much as the person that's creating the content there.
      
      Thanks again for the story, it was great reading! And I've already had a few other requests for a hub, so I'll add it to my ideas queue!

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    web923posted 11 years ago

    Paul, thank you for sharing your wisdom, and in a very professional manner I might add! You've brought up some very good points like target marketing and producing hubs that are in some way useful and/or beneficial to the reader. I sometimes find it difficult to switch gears from creative writing (which I love), to thinking analytically in terms of marketing. I think it must be a right and left brain conflict of some sort, nevertheless you've stimulated some left brain activity. Thank you!

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    caseymelposted 11 years ago

    I have been trying to figure out how to get more visitors to my Hubs and sites.  This article will be a great resource for me!

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    janderson99posted 11 years ago

    Paul, Good summary!
    One thing to note is that RSS goes kaput in two days (Feb) So sad!

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    writing onlineposted 11 years ago

    great tips, i have published an article but I think it does not generate traffic because the content. I 'd like to try better next time

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    andyk02posted 11 years ago

    Thank Paul for your tips. Btw, your summary  can be a great hub too... hehehe...

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    LisaMarie724posted 11 years ago

    Wonderful advice to new hubbers Paul!  I can see you going very far on here.  I can't wait to read more of your hubs.

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       Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Lisa, you're very kind to say so. I'm working on a couple of other hubs at present that I hope will be useful to the community.

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    maryeasonposted 11 years ago

    Thank you Paul for the great information. I am one of the "newbies" you were targeting and it was very informative and helpful.

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    sallybeaposted 11 years ago

    Hi Paul, brilliant advice.  You have gone to a lot of trouble to share your technique with all of us Newbies.  I for one am very grateful.  I am definitely one of your fans, you are definitely a rising stat!  Thank you so much!!

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    DommaLeighposted 11 years ago

    Thanks for  the advice. I am new to HP too with only one article so far but I am hoping to finish another very soon. You made a ton of good points that I plan on trying out.

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    Peggy Wposted 11 years ago

    Congratulations on your impressive start with HubPages.  Whether old or new writers, we can all learn from one another and it would seem that you have much to offer by way of expertise.  Thanks for posting this!

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    2besureposted 11 years ago

    Delete this and make it a hub, everyone will who is looking for more traffic will read it.

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       Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Haha, I will make a hub from it but I want as many as possible to benefit, so I'll leave this up.

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    molometerposted 11 years ago

    Hi Paul,
    
    You are off to a cracking start here on hubpages. Well done on writing this helpful guide. Not just for newbies either.

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    NotPCposted 11 years ago

    Great job on your first two weeks here at HubPages! It sounds like this is the right place for you to be! Don't be surprised if your pages take a slight drop in traffic for a month or two. Sometimes hubs get a lot of traffic when you first publish them because they are listed as new hubs and are featured in people's news feeds. Also every time you edit a hub, that counts as a view, so when you first publish and are editing the hub you may get a false traffic indicator. After about a month, once your hubs gain search engine momentum and you develop incoming links, the traffic should bounce right back up.
    
    Again, just thought I'd throw that out there so you aren't shocked if the traffic does happen to drop a bit. Otherwise, keep up the great work, but most importantly have fun being here. That really does make all the difference!

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       Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       That's great advice, thanks for sharing it .

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    aa liteposted 11 years ago

    The thing that always worried me about using social media/internal traffic was how scaleable was it, and how long it would last.  I've personally never used social media much, mainly because I don't have a big network out there.  I think it really helps if you're already established in circles or communities or whatever Google+ calls it.
    
    However, I did experiment with posting a few of my hubs on reddit a while ago.  Incidentally this is something you have to be careful  with, you can easily get banned as a spammer if you overdo.  The immediate effect was amazing, my Google analytics went through the roof, and I got about 1000 visitors in a day...........then it all died out. 
    
    I don't even post my hubs on Facebook, I suspect if I did my friends would pop over to read it, there would be nice traffic for a day, then it would die down.
    
    Now there is always the chance that a hub could go viral, I post it on my account, a friend shares it with his friends, they in turn share it with their friends etc.  That can produce a huge number of views and can go on for a long time.  But content going viral is completely unpredictably, so it is a matter of luck rather than strategy. 
    
    2000 views in 2 weeks for somebody who's new to HubPages is very impressive.  But it probably earns about $6, so $12 in a month (very approximately depending on CPM).  Most people would hope to be able to get more than this eventually and I worry that the social media strategy is not scaleable, i.e. a hub gets traffic when it is first published, but stops getting views after a few days.
    
