Has HP been holding our articles back?

1. 85

   Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years ago

   Almost without fail, when a hub of mine is moved to a niche site, the views increase. I suppose this makes sense; HP created the niche sites to escape from that "content-farm" label that Google had put them under. That seems unfair to me that an article would suffer simply because it was posted on HubPages. My niche articles have not substantially changed from what they were on HP.

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Now I am really frustrated that I can't go back and fix that typo in my title. Can't you do something about this HP?

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         lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Yes they do better on the niche sites for a couple of reasons, namely:
         
         They all belong to a niche and there's some sort of niche authority that they show.
         
         They are not seen as "content-farms" the way HP was.
         
         I'm guessing there are other reasons too, but these could be the main ones.
         
         P.S: why can't you change a title? Do you mean URL?

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         Jesse Drzalposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         If you are talking URL title in a Hub, it cannot be changed once created.

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            Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            I was talking about the title of this question. I should have put an s on the end of article.

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               lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Haha okay But it seems like someone did it for you.

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                  Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes, I see they did

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      kenneth averyposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      @Sherry, I have to be honest. I have seen a "noticeable" increase in my materials since HP started the niche sites. Not on everything, but most.

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      OldRosesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I feel like I live in an alternate reality from everyone else.  What traffic increases are you talking about?  My hubs that were moved to niche sites LOST traffic.  My new hubs that were moved immediately never earned ANY TRAFFIC.  My hubs that are not on the niche sites are doing much better.  I pin all of my hubs because most of my traffic comes from Pinterest.  I get nothing from search engines for my hubs that are on Dengarden.  Niche sites have been a disaster for me.

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         lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Do you keep track of your rankings? Aren't your gardening hubs seasonal? It's not yet time for my gardening hubs to shine, so right now they are on lower traffic stats than what they were when they were back on HP, but their rankings are much better (dengarden), so I assume this summer is going to be really good traffic.

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            OldRosesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            I am looking at stats from last year when Dengarden was created and my articles were moved.  The traffic dropped to zero during the the gardening season.  I also write hubs that are seasonal (houseplants, holidays, etc).  My seasonal hubs not on Dengarden and Holidappy are doing great.  My seasonal hubs that were moved: zero, zip, zilch.

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               lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               That's just sad. I've seen you say you were not doing well before, but I didn't know it was this bad.

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               Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Do you know where your traffic comes from when your Hubs are on HubPages?

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                  OldRosesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes, Marisa, most of my traffic comes from Pinterest.  It's the search engine traffic that I have a problem with.  It drops off completely when my hubs are moved to the niche sites and never recovers.  New hubs that are moved immediately to niche sites never get search engine traffic whereas hubs that stay on HP do get search engine traffic.  It's frustrating for me because everyone else brags about the thousands of visitors they get on the niche sites.  I don't see it on the niche sites for my hubs.

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                     Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     That is mystifying. 
                     
                     One thing I notice is that you have a lot of Hubs with basic gardening tips for the beginner.  They are well written and useful, but I'm guessing the same tips are widely covered on dedicated Gardening sites, and those articles are probably getting the traffic ahead of you.

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                        OldRosesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                        Marisa, you are completely missing the point.  Don't feel bad, everyone else does too.  So, for the last time:  when other people's hubs are moved to niche sites, the traffic increases.  When MY hubs are moved to niche sites, the traffic DECREASES.  it has nothing to do with my topics or quality of writing because both have to be very good to attract traffic on HP where traffic has been falling steadily.

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                           DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                           If you are that unhappy with the performance of your hubs when moved to the niche sites, why dont you try to write to HP and ask that none of your hubs be moved, and ask that your hubs that have been moved are put back on HP?

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                              Joseph Lawrenceposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                              I don't think Sherry is unhappy with the performance of her hubs. She just wants to bring up the discussion of why Hubs on HP might not get the same traffic as the same Hubs featured on the other HP network sites. It's a good question but personally—the more views, the better.

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                                 Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                                 Joseph, if you change your forum view to Chronological rather than Threaded, you'll see that DrMark wasn't talking to Sherry.

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                              OldRosesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                              Thankfully, 90% of my traffic comes from Pinterest so it doesn't really matter which site my hubs are on.  I post in the forums about my experience for the benefit of new hubbers who only hear how many thousands of hits they will get if they can just improve their hubs enough to be moved to a niche site.  They need to know, or at least should know, that huge improvements in traffic are not always the norm.  I'm not complaining, I'm trying to provide a public service.  Obviously, if I was so unhappy, I would have left HP long ago instead of sticking around for 9 years.

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                                 lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                                 That's true. My hubs that were moved did do better in rankings and the new ones are also better ranked than that they were in the few days they were on the HP domain. But I see what you're saying and people shouldn't be expecting miracles, just because the hub is on the niche sites.

