A little tip that may help you get more traffic

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   TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years ago

   
   Recently Calculus-Geometry mentioned that  when you change your topic category, a hub's URL changes to match it.  I did not know this, so have been going back to check and realign my categories.
   
   While doing this, I noticed that  I had a few articles that were very similar, so I  took the best information of both, deleted the one that was not doing as well, and republished with a new title,upgrades, etc.
   
   In the past few days my traffic has risen more than 20%, and I am assuming it is because of these changes.
   
   Just thought I'd share these tips because I think they will help some of you.

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      Jodahposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you TT2, this is helpful info and may be worth a try.

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         TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I was very surprised to see such fast positive results, that's for sure.

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      peachpurpleposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      thanks for your tips, i do noticed that changing the titles did helped

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   Max Daltonposted 8 years ago

   Good advice. I've seen this suggested a few times over the years. I've been cleaning things up recently, and I think I have the opportunity to do this with some lower performers that I've got. It's at least a better alternative than deleting them.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Seems to work pretty well and keeps you from competing with yourself.  It also produces a better, tighter hub.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         I think this is the root of the issue.
         
         At one time, it was seen as a good thing to write a lot of Hubs around one narrow topic.  The idea was it "bulked up" your sub-domain and gave you the opportunity for more advertising.
         
         Under the new structure, I think there's a definite case for "not competing with yourself" and creating one strong Hub from two or three weaker ones.
         
         It's even good advice for poets - grouping several poems on a similar theme into an "Anthology" Hub (instead of an individual Hub for each poem) can be more successful.

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         Glenn Stokposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         TT2 - After reading your important discovery and Marisa's clear explanation, I went ahead and spent some time examining my own hubs. I discovered that I also had many various versions of similar topics that could be combined into single tighter hubs.
         
         So I was wondering, before I do this, how you got around being moderated for duplicate content when you placed the text from one hub into another. I guess HP understands that it's your own text. But did you need to give them the heads up before doing the work so the bots don't interfere?

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            TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Great question, Glenn.  Here's your answer.
            
            Since I keep copies of all of my hubs, I simply copy and paste the ones I want to combine to my desktop.
            
            Then, whichever one has the most views becomes the base article to which parts of the other(s) will be moved.
            
            I cut and paste and reorganize the sections that I do move over until I have the main points together.
            
            Then I go into my HP account and do a total delete of the hubs I will no longer be using.  I always go to WMT and request de indexing immediately after I do the delete.
            
            Once I have done this, I go to the mother article that is online and update it with the new, improved hub.
            
            This way I am removing duplicate content before upgrading, so there are no problems..
            
            This sounds like a lot of work, but really isn't so bad because I produce the new, improved hub on the desktop before using it to improve the mother hub.
            
            This works best if you are only combining two hubs, but regardless of the number, you'll see when you get started that you have duplicated many ideas, which makes the elimination process much easier.
            
            Hope this helps.

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               Glenn Stokposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               You and I are thinking the same way Sondra. I do all my work offline using MS Word. So I can delete the other hubs and work on combining them later.
               
               Thanks for confirming that when you delete the others first, you won't have problems when updating the "mother hub." 
               
               The one thing I realize we can no longer do is tell Google to de-index the deleted hubs. This is because since we no longer have our own subdomains, we lost the ability to use WMT.
               
               I have a few topics I plan to combine. I'm going to try it with one of them today to see how it goes. I already chose which should be the mother hub. And I used the same criteria as you explained… using the one that has the most views.
               
               Thanks for sharing your experience with combining hubs. I noticed only four people are following this thread at this time. That's a shame, because I think you are showing us a powerful way to improve things that can help everyone.

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                  TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  That's interesting because I still am asking for de indexing from WMT and they are doing it.  If you can't do that, you may have duplicate content problems, but then again, the bots should be able to see that you have deleted those other hubs.  However, you would have to do it immediately after posting to be safe from plagiarists and to avoid duplicate content.

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                     Jean Bakulaposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                     This sounds good. I could also combine a few hubs into one, although some of my hubs are in need of shortening.

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                     Glenn Stokposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                     I already merged three hubs into three mother hubs in the last two days and I'm not having any duplicate issues, probably because I deleted the source hubs first.
                     
                     But how are you succeeding at using WMT after all your hubs were moved from your subdomain?  Non of us can use WMT anymore. After the subdomains were removed, I lost the ability to prove ownership, just as everyone else. See this forum - http://hubpages.com/community/forum/134 … r-hubpages
                     
                     And Paul even mentioned about a trade-off with the Google Search Console (WMT) at the bottom of his blog... http://blog.hubpages.com/2015/10/24/lik … new-again/
                     
                     So I'm curious how you are still using it.

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   erorantesposted 8 years ago

   Thank you mister traveler2 . I will keep your advice for future reference. It makes sense. The guidelines on hubpages tells about the problem of similar hubs. The controversy of writing similar hubs is common because we are in love with our writing abilities. We keep writing without realizing we are writing the same topic and the same sentences. You are great.

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   chef-de-jourposted 8 years ago

   Useful advice and well worth a shot. I like the way you set out in simple terms how to go about this procedure.
   I've been combining poems into one long hub for years, ten poems usually on a set theme, and this has been quite successful. I recommend it to all poets who write on HP.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      This is an excellent idea and one our poets here should pay attention to.  I never would have thought of this idea!  Congrats!

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   Digital MDposted 8 years ago

   This is interesting and worth a try! Although most of my hubs are already standalone and mostly composed of 1500-3000+ words. They may not need much editing. I'll try this for future hubs. Maybe a change in title is also called for especially for those hubs not gaining much attention.

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