Invisible Categories

1. 81

   Midnight Museposted 9 months ago

   I have a couple of articles that I noticed were not performing as well as some of my other articles. Both of the articles are located in the following directory:
   
   HubPages»Education and Science»History & Archaeology»History of Europe»The Viking Age
   
   I tried to go to the "Viking Age" category to see if I could determine what was wrong and take a look at some of the other articles that were performing better. To my surprise, there was no "Viking Age" category. Under the HubPages»Education and Science»History & Archaeology»History of Europe there are only two actual categories that show up: "History of England" and "History of Ireland."
   
   Is this a technical glitch? If so, when (or will) it be fixed? Do I need to move my articles to a different category?

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   1. 93

      Jean Bakulaposted 9 months ago in reply to this

      Probably. I don't think they have plans to add any new niches in the near future. I have the same issue with some hubs.

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2. 90

   Jayne Lancerposted 9 months ago

   There is no link provided for categories/topics that have less than 20 hubs. Here is a link to the "Topic Tree", where you can see how many hubs each category/topic has: http://hubpages.com/topics/tree — you'll see that "The Viking Age" has 13 hubs.

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3. 81

   Midnight Museposted 9 months ago

   Thank you very much! The topic tree is very helpful and  will use it to plan my articles accordingly.
   
   It looks like I need to temporarily move the articles to a different appropriate category that has a sufficient number of articles, writing more articles on Viking history, and then move them back to the Viking Age category. I had plans to do a little bit of research on Viking clothing (i.e. Birka, Hedeby, and miscellaneous bog finds), so I will just use the information to write a few articles on the topic. I wanted to do a bit more writing on medieval illumination and painting techniques, but maybe I'll be able to do that after the start of the new year.

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   1. 91

      DrMark1961posted 9 months ago in reply to this

      Before you rush into moving your articles, think about how many times you, or for that matter anyone you know, has looked for an article based on the topic tree? It is not hurting your traffic to be in a rare category. People are looking for your article based on the search pages, and unless you employ good SEO tecgniques all of the changing topics is not going to help you.
      If you do not know how to improve your article for the search engines, spend time on that, not on the topic tree.

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      1. 94

         Marisa Wrightposted 9 months ago in reply to this

         ++++++1
         
         I understand that you're looking for a reason why those two articles aren't doing well, but I'm 99% sure it has nothing to do with the topic tree!  Jayne was just explaining why you couldn't find it, I don't think she was suggesting it was part of your problem.

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         1. 90

            Jayne Lancerposted 9 months ago in reply to this

            Correct. I should have mentioned that changing category would not solve the traffic problem.

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4. 81

   Midnight Museposted 9 months ago

   I tend to browse Hubpages based on scrolling through the category trees because the searches do not always produce the results for the subjects that I am looking for. Admittedly, I tend to be a person who often does things a bit differently than the others around me.
   
   Over the last year, I have experimented with articles with good SEO, non-optimized articles, and just plain (i.e. short and simple) articles to try to understand some of the principles of traffic. During these experiments, I gained insights regarding what could be described as a "base level" of traffic. These two articles fell below those expectations and did not match the general data trends for baseline traffic. So, I tried to analyze the issue and came across the problem with the categories.
   
   In regards to overall traffic trends, I have learned that Hubpages appears to have an entirely different set of rules regarding incoming traffic than most other online platforms. Although SEO optimization is beneficial to generating incoming traffic, it does not solve the problem. Instead, the best way I have found to resolve traffic issues is through the use of back links. This is an issue that I am constantly poking away at. By my own admission, I have never been much of a blogger and instead spend most of my time either researching or writing articles.
   
   I tend to be driven by statistics and therefore I think one of the more difficult things (for me) has been the lack of comparative data. How many hits per day should a "good" article receive? I usually try to make sure that my pages are receiving at least some traffic each day.

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   1. 91

      DrMark1961posted 9 months ago in reply to this

      If you are not much of a blogger, and do not want to spend a lot of time on social media, the best way (in my opinion) to start getting some traffic to your hubs is through improving your titles. You obviously spent a lot of time writing that hub on making candles, but does anyone bother to read it? Probably not much. Why? There are many, many other articles out there with the exact same title.You need to focus on an aspect of making candles that will get some readership.
      
      I disagree with the idea that getting traffic through HP is any different than other sites. But if you are looking for back links instead of improved SEO and ranking in the SERPs, do you really think someone is going to link to your article on Viking longship construction? Why? Does it provide information that is not already out there in many other history sites?
      
      Comparative data is hard to provide since it is an "apples and oranges" situtation. I have been here longer (thus many of my articles have been on Google longer), I have more backlinks, I share more on social media and other people who read those articles also share, etc. When I had only been here about a year, I think I had about 5 articles that were getting over 100 page views per day. Most of the articles were getting double digits. I always have about a third that get little daily traffic, and very few for the month, but they are balanced out by those that are getting a lot of traffic.
      
      Not sure how much that comparative data will help, but hopefully it will a little.

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      1. 91

         DrMark1961posted 9 months ago in reply to this

         One other point, MM, that I hope will help. I noticed only one article on a niche site. Read some of those niche sites and find out how your articles need to be changed to be moved over. I cannot guarantee that the traffic on every article will be better, but in general they are going to do a lot better.

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      2. 81

         Midnight Museposted 9 months ago in reply to this

         Thank you. Yes, that was exactly what I was looking for in terms of comparative data.

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   2. 94

      Marisa Wrightposted 9 months ago in reply to this

      You have to remember that you're already a member of HubPages and therefore you're more likely to be browsing or searching the site.
      
      Over ninety percent of HubPages' readers are NOT members and they do not browse the category trees OR search the site.  They arrive at a single Hub because they're looking for the answer to a question.  They will then either click on on of the Hubs listed on that Hub, or they'll click back to Google and look at another result.  They will not look at categories and they will not look at profiles.

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