What Happened To The Links In Hubs to Digg & StumbleUpon?

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   Rock_njposted 10 years ago

   I understand that HubPages makes a lot of changes, and not ones we always agree with but are for the best, but I don't understand their rationale for getting rid of the link buttons at the buttom of Hubs that Hubbers could use to easily post their Hubs to sites like Digg & StumbleUpon? Why did HubPages do away with that functionality? I thought part of being succesful at HubPages is sharing links to your Hubs on the Internet? Why did they make it harder to do this?

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      Skylandersposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I agree. I use those two sites a lot

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      MelissaBarrettposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I'm of two minds about this on one hand I've seen lots of SEO "experts" saying that links from stumble upon are being ignored at the least by Google and considered "garbage links" at worse.
      
      On the other hand many of the new computers with windows 8 are coming pre-loaded with the stumble upon app.  So I'm guessing that it might be picking up even more users in the near future.

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      mcxniftycallsposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Hubpages had done it for good. In today's internet words, there is no value of links on social bookmarking or content sharing websites. It can reward you a couple of instant click but nothing else.
      Concentrate on writing quality and original content and spend some time on keyword research.

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   affilicoreposted 10 years ago

   I think there's a reason behind it... sites like StumbleUpon and Digg are currently having NoFollow attached to all the URLs so in terms of Link Juice or SEO value to your HubPages.. there's no value in terms of boosting your site ranking... having your sites on these two sites are merely for exposure...
   
   So therefore trimming to it just the necessary like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest do make some sense because if you are able to gather "Likes, Retweets, or Repinned" these do help to boost up the value of your content and it's telling search engines that people like/agree with what you are putting up and it should be ranked higher in the results.

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      Rock_njposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I actually get quite a few hits from the Hub links I post at StumbleUpon; not sure about Digg.  I have been reading a lot about SEO lately, and it seems as though as long as you're not on paid social booking marking sites, there is no negative impact as far as page ranking goes for having No Follow links.  In fact, Google wants to see some No Follow links or else they think your linking is too unnatural (which can incur a penalty from Google).  Ultimately we all want traffic to our Hubs, so I don't see anything wrong with encouraging people to post links to these social booking sites (even if they are No Follow), at least the ones like StumbleUpon that don't have a bad neightborhood reputation.  They might not boost our subdomains in Google, but they certainly provide link juice and needed traffic.

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   mcxniftycallsposted 10 years ago

   That's what I am saying, it can give you some instant traffic for a day or two but it don't help in search ranking at all. So it is not a great loss.

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      Rock_njposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I would rather get some instant traffic for a day or two, or even longer in some cases, than not.  It also can lead readers to share it with friends and increase traffic further.  I post my Hubs there anyway.  There's no reason for HubPages to take away the feature that made it easier for me to post links on these sites.  They want traffic to Hubs and to their site and get more exposure for HubPages, drawing in more writers.  This is one way to do that.

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   That Grrlposted 10 years ago

   Use a bookmarklet on your web browser to share your links to all the social networking sites you choose. I like Twitter, StumbleUpon and Scoop.it. If you use Firefox or Chrome look at the add-ons for the browser to find a quick share button which you set into your bookmark bar. It's very simple to use - just click the button when you are on the page you want to share. Fill in some information to polish it and then send it.

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      Rock_njposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the bookmarklet suggestion. I do use Firefox and Chrome. That is very helpful.

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   Simone Smithposted 10 years ago

   We got rid of that feature for several reasons:
   1. We wanted to simplify the Hub interface to give readers a better experience
   2. We had it on good authority that offering fewer things to click on meant that the options that remained would be clicked on disproportionately more (hence we wanted to direct readers to the social sharing options that provide the most bang for their buck)
   3. We found that those social sharing buttons were often abused (that is, Hubbers were sharing their own Hubs on social media channels in which they were not active, contributing citizens), which only hurt Hubbers' (and HubPages') prospects in the long run
   4. We wanted the page to load faster, and removing more buttons can help to lighten the load
   
   What's more, That Grrl makes a great point about bookmarklets being a great option. If you're active on a site and do more on it then just share promotional things (you should never join a site just to promote yourself), it's well worth adding the bookmarklet, and it doesn't hurt to occasionally share a Hub or two of your own using that tool.
   
   Hope that clears things up!

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      Rock_njposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the explanation Simone.  :-)  That certainly clears things up.

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   LisaMarie724posted 10 years ago

   That does make a lot of sense Simone, thanks for letting us know the reason behind it.

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