Ex-lenses can be identified as spammy for internal links

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   TolovajWordsmithposted 10 years ago

   I hope this can be of some help to some ex-Squids who are wondering why are some of their now-hubs in trouble.
   
   According to the Big G an article can be identified as spam, if it includes a link to the same article.
   
   Example: http://myarticle has a link to http://myarticle (same url)
   
   Of course you can use this link with proper anchor text, which is the keyword you are aiming at.
   
   This is one of the oldest and simplest SEO tricks and is considered as dark gray hat, but can still work to some degree. I have seen hundreds of lenses using that in old times of Squidoo.
   
   But there was another option to internal linking on the same page and I occasionally used it.
   
   Example: http:myarticle has a link to http:myarticle/module3
   
   In my case, for instance, I have an article about 1001 Nights when I mention Scherezade somewhere at the beginning and have a module dedicated to her later. So I included a link to give the reader an opportunity to read right now, if he doesn't want to bother reading the text before her part comes. This is totally legit use of internal linking which is widely used at many sites (Wikipedia and many government sites with tables of contents comes first to my mind).
   
   When HubPages changed all links in ex-lenses which were pointing to lenses, from htttp://squidoo/something to http://hubpags/something, the part pointing to the specific module was simply deleted, so we got the spammy structure:
   
   Example: http://hubpages/something is linking to http:/hubpages/something (the same url!)
   
   Squidoo allowed internal linking to specific modules and HubPages doesn't, so the automation with all good intentions made a problem.
   
   This is definitely something you may check and make necessary corrections (deleting the link can be the simplest thing).
   
   Cheers!

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      flycatcherrrposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I just discovered this, too! 
      
      Also - If you had used the 'feature lenses' module on Squidoo, it seems to come across in the imported hub as a bunch of Squidoo links with tiny images (photo module, hidden) all in a row.  Not attractive or useful to the reader, so obviously not 'quality' content for the hub. 
      
      It's too bad the 'featured lenses' modules weren't dumped on import, but at least now we know *one* of the problems & it is an easy fix - delete, delete, delete.

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      1. 78

         Kim Milaiposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you, this is good info. I just deleted the 'feature lenses' module after it transferred.
         
         This week wasn't too bad for me HubPage wise - compared to a lot of people. About a third of my hubs were dinged for engagement. I went back and realized I forgot to add new titles to some of the text modules. When I added them, then the hubs went back to featured within 24 hours.
         
         I also made sure I drastically reduced my amazon modules and most importantly, all my amazon modules are *separated* by text or callout modules.
         I had already done a lot of this beforehand so this sweep didn't get me swamped with editing.

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   2. 87

      Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Well spotted.   You can do internal linking on HubPages, it is a bit fiddly to do but it is allowed.

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   makingamarkposted 10 years ago

   Thanks - that's very helpful

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3. 73

   TheDragonBringerposted 10 years ago

   I wish the big G would reconsider this one, but they won't. I always loved this on Squid.

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