What's the backlinking strategy that works best for Hubpages?

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   hclpdposted 9 years ago

   I am thinking about building some backlinks to my Hub[ages subdomain, but am not sure where and how should I start. What do you suggest? What's your backlining strategy? Is it really impossible to get so organic traffic without backlinks? If not, how difficult is it?

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      Maffew Jamesposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      As I said in a previous thread, craft content in a way that generates organic backlinks. Don't buy backlinks, spam comments, or ask for them. Google will penalise your subdomain for this and it won't help you. Building backlinks is a matter of marketing.

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      Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I'd suggest publishing about fifty hubs and polishing them up until you can't find a thing to do to any of them before you worry about serious self-promotion.
      
      Each new piece of writing you publish is an advertisement for the brand of you. The more quality hubs you create, the more possibility exists that someone will read one of them and decide to look for more of your work and share it.   
      
      My strategy is to keep writing, do my best, and share very, very occasionally and only on social websites I already use.
      
      Part of my reason for that strategy is that I, like many people are, am a terrible judge of my own writing. I have had pieces I knocked out half-assed in half an hour, intending to edit the living heck out of them when I had the time that went viral before I got the chance. I've had pieces I sweated over and refined for months before first publish that still sit in my body of work unloved. Some of them seem like my very best work to me, but they clearly are not.
      
      The reason that has any relevance is that aggressively sharing your worst work probably isn't a fantastic self-promotion strategy. So I wait until someone else shares a piece unsolicited before I promote it any more than very casually. I let my readers figure out what my best work is so I avoid the unnecessary and possibly counter-productive work of promoting something that may well just suck.
      
      I have organic, reader-generated backlinks on all sorts of nice sites from using this strategy. They include .gov, .org, and .edu websites as well as magazines, viral videos, and popular blogs. I'm not an exceptional writer in any way so my strategy must be good, at least for me.
      
      Also, the majority of my HubPages views come from search engines so, no, backlinks are not necessary to get organic traffic. People obviously still use the heck out of search engines so the search engine traffic people are missing is not gone, it's just gone somewhere else.

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         Millionaire Tipsposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I hadn't looked at it quite that way, but I agree with it.  That is a good strategy.  I too let the links build up naturally over time.  In the meantime, I do try to provide content that is worth sharing. But, as you say, I'm not a good judge of what is and isn't worth sharing.

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         CatherineGiordanoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Kylyssa: Very good advice.

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      NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I agree with Maffew and LeanMan. I think building unnatural links could get you hurt by Google. People will naturally link to good content. Some people find pinning articles to Pinterest effective. I've only personally had minimal success with it. You can get good organic traffic without backlinking and just using search-friendly keyword phrases in your titles and some in the text.

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         Kylyssaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         +1 for complete agreement and appreciation of clarity.
         
         The unnatural stuff is generally ineffective and potentially risky.

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            NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

            Exactly.

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      peachpurpleposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      i do use reddit, redgage, digg to submit my links. I don't see any traffic yet to tell you the truth

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      TolovajWordsmithposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      1. Write another hub. Make sure it is relevant to at least one of already existing hubs and link to it. Try to add at least one relevant link to a page with already made authority on the subject.
      2. Make a post or more posts on the same or similar subject but from different point of view on one or more of your blogs.
      3. Repeat.
      
      (Occasionally link from one of your hubs to one of your blog posts. It has to be a relevant link. Be patient and persistent.)

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      misterhollywoodposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I would just add here that if you have a blog post on your personal blog that directly relates to the hub you have here, a deep link to that specific blog post is completely ok. It's a natural and that's fine.
      
      People get into trouble when they have unnatural links. Example: I write a hub about  "How to take rapid transit in NYC" and I link to a blog post about the best natural remedies for erectile dysfunction. Um ... That's not a natural link

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         CatherineGiordanoposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Unless you are a masher on the New York subway.

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            misterhollywoodposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            LOL!

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   LeanManposted 9 years ago

   Building backlinks could potentially have the opposite effect to what you hope for....
   
   Unnatural links or links from bad neighborhoods will see your site penalized - that is what the Penguin algorithm from Google is all about....

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      colorfuloneposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      +1
      I agree with that.
      
      What is your take on joining forums that allow members to have links in their signatures?  Say a gaming forum, for someone who writes about games?

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         Marisa Wrightposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I'd say it's well worthwhile to join forums that allow signatures.   Not so much for backlinks - remember, no matter how many links you have from a domain, Google counts only one or two of them - but to get real readers.