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                                 DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                                 This is not really the topic of this thread, but I think if I was here for 9 years and was still at the 10K accolade I would be asking myself what is wrong with my hubs. Something has to be wrong to not be getting any traffic.

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            3. 85

               Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               That is a real shame, because you have so many in depth articles that seem perfect for DenGarden. Your titles are very straight forward, which is usually good, but I wonder if there is some way they could  be improved to attract more search traffic. Gardening is a competitive niche.

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      2. 85

         Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I only have a few on DenGarden. The Home Improvement ones are doing better than the garden ones. Although, the one about low maintenance plants has 100 views in the last 30 days. Not great, but better than it used to get.

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         1. 87

            Jean Bakulaposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Sherry,
            Dengarden seems to be an overcrowded niche. I have one hub on it. So does everyone else, apparently. It's still chilly in CA, people probably aren't gardening yet.
            
            I looked at your work and you have a lot of interesting hubs on travel and music. Why don't you try to check them and see if they are up to standard, and maybe they will be moved to niches? I find that when I fix up old hubs, they almost always get moved. Many have errors I made as a newbie, like putting all the hub in one text capsule. Or getting pictures from the wrong place. Now they only want one good picture at the top, or if more, make them the full length, people are reading them from their phones, so they have to look good that way.
            
            Some moderators are stricter, but usually they do tell you what to do to get the hub moved. Try that, and garden season is around the corner!
            
            Also, I notice a big spike in traffic when a hub is moved. It lasts about 6 months, unless it's a really good one (according to readers), but I find the stats drop almost to nothing after that first big spike. I had about 30 moved in the beginning, and the money was much better. But it's already slacked off. It's still better than when they were on HP, but it's gone down by half. I'm not writing new hubs though either, maybe that's the focus now. Good luck.

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               Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Almost all of my hubs are on niche sites now. Out of 48 hubs, only 18 are still on HP. Music has done well, travel not as much. Dengarden has been pretty good. Even my one garden hub is getting a few hits. Home improvement does better. It just amazes me how a hub that has just languished suddenly pops up when it gets moved.

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            2. 90

               Jan Saintsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               "Dengarden seems to be an overcrowded niche." True, and they want to move hubs that are good for Dengarden to other sites like Toughnickel!
               
               I think anything to do with farming should be placed on Dengarden and not on Toughnickel. My excellent hub on How To Farm... was rejected for Dengarden and told it was suitable for Toughnickel and it didn't make the cut for this 'Make Money, Save Money, Use Money' site. Please, I had prepared it solely for Dengarden!
               
               I also think that home improvement hubs should have their own niche site!

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                  Jean Bakulaposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Jan,
                  I disagree with a lot of the niches they move my hubs too. I've written in and argued the point, but I think they put them where they need to fill out the niches more. You may as well go with the flow if they want to move it, even if you think it would be better of on another niche. Good Luck.
                  
                  Also, Sherry,
                  I hope I didn't sound like I was dissing Dengarden. I love gardening myself, and enjoy looking for new ideas there! But it's chilly in NJ, though I see a few little green things coming up. In the last few years, I've had bulbs come up, then it gets really cold again, and they die. I think that gardeners can prove climate changing. These kinds of things never happened before. Once the crocuses came up, it was daffodils, tulips, then impatiens, azaleas, etc. Now some years I get less flowers, or none from certain plantings, and the next year they are huge.

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                     Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     Dealing with those problems you mention can make good article. The one gardening article that I have that does OK is a list of plants that grow in places like where I live, with dry sunny summers, cold wet winters and short growing seasons.

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   4. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I see that what you mean is, being on the HubPages main site puts our Hubs at a disadvantage.
      
      My reaction would be, well duh, yes.  If that wasn't the case, why would HubPages management have bothered to undertake the huge task of creating the niche sites? 
      
      HP has been trying, for years, to get Hubs to perform at their full potential on the main site.  They finally decided it was never going to happen, and that's why they created the niche sites.  So it stands to reason that we should expect our Hubs to do better there. 
      
      They don't always do better on a niche site. It depends on the choices HP made when creating the niches.    Some are coherent and cover a clearly-defined, closely-related set of topics.  Those sites are going gangbusters from what I hear.   Others are a bit cobbled-together, like HobbyLark and FeltMagnet, and some of the topics aren't a good fit - those topics aren't doing so well.

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         Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Right. I did acknowledge this disadvantage in my first comment. I guess I am just expressing my frustration that good articles that people actually do want to read have been overlooked by the search engines for so long.