    Does the first hub you shared on social media still get a lot of views?
    
    I see something similar with internal HP traffic, whenever I publish a hub, I get some followers reading it, I don't have a huge number of followers so it is not overwhelming, but there is always a peak, then it dies down.  I'm sure I could get more internal views if I interacted more, but I think the effort to get significant traffic would be huge.

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       Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       You make some really good points, specifically about scalability with social media and spamming. I too tried the Reddit route and had a very similar experience to you - Big spike for a short while and then it really died down.
       
       As far as Social Media in general is concerned, I think it's about context and making your sharing part of the conversation. For example, the G+ communities that I am on are about small business, so when someone posts a question or starts a discussion where something I have written can be a useful resource I can point them at it. Because it adds value, others will then click through and read.
       
       Additionally, because small business is a broad topic with lots of communities on various aspects, I can tailor my posts and links to each community (i.e. make my introduction specific to the community I am posting to), that gives me more flexibility and also gives my posts a wider circulation.
       
       In terms of what this does for my stats, Google Analytics tells me that over the last three weeks I get around 25-35 views a day from G+, depending on my posting schedule.
       
       I haven't really experimented much with Facebook, but have had a total of around 20 visits from there during that time and about the same from Twitter.
       
       Thank for sharing, very insightful.

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    rebekahELLEposted 11 years ago

    Congrats on your views.  I think you've shared helpful advice and social media definitely can help bring targeted traffic, which is what many of us want.   I think there are those who may not differentiate between views and readership.  The HP community can be a great resource to build readership and shares, likes, etc.  Hubs are shared, linked, liked which can build followers and links.  And search engines notice author quality with social media. It's not by accident that our hubs have our screen name and number of followers at the top of the page, along with social media shares.  HP recently stopped counting Twitter tweets, which is too bad.  I think it was a 'faster loading page' decision.
    
    There is a lot of info out there about the valuation of social media, but it's certainly part of the SEO pie and something we can use to our benefit.  I found this link with various articles others may find helpful.
    http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_resu … &stp=1
    Also an older article about social media and search engines from seomoz, which is a top rated SEO site.
    
    Organic traffic is sought after, but direct and referral traffic need to help balance how we generate traffic, if for whatever reason, our page rank gets hit!

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       Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Rebekah,
       
       You make some very good points. It's a case of balancing social media, direct., referral and search.
       
       I think what some people miss though is that Social Media is all about *interaction* - If you just post links with no explanation or context, people won't  click on them.
       
       Just as with the HP community, it's about adding value over time and giving other people something they want to read.
       
       I liked your articles links as well, very helpful.

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25. 57

    DIYmommyposted 11 years ago

    Paul,
    
    I joined on Feb 1st, and I'm now just shy of 2,300 views!
    
    I'm really getting addicted to writing for HubPages...

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       Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Brilliant news, well done!

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26. 53

    Page1 SEO tacticsposted 11 years ago

    Those are some great stats from all of you who have been on here for such a short time, congratulations.  This forum content is quite helpful, and yes the interaction in the community can really help out quite a bit. I myself don't do enough of it for any of my accounts to receive such a high percentage of views from the community, though, I do still get a bit of community views.  I mainly try to focus on search engine traffic, as the community will only go back to the same hub a number of times, which could result in a lack of traffic as time continues. Thus I am focusing on search engine traffic as a top priority, and in my very rare spare time interacting in the community.

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27. 59

    djohnsposted 11 years ago

    Thanks, Paul!  I'm new here, and will use your tips to try to drive traffic as well!

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28. 60

    birthwriteposted 11 years ago

    Great information and this is an incredibly helpful post! I joined HP a year ago, but just started writing hubs this past week. I am really enjoying it! I plan to learn more and grow and eventually make money, but right now I just enjoy being a part of this community. Thanks again!

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    1. 67

       MarieAlana1posted 11 years agoin reply to this

       birthwrite, I like that username. It's almost like you are saying you were born to write with such a unique username like that. I'm just wondering one thing. Why did it take you so long to start writing hubs? I'm noticing that others are waiting to write their hubs as well and I'm wondering why somebody would do that. Everybody has their own unique stories to tell and things to write about their own interests. So, why would anybody wait to write?

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29. 80

    csgibsonposted 11 years ago

    Thank you for sharing your information relating to traffic.  I will try to adopt some pof your ideas.

