So I checked my 'Not featured - Traffic and. arghhh!

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   Nell Roseposted 7 years ago

   How many of us have actually checked how many of our hubs are not featured due to traffic? Eek! over a 100! yep you heard me, 100! Jeesh!
   
   Purely because we forget to promote or update them! I have a lot of work to do! Anybody else in this predicament? Please say you are......lol!

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      DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Nell, I suggest deleting some of your less successful hubs if you are not able to keep up with updating that large number. I have seen several hubbers on this site with over 1000 hubs, but if they are not able to update they end up with 100s of unfeatured hubs.
      I really do not think it is worth it. In my opinion we are better off keeping fewer hubs that we are able to manage.

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         Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks DrMark

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      OldRosesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I checked and spent the beginning of the year updating my unfeatured hubs.  Took way too much time so now I check my hubs more often.

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      ChitrangadaSharanposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Thankfully all my hubs are featured since I keep on updating them. But then you have a number of them Nell. It must be too much work for you. Good luck!

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         Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Hi Chitrangada, lol! yes too many to mention!

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      MizBejabbersposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Updating mine haven't done much good. Most get unfeatured anyway, and I'm speaking of what should be evergreen. But then I don't publish very often, so I think people who publish weekly or even daily have a better chance than those of us who don't have time to publish more than a half dozen hubs a year. Because I worked for a newspaper and day or two old material was ready for the birdcage, I was surprised to find that these hubs could stay up as long as they do.

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         TheDragonBringerposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Hey, I looked at some of your articles, and they don't have bios. I know I keep bringing it up, but the Google Search Quality Rating guidelines do suggest that all of your hubs need a bio, YTML or not. Try adding one and see if that helps.  Also, go to stats, then to search phrases. You can see what phrases people use to find you through search engines. Once you do that you might think of tinkering with your titles.

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            Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            I did have bios Dragon, but for some reason when they get moved about they lose them, so i am going back to do some again.

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               TheDragonBringerposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               You know what, maybe you should email the hubpages support team. By the way, I apologize if I comment bombed you and if I didn't then I am broken too.
               
               I tried to leave you a comment and it wouldn't let me submit it.

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               Glenn Stokposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Hey Nell, I have a thought! When you change your bios do you go to the hubs and check them to be sure your change has taken?  I'm wondering if by chance you forget to click "save" in the "Edit Bio" page.

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                  Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Thanks Glenn, maybe some of them, but not all the ones that have been taken for other sites, but according to hubstaff it was me, so....

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                     Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     But Nell, you are setting up all the bios at the same time, on your Account page under "About the Author" - so how could you save some and not others?

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                        Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                        Oh dear lord...I am a dumbass! LOL! I was er.....going into hubs and doing it, never even saw the About the Author thing! I blame it on age-ish....drink, work and yep being so complacent that I forgot! LOL!

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            tarayatesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for the tip, I didn't know about either myself...

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      Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I am absolutely astonished that you don't check that - for any Hubber wanting to earn income, it's absolutely fundamental!   
      
      However, I take issue with this statement: Purely because we forget to promote or update them!"   Er- no.  Posting a link on a social site, or changing a few words, will get them Featured for a few weeks.  It won't solve the underlying problem and it's a waste of effort IMO.  Both those things will get you a little blip of traffic, which will earn you cents at best.
      
      If you have Hubs that are unFeatured for lack of traffic, then you need to work out why it's not getting traffic.   Is the title Google friendly?  Are you using a range of different keywords in your text, so Google can understand what your Hub is about?  Maybe it's too short? 
      
      On the other hand, it may just be that the Hub is about a subject that people aren't searching for.   If that's the case, then no amount of updating, promoting or revising will do any good at all.
      
      The way to find out - think seriously about what's wrong with each Hub and make a major effort to improve it.  That will get it Featured again - but if it eventually gets unFeatured again, you'll know it's just one of those subjects that will never get traffic, no matter what you do. I wrote a Hub called How to Optimize your Hubs to Make Money, it gives some tips you might find useful - it's on the slider on my profile.

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         Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I have been but it got away from  me, what with work and being ill or some time, just catching up now

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            Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            I'd suggest that you don't rush to fix them all.   Take your time, work on one at a time, and do a major renovation on each one.  If you succumb to the temptation to do a quick fix, you'll forget which ones need attention and they'll suddenly all get unFeatured again in a couple of months.  Better to try to fix them properly now, IMO, even if it's slower.

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               TheDragonBringerposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               I am just trying to figure out how to create the time. Between my accounts, I have many hubs. I still have my full-time job and three kids. Now I try to schedule special mom time where I am left alone so I can edit hubs. My kids are getting older, and more independent, so that helps.

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               Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Thanks Marissa

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      When it comes to hubs, I value quality over quantity. I don't have hundreds of hubs, and I don't have any unfeatured. While it's hard to guess which hubs will do well when you write them, after they've been around for a couple of years you have a pretty good idea of how they're doing.
      
      I only have 47 hubs. 90% of my earnings have come from my top ten. Almost 50% came from one hub.
      
      I think it is best to improve from the top down. Start with your top earners. When they are the best you can make them, move on to the marginal ones.
      
      Then, and only then, move on the ones that don't get any love. If one was unfeatured, I would take a good hard look at it, and decide if it was worth keeping.
      
      If not, save it to your computer. You never know when you might need it. I have deleted a few that I regretted not saving later. Then just go ahead and delete it from HubPages.
      
      If something happens later that makes one of your old, deleted hubs suddenly relevant, you can always reconfigure and republish it.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         +1

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   louise-barracoposted 7 years ago

   I have been updating my hubs for weeks it's not fun but has to be done

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      Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I have done quite a few this evening, but I never realised how many needed doing! lol! well done for tackling it louise.