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2. 76

   Nancy Owensposted 7 years ago

   In answer to your question about our hubs being held back, I don't think that is the case. Of my hubs that have not been promoted, I can look through them and find reasons why they haven't been elevated to the niche sites. Reasons could be that the topic of the Hub just doesn't fit in well with the various categories, or that my Hub needs to be improved. It also seems like the hubs that have unrelated amazon capsules in them won't be promoted until the capsule is removed or changed.
   
   That is my experience with my own hubs. Hope this helps.

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks Nancy, but what I really meant was that the hubs are performing poorly just because they are on HP, not that HP is holding them back from moving to the niche sites.

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         Nancy Owensposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Oh. So that presents a different perspective. That is something I haven't really thought about, so now I will start thinking

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3. 72

   Oscarlitesposted 7 years ago

   Well, I feel boycotted on hubpages. after all the time i have been on here, and articles written, supposedly google searchable, I get no views unless I am daily re-posting my articles. zip , zero, zilch, zappoo.  none at all. very discouraging!

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I took a look at your hubs. I bet you could get some of your hubs about Commercial truck driving and maintenance moved to AxelAddict. If so, you'd probably get some search traffic.They could use a little work though.
      
      You need to break the text up a little. Add some subheadings and put in some pictures. I noticed that on one of them the text was all bold and italic, definitely change that.
      
      Check this link for some tips.
      https://hubpageshelp.com/standards/Lear … iting-Tips
      
      Good luck, I hope Google finds you.

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      Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      HubPages is Google searchable, but if you're not getting traffic then your Hubs are not Google friendly enough. 
      
      It might help to read my Hub on How to Optimize your Hubs to Make Money.  It gives some tips which you should follow.  Also, look at the Stellar Hub guidelines on the top right hand side of a Hub when in Edit mode, and try to tick most of the boxes.   If you tick them all, you've probably overdone it, because not all elements are appropriate for every Hub.

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4. 87

   Will Apseposted 7 years ago

   This is what bugs me:
   
   
   That page, with its many views and immaculate user metrics is still on HP. And so are several others in my account.
   
   I wonder how many other successful pages from other writers are still languishing in the main site?

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      lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      All my Tomato hubs need to be moved if this is what you think deserves a move The thing is though, that they didn't have the traffic at the time they were viewed by editors (seasonal hubs). But I've got a lot of work to do on them before they are moved now, as they were one of the first hubs I wrote here and are not on par with the others I have on the niche sites.
      
      Probably HP could do another browse of hubs based on Google traffic volumes.
      
      EDIT: I still don't receive that many views a day on most of my tomato hubs, just saying It's not the season yet.

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      1. 87

         Will Apseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         HP is shooting itself in the foot by ignoring pages that have (or have had) decent traffic from search engines with good metrics.
         
         The metrics tell you the page works for readers.
         The traffic tells you there are no spam issues.
         
         These kinds of page could be located with an algo and moved automatically. You might want to work through them later with human eds to ensure they meet the house style. Or you might want to expand the house style to include pages that obviously work.

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            lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Yup

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I hope you are taking advantage of the opportunity that HP has given us to nominate one hub to be move every 14 days. I am steadily moving those of mine that have been left behind.

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         Jan Saintsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         HP needs to reduce this period! Submitting one or two in a week can really be good!

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   john000posted 7 years ago

   I have over a dozen niche articles, and all of them have resulted in double the viewership and double the earnings. So, I am not sure why your articles have not substantially changed. As to the fairness issue, what is fair?
   
   If, in your opinion, we shared all hubs fairly, nobody would be earning what they do today? Do you agree? Now pull back a bit. Suppose HP niched only 75% of the articles submitted. Do  you think that would somehow help your earnings? Me thinks you are mixing up fairness with economics. In order to produce a profit, HP must rely on editors (who have some experience) to determine what will draw views. If they depended on your opinion, I think I would be losing a lot of money!
   We have had a decade of liberal mind washing. When we had no viewership, our earnings went down. HP worked to improve viewership, and it went up (sorry yours didn't). If we went back to the fair thing, we all would make much less. That's a fact! Please.... for the sake of most of us who are making a bit more, don't screw it up! Those who have great hubs will then be forced to move, and you will make even lessssssssss. Get it?

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Are you talking to me? If so, I guess I have not made myself clear. What I was saying was that it was unfair of Google to discriminate against our perfectly good hubs, just because they were on HubPages. (Being on HP is holding us back)
      
      The same hub that got no action on HP got plenty of it when it was moved (unchanged) to a niche site. It's not like there is/was not plenty of good stuff on HP. We did not deserve that penalty.
      
      I'm not complaining about not having my hubs moved. The vast majority of them have already been moved, and I'm glad that HP has hit on this solution. I'm just kind of sorry that it was necessary.

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