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30. 79

    ketageposted 11 years ago

    Nice, I wish i had that many views in such a short time, after reading your post, it seems I have neglected a few steps. Thanks for the tips. Off I go to blatantly promote myself to my friends on facebook

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31. 57

    DIYmommyposted 11 years ago

    Not bragging here, but, in a little over a month, I'm just shy of 3,700 views now! It looks like some of my articles picked up alot of steam in search fairly quickly....

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       AMFredenburgposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Okay, wow....

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32. 40

    lightitupgolf2posted 11 years ago

    Im new and struggling with traffic.

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33. 82

    molometerposted 11 years ago

    Nice work Paul, very handy information for new and existing hubbers.
    As for  Sophia Angelique she no longer exists on hubpages, and her story was a little far fetched to say the least.
    100,000 views in 3 weeks is a bit much to swallow.  It took me five months to get up to 10,000 views per month, and that was an not easy thing to do. 3 months later it fell of a cliff with a PANDA update but is back on track now.
    Constant effort and social activity is the only way to get and maintain traffic. There is no substitute for hard work.

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34. 61

    Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years ago

    I'm glad that all of you are finding the advice useful; as an update, I've managed just over 9,000 page views in seven weeks, so the momentum is cointinuing, although it's shifting more towards organic Google search results now.

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       Sarra Garrettposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Good news Paul!  Kudos to you!

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35. 76

    shampa sadhyaposted 11 years ago

    It is a good post.

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36. 51

    ritsukakunxposted 11 years ago

    Honestly, its simple:
    
    write what people are searching for. Write for keywords, if you want to make money, instead of interests. Sounds boring/harsh, I know, but you can have a happy medium!
    
    I get 2,200 views a day right now, around $3.50 to $5 per day on HP earnings and get about $40/month from Amazon at this moment. :3 Not much, but it is nice for passive income!
    
    I get it because I write what people are SEARCHING for along with things that interest me a bit. For example, not too into celebrities, but have a passive interest in them because hey, who doesn't like a train wreck? :p Korean Cosmetics, though? Love them and those articles get lots of views/amazon sales.

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    1. 51

       ritsukakunxposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Also - don't bother building up HP followers. Views from followers are NEGLIGIBLE. I've seen people with 500 hubs, 3,000 followers, and only 10k page views trophy. Doesn't seem that good, huh? You get most of your real traffic from search engine searches! Use a keyword tool to see what people are searching for. Don't write something with lots of competition; instead write something with few competitive pages.
       
       I'm not saying HP traffic is worthless, because it is nice to make friends and all, but if you want to make money, you gotta look elsewhere.

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       Randy Godwinposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Unfortunately, many of us were once enjoying the same success with writing such content and making money on Adsense and Amazon sales.  My rate of earning was once twice than yours until Google decided my well researched and helpful content was not needed anymore.  Please be aware you can lose almost all of your traffic literally overnight at any time from no fault of your own.  Don't get too comfortable with your advice, it can turn around and bite you on the asp.  Just saying.

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37. 61

    Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years ago

    I agree that Google organic traffic is definitely important for long term success, however, HP traffic is important in the early days, which is what I intended this post to be helpful for. For those interested, my stats, seven weeks in look like this:
    
    Visitors
    Visits: 6,328
    Pages/Visit: 1.47
    % New Visits: 77%
    Bounce Rate: 80%
    
    Main Traffic Sources
    Direct/None: 1,745 (28%)
    Google Plus: 1,305 (21%)
    Google Organic Search: 1,136 (18%)
    HubPages: 1,054 (17%)
    Forums: 289 (5%)
    Twitter: 67 (1%)
    Facebook: 64 (1%)
    Other: 668 (11%)
    
    Content
    Total page views: 9,322
    Unique page views: 7,915
    Time on page: 3:23
    
    Hub views
    Top hub (Google Plus Introduction): 879 (9%)
    Second hub (Comparison of outliner software): 537 (6%)
    Third hub (Google Plus Community Advice): 482 (5%)

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       aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Hi Mr Paul (Hat),
       
       So this is really interesting, but to me your data just show how difficult it is to replace Google with social media  (and wouldn't we all want to be less dependent on the Big Bad G!)
       
       Your view numbers are truly impressive for a 2 month old hubber, I think I was happy when I managed 20 views 10 months ago.  But..... to me your growth is not growing (I'm sure there is a technical term for this, am certain I should know it.....additive? doesn't sound right). 
       