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      always exploringposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I have a bunch of unfeatured hubs. Get busy Ruby!

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         Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Hi Ruby, lol! its a pain isn't it? how you doing?

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   AudreyHowittposted 7 years ago

   I am right there with you! Arg!

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   Oscarlitesposted 7 years ago

   I honestly don't feel that you should have to promote or update your hubs in order to keep them "fresh" or whatever., I feel that the search-ability and traffic is based on a formula hub-pages has brought into the mix of their relationship with the world wide web.  I admit I don't know as much about web search and domain presence on the web as I would like. however, since very early in my hubpage membership, we lost something and my hubs seem to not recovered from it.   not at all. At the very first, we were searched for and found easily. maybe a better way to relate this is we were surfed into the mainstream web and now you have to go chop logs and kindling and restart the fire several times a night to keep the fire burning and the hubpages "warm" , (metaphorically speaking!)

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      TheDragonBringerposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      You should read the search quality guidelines, and research some about what triggers webcrawling. The google guidlines state that medical YMYL should be "frequently updated".
      
      Google wants content to be updated, it isn't just some trick Hubpages plays on users. However, Hubpages has to work hard on reputation, because that impacts traffic.

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      OldRosesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I agree with DragonBringer.  If articles/hubs aren't regularly updated, Google considers them abandoned and won't include them in their search results.  In addition to HP, I also have a website so I can attest to the fact that any time I update a hub or an article on my website, there is an uptick in traffic from Google.  This is a Google issue, not a HP issue.

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         Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         It is absolutely not true that Google considers non-updated articles to be abandoned!   If that were the case, don't you think online newspapers would be deleting all their news items from last year?
         
         If you read the guidelines in more detail, you'll see that Google understands some information is "evergreen".  Google says it values "freshness" but says it tries to strike a balance.  When it evaluates a website or blog, for instance, it's not expecting every single article to be regularly updated - the important thing is that new articles are regularly being added.  They take that to mean that the site is being actively managed and that if older articles needed updating, they would be.

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   FatFreddysCatposted 7 years ago

   I got 170 hubs and (Barry White voice) they allllll featured, baby.
   
   ...of course, my traffic is on the dumpster, but hey....featured!

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      Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      LOL! Freddy!

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   lobobrandonposted 7 years ago

   Do not update hubs because they are unfeatured. If you think they have the potential to get traffic after you update them, then do it. If not, forget about it. You could end up wasting hours of your time for nothing.

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      +1

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   Author Cherylposted 7 years ago

   The only thing you have to do is buff them up a little and then I either post it to LinkedIn or another social media then they get bumped back up again.

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   lovebuglenaposted 7 years ago

   I never had that many but I had I think in the 20s or 30s range of those. Noticed that sometimes you don't do any edits to them and they go back to being featured.

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   Nell Roseposted 7 years ago

   No, not noticed that? maybe its because someone on hubs read it.

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    Jodahposted 7 years ago

    Nell, I know where you are coming from. Probably a quarter of my hubs are now unfeatured even though my traffic is increasing and many have had views. I used to spend hours updating them but that would only keep them featured for a week or two and then the same all over. Now I will maybe update one or two a week. It doesn't seem worth the time. I was a member here for five years before I had any hubs that weren't featured now it seems to happen on a daily basis. I say don't stress it.

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       Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       Thanks John, yes I did panic a bit as my traffic is bombing, but what can you do? I will do that, just a couple a week too.

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       Marisa Wrightposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       Jodah, there are two ways you can deal with unFeatured Hubs.   
       
       Option 1 - Change ONE SENTENCE in the Hub, no more.  That will be enough to send it through the system and get it Featured again for a few weeks.    Then just rinse and repeat every time.
       
       Option 2 - Thoroughly revise and expand the Hub, with the aim of improving its search-engine-friendliness.   You need to invest a lot of time on the Hub for this option - but if it works, it will get it Featured again and it will stay Featured, so you won't have to do it again.
       
       The trouble is that for some subjects - like some poems - the second option will just never work.  So if you've tried doing Option 2 and the Hub is still getting unFeatured, you should settle for Option 1 - or give up and move it somewhere else.  That Hub will never get much traffic on HubPages even if you keep re-Featuring it, so there's no point wasting time on it.

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    Hypersapienposted 7 years ago

    I really haven't been active on HubPages for a number of years now, but since my hubs were still making moolah (although admittedly not much) I went back and tweaked them not too long ago.  I didn't make any major changes, but the result was that I went from 8 featured hubs to 2.  In short, I can't speak for anyone else, but this is the kind of thing - coupled with the increasing difficulty to drive traffic - that has made me sort of ambivalent about HP as a long-term profit center.

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    Dolores Monetposted 7 years ago

    On revisiting some older hubs, I have noticed mistakes that shock me - misspelled words, backwards words, wrong words. I've seen pictures that I forgot to source. I've also seen hubs that had been gone over by editors or edibots and found words changed into something that makes no sense. For instance in one clothing hub the word "worn" was changed to "worm" several times. We all need to recheck hubs, especially the older ones to make sure that they read easily, that they are formatted nicely, that they don't spew redundant key words, and they are up to date.

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       Nell Roseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       I totally agree with you Dolores, some of my original work is appalling! not bad spelling etc but so boring I have no idea why I wrote it! and yes those bots that change words! why do they use them? I thought the whole idea is to write good articles and earn money for us and hubpages. Those bots are a menace!

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    Marisa Wrightposted 7 years ago

    If you're a dumbass, then so am I.   I wanted to go and update them recently and I knew there was a central place to do it, but it took me ages to find it.  It never occurred to me that "About the Author"  meant "Bios"!

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