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   Mark Ewbieposted 9 years ago

   I have a handy letter which I email to many important bloggers and some useless ones as well.
   
   Dear blogger,
   
   I liked your blog on thing.  I have also written a page a bit better than yours.  Please link to it and I will mention your name on my "Big Page of People On The Internet" which has had nearly seven visitors.
   
   Thanks.

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      hclpdposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      If I am not wrong, it's called the Moving Man Method.

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   LindaSmith1posted 9 years ago

   My traffic on another site is bing, google, rebel mouse.  My traffic here has gone down the toilet.

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   Christopher Knoxposted 9 years ago

   Good call. It shouldn't be to hard as long as your keywords are low comp. Good luck.

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   Sam Montanaposted 9 years ago

   I have actually had some success with putting comments on other articles around the internet. The articles have to be the same topic as you're linking back to and your comment has to be good and useful for the article you're reading.
   
   Go to DropMyLink.com and you can enter in a keyword like music for example and then click on either CommentLuv or KeywordLuv. Those types of comments, you can put in a link back to an article of yours. It gives you a backlink from a good neighborhood so to speak and I have seen traffic from these backlinks.
   
   Just don't do very many per week. Google likes to see backlinks built up slooowly over time or it looks unnatural.

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      LeanManposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Sam do you think that seeing links from comments on a host of sites but no links coming from other sources in the same proportions looks natural? It just starts to look like you are spamming comments around the internet....

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         Sam Montanaposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         If you do too many it will look odd. That is why I do very few. And the comments are always on a website and article about the same subject I am putting a backlink to. If you can find just a few high ranking websites to put a comment on, it does help. Helpfully, along the way, others are putting links to your article on their sites as well.
         
         If you have 50 articles and you have 1 or 2 backlinks per article, that is not going to look like spam.

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   makingamarkposted 9 years ago

   The best backlinking strategy is to:
   * build expertise on a topic away from this site so that Google and other rate you as an author,
   * introduce your new hub and then
   * be prepared to wait for natural links to accumulate over time.
   
   It works - but it's not a recipe which makes the "get rich quick" types happy.

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      hclpdposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, I guess you are right. Only time will tell how successful I am going to be here

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   Sara2901posted 9 years ago

   Try pinterest. Pin your best images and write a good description that has your keywords in it. This is my best source of traffic right now.

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      Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      I am getting major traffic from Pinterest too. The truth is if you don't do anything plan on not getting traffic. They've got to find you someplace. Just don't spam or add links to poor places. I know some will disagree with me, but this is what has worked for me.

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         rebekahELLEposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         I agree.  It's harder now to gain that initial flow of traffic than it was years ago.  I think it helps to link to quality sites and to join a quality forum that allows our screen name to link to our sites.  The key is not to spam anywhere.  Hubs take a while to gain natural links and ideally that's the way it's all supposed to work, but that was when there were far less people publishing quality content online.  Social media can help and yet you have to keep in mind that anyone using social media also wants links back to their sites.  So choose carefully. 
         Google does look at links, both externally and internally to determine topic relevancy and may rank a site higher as a measure of quality and trust.  Without quality backlinks, it's going to be more difficult to get a decent position.  My hubs that don't have decent backlinks flounder in the SERPS because no one can find them.  My hubs that have gained quality backlinks do much better and they've taken years to gain links.

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         misterhollywoodposted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Pinterst is great for traffic for sure!

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      hclpdposted 9 years agoin reply to this

      Somebody will have to tell me how to do this. I am pretty new to pinning.

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         NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

         It's not hard once you get the hang of it. You open an account, I just used my facebook to open an account. Then you create boards. you pin to boards. On your hub you can just click the Pinterest button on the sidebar and it'll direct you to sign in to Pinterest if you aren't already and then a box will come up for you to choose what board to pin to; write a summary with some keywords in it; then pin it. That's the gist.

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            Barbara Kayposted 9 years agoin reply to this

            There are some good hubs here about how to use Pinterest. I think it is Wrylit that wrote an informative one.

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         NateB11posted 9 years agoin reply to this

         Pin other stuff besides your Hubs. Look around the site, follow some people, etc.

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   Dressage Husbandposted 9 years ago

   It is all about quality and time. Most people quit before they get any real back-links and traffic. My guitar site is gradually building its own back links after being on-line for over 4 years now. It has over 1,000 and they have all come naturally. My guitar blog passes that love to my guitar Hubs, but not to any of the others (too bad!).

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