       What I would be most interested in is whether your Google+ views increase proportionally with the number of hubs you publish. 
       
       So 5 weeks ago you said you had 2000 views in 2 weeks, 1000 views/week.  Now you have 9300 views, so you've added 7300 views in 5 weeks.  That is 1464 views/week. 
       
       Okay so there is growth, but I think your views from organic search etc. have increased.  When you started your thread you said that 19% of your 2000 views came from Google+, that's 190 views/week. Now it's 380 views/week....but you have published a lot of hubs during that time.  5 weeks ago 7% of your traffic came from Google that's 70 views/week, in the 5 weeks since then you're getting 262 search views/week that is  much more impressive growth.
       
       I suspect that as  times goes on the views you get from Google will dwarf your Google+ traffic.  Also should you ever stop publishing new hubs, your social traffic will drop much more than your search traffic.
       
       To make payout each month ($50) you need about 1500 daily views.  I suspect that is a lot easier to achieve with organic search traffic than with google+ (eventually, I am far from achieving it yet!).
       
       So.....your google+ traffic is very impressive, but if Google hates us I don't think social media can replace it, if we want to make more than peanuts from online writing.

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          Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          You are completely correct, and I think it is because social networking simply doesn't scale up as quickly or readily as organic SEO. I think there are several reasons for this:
          
          - There are only a 'finite' number of followers / places that you can post on social media; indeed, as my number of hubs have grown, I am posting about each one less because I want to avoid spamming the communities I belong to and want my hubs to add value, hence having more caution when posting
          
          - Using social media takes time, and that's something that's in short supply for me at the moment. I'm spending more time writing and less time promoting
          
          So, neither my audience, nor my promotion has scaled up as my number of hubs has grown; what has chanegd as a result of having more hubs is greater visibility in search results (more pages to rank, more keywords etc.)
          
          I still think that social networking is a great way to start out, prior to the search engines passing much traffic, but as we focus more and more on writing, it's natural that the search engines will send more traffic. I still think that social media can play an important role in an overall traffic strategy, but it depends where time is focussed (compare my roughly 21% of traffic from G+ compared to only 1% from FB or Twitter).
          
          I'm also aware of how many views are needed to start to make reasonable money, so I'm trying to diversify my traffic approach through guest blogging, spending more time on each hub etc. It's very much a case of tweaking, testing and refining at present, but it's certainly proving an interesting experience!
          
          But you are correct that it would be a naive approach to try and replace SE traffic with social media; I still think that exposure on social media can be a good thing, it's just as part of the overall traffic mix.
          
          Your Mr Hat!

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             aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

             Agreed.  The thing that one also needs to consider, is that social media "signals" are now believed to be part of Google's ranking algorithm.  So your hubs might rank better if you share them.  Pinterest is supposed to be especially important (probably google trying to make up for the fact that its bots don't 'see' images).  And Google+ due to shameless self-interest.
             
             Personally I think Google is crazy, social media signals are going to end up being even more of a mess than backlinks, they are a lot easier to game!  But then, what do I know.

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                Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Yes, I think that when Google Authorship comes fully into play, it will make some significant changes; indeed, the 'social media signals' think is ine of the things that drew me to G+ in the first place, although as a moderator of a relatively well behaved community there, I can tell you that (some) people are link dumping and spamming like crazy... I think that's only going to get worse as both authorship and social media signals become more important.

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                   aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                   See  to me Google Authorship is very different from social signals.  The way I understand it, and I must admit I haven't really read much about so I could be wrong, Google authorship will mean that the site you write on will matter less in how you rank.
                   
                   Right now the "authority" of the domain on which you publish matters a lot, which is not a great way of doing things, on HubPages there are hubs of very different quality.
                   
                   If you've claimed Google authorship for your writings, then Google can develop an idea of how good your content is, it gathers data about how "engaged" your writers are etc.  So when you publish something new it uses that data to rank your stuff.  Of course it would have to keep re-evaluating writers, so if they suddenly became spammers, they would lose their author rating.
                   
                   That seems to me to be a really good addition to Google's algorithm.  It could also mean that getting a new blog or site to rank would be a lot faster, as long as you were already a "known" author.

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                      Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      Yes, I know that Google Authorship and Social Signals are different to an extent, however it's 'believed' that part of how Google will tell an author's authority is by the social signals their work generates, i.e. how many plusses, shares, comments etc. that it has.
                      
                      You are completely correct though in that the major impact of authorship will be ranking the 'quality' (there's that word again!) of an author, as opposed to purely of a particular site.

