How do I improve my traffic from Google?

1. 71

   brianlokkerposted 11 years ago

   In the 2-1/2 years I've been on HubPages, most of my traffic has come via Google. I have only 25 hubs, and my traffic's never been large, but now it's close to non-existent. I know the various algorithm changes have affected everyone, and I've been assuming that the problem relates to HP, but now I'm not so sure, and I'm wondering what I can do myself to help the situation.
   
   As an experiment, I did a Google search on the exact title of my best-performing hub, relating to the Big 5 Oscars. This hub used to place pretty highly for various searches, but now I can't even find it among the top 20 pages of search results for the exact title. What really makes me wonder is that there is another HP article on page 2 of the SERP. That hub is about the Oscars, but has nothing at all to do with the "Big 5." My hub is a 2400-word article discussing the three relevant movies, whereas the other one is essentially a list of movies, which doesn't include any of the three.
   
   So I guess what I'm saying is that there must be something "wrong" with my hub in Google's eyes that has nothing to do with HP. (Meanwhile, the same search on Bing puts my hub at #1 on page 1.)
   
   I'd love to get some ideas about what I may be doing wrong.

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2. 78

   psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

   Are all your hubs "featured"?

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   1. 71

      brianlokkerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, all of them are featured. They have an average hub score of 86, with a range from 97 to 79. As of this morning, 9 of the 25 are "Editor's Choice" hubs (not the one I tested).

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3. 85

   WryLiltposted 11 years ago

   Are people Googling what you're writing? How much competition do you have?
   
   Remember, your title is the most important part of your content.

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   1. 71

      brianlokkerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I'm not suggesting that there is necessarily huge traffic out there for my hubs, although the one I experimented with had been doing pretty well historically. (And it's an evergreen topic, like all the rest of them.)
      
      What I don't understand is that the hub is not appearing at all (or on the first 20 pages, anyway) in Google for an exact title search, whereas other pages that are just peripherally relevant, or in some cases completely irrelevant, to the topic are showing up in the results. As I mentioned, the same search brings up my hub as #1 in Bing, so it appears to me that it's specifically Google-related.

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      1. 43

         Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Google does list that Hub in a search of your subdomain pages; however, it doesn't appear that any new cache versions of your Hubs or your subdomain appear after September 17th when HP made major changes in the navigation of the site.
         
         I suggest that you go in to your Webmaster Tools account, and do this:
         1.  From the left menu under 'Crawl', select 'Fetch as Google'
         2.  Add the Hub URL.  Be sure to include hub/ in the box and click on Fetch.
         3.  If the crawl is successful, click on "Submit URL to Index' when the option appears.
         4.  Submit the URL to your subdomain page (brianlokker.hubpages.com).
         5.  If the crawl is successful, click on "Submit URL and Linked Pages to Index." 
         6. Wait an hour and then ping the URL here: https://pingler.com

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         1. 71

            brianlokkerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Writer Fox, thanks for such a detailed response! I took your advice and followed those steps. I'll monitor the situation and see if things improve. Thanks again.

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            1. 43

               Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               You're welcome.  I published a new Hub on September 23, the first one I've published since the navigation change.  It was not found by Google quickly like my Hubs have previously been found.  Troubling.  After 24 hours, I followed the procedure I just gave you – and did NOTHING ELSE.  I'm getting 100 visits a day now from Google.  One side note, the Hub was indexed promptly on Bing/Yahoo and received visits from that search engine almost immediately.

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         2. 59

            TDowlingposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Writer Fox:
            
            I'm not very literate on SEO. I went to Google's Webmaster Tools site and I attempted to create an account for tdowling.hubpages.com. The instructions on the Google site informed me I need to download a file and then upload the file to tdowling.hubpages.com
            
            How do I upload this file?
            
            -TD

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