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38. 77

    infotechnologyposted 11 years ago

    Traffic generation is of paramount importance to every internet publisher. I subscribe to organic medium  as the best source of long lasting traffic. But it does not happen in isolation, it is a combination of factors such as keyword research, hubpages community forum, social networking and consistency in quality posts. Just to mention the most important.

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39. 66

    younghopesposted 11 years ago

    Thanks a lot for this valuable information, it made an interesting reading and also the comments of the fellow hubbers which followed. You said you participate more in communities of google plus, how much has this been useful to you? or do you promote more on your google plus profile? I basically am confused with one thing though- there are so many social media platforms like FB, twitter, pinterset, google plus, tumblr etc and it becomes unmanageable to make friends on all, or to get followers and then making them come to your main website. Is there a way out?

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40. 61

    Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years ago

    Google Plus is a major source of traffic for me (In my top three referrers now and in the early days it was my top referrer); I think you're right that there are lots of networks and we only have so much time to devote to specific ones.
    
    I have found G+ to be the best for me because I've made some great connections there, belong to some great communities (one of which I help to moderate) and generally find it to be a good place to promote the content that I write.
    
    I tend to promote, appropriately, into communities that would be interested in the hubs that I create (so I promote my business hubs into the business communities, my Google+ hubs into the G+ advice communities etc.) As with everything else, it's all about adding value and providing context; just spamming links won't work, you have to invest the time to become a useful member of the community, which does take quite a bit of time and effort, but is worth it in my opinion.
    
    Hope this helps.

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       Randy Godwinposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       So Paul, I don't know if you've mentioned your earnings on this thread or not, but getting traffic is a bit different than making money using social sites.  I consider G+ a social site at this point.

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          Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          Indeed, G+ drives traffic to my hubs, where I do make a (little) money; I don't think I claimed I made any money from G+ directly (it would seem to be a hard thing to monetize).

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             Randy Godwinposted 11 years agoin reply to this

             No, you didn't claim you made much revenue from G+ and was why I asked this question.  Since monetary gains is the chief aim of many writers on HP, I just wanted to clarify that social sites aren't the best means of making money.
             
             Thanks for making this clear. 

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41. 66

    Parallelsposted 11 years ago

    Great tips, thanks for taking the time to write them. As a relatively new hubber I'm definitely going to be checking back to this post in the future for reference!

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42. 60

    Mark Ewbieposted 11 years ago

    Seems to me that the best way forward is to create content that other people want to share.  I don't believe it is possible to judge your own sufficiently well to know whether it is worth sharing.
    
    So that should be easy then.

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43. 0

    VivaLaVinaposted 11 years ago

    This is so good to read. I am very glad to find this forum on my doorstep of writing articles. I know what I should do, but sometimes there are certain matters that become obstacles for me to go forward. Now that I read this wonderful tips and ideas and facts of yours, I can feel that I am stepping over the obstacles I have unconsciously built. Thank you for sharing your great thoughts to success!

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44. 0

    cbarbarposted 11 years ago

    This is very valuable information. I just started on HubPages and need to be more involved on my social media sites. I agree that quality content is important, because if you are able to draw people to your articles, you want them to be good and you want the people to return (and even refer others to your articles). Thanks for the information.

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45. 94

    Annette Hendleyposted 11 years ago

    Great info. I started around 6 weeks ago as well, but haven't been all that active. Thanks for the tips.

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46. 70

    ladydeonneposted 11 years ago

    Thanks Paul!
    
    Your information is right on target.  I am a NEWBIE and have only posted 0ne article.  I appreciate that you are willing to help others who are less experienced and/or knowledgeable.  This information definitely belongs to the hub category.  I am thrilled that someone so generous and unselfish is a part of the hub community.  I'm a follower!

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47. 61

    Paul Maplesdenposted 11 years ago

    Hi all, I am delighted that you are finding the information useful!

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48. 58

    MGlobalposted 11 years ago

    Experience teaches wisdom...your insight is well appreciated. Thank you

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49. 61

    rhonda-ryanposted 11 years ago

    very good case study. Well I write unique and good quality content and do some social media marketing as well. but still i did not get more then 100 views for each hub.
    
    Today i'm going to share another hub for the same industry. I'm hopeful it will get some better results as compare to previous ones.

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50. 93

    lorddraven2000posted 11 years ago

    Awesome topic. I enjoyed this very much and found it to be very useful. Thanks

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