Jennifer - first of all ... don't ask for readership. Let it come. And it will come if you do the following:
1. Read others work and comment/ rate it
2. Take part in the forum, even if it's just asking for help or offering help to others
3. Publish hubs of interest to your fellow hubbers
4. Rate up answer in in http://hubpages.com/answers/latest/ - even better, answer questions left by others
5. In a nutshell, participate in the Hub community
I hope that answered your question.
And welcome to HubPages
P.S. - a tip ... this is the sub-forum whereby you link a hub or two, asking for help re your hubs. Therefore link a hub, not your profile.
One of my favorite things to do recently was to find information I know I'M looking for but can't find using simple Google searches. I research it, build an article around it and then when it gets indexed by Google all the people who've been thinking like me end up at my article.
Its doubled my traffic in less than a month and is a great way to figure out what to write next. Plus, its guaranteed to be something you want to write about no matter what.
If you couldn't find anything about it in the search engines then how did you research it?
Thought I saw a comment in this forum (can't remember where now) that most readers are fellow hubbers. How true is that really?
Honestly, before I came across hubpages from another hubber, I really don't remember visiting any hubpages over the years as a result of an internet search, and I do do a lot of searching on the net.
Wonder if anyone do get visits from non-hubbers?
Definately we do! Go to the "my account" tab at the top and then look at the categories to the far left. Click on Traffic Sources and you'll see where your traffic is coming from. I currently have about 9 sources that are being reported although some sources are unknown.
I have about 22,000 hits right now, and of that about 70% comes from Google and Yahoo searches (counting all the country-specific Yahoo searches and such), and a good 20% comes from links I've placed in my social networking pages, on message boards where the hub was relevant to the discussion (i.e., putting in links on Koko's Goldfish to an article I've already written that answers a newbie's question about basic goldfish care). The other 10% are fellow hubbers, and a few odd smatterings that I'm really not sure where they come from, I don't know if people are linking to me elsewhere or what's going on.
My advice to the OP...the first thing is to make sure people know you both on Hubpages and elsewhere -- if you are on other forums and they allow it put a link to your Hubpages account in your signature, link it on your Myspace or Facebook, throw some Twitters out when you write something new, and so on.
Make sure you pick good, relevant tags for your articles. Include words or phrases in the article itself that people might search for, and when you're referring to the subject try to say it in a few different ways (i.e. 2009 Winter Olympics, Winter Olympics of 2009, etc.) so that you have more chances of hitting on the exact phrasing someone might use if they're searching for the information you provide in your article.
If you want to go in a more strict SEO format, decide what your keyword is, which should be what most plainly describes your subject. Make sure that this keyword goes into each paragraph at least once, but most people say no more than twice. Then pick 2-4 secondary keywords, ones which describe the subject in different ways or are directly related to the subject, and disperse them throughout the article a couple of times each. If you're not familiar with it, it can be a little tricky to start, but once you're used to it it's really easy to write articles that read and flow well while hopefully giving them a half-decent chance of being found in the searches.
All the time Jack - it all depends on your niche and keyword research/selection but I'm finding over 90% of my traffic is from Google search.
Almost all of my readers are visitors from Google and Yahoo.
I've gotten to the point where most of my hits are coming from outside the community.
On my traffic sources page I'm listing almost as many sources as I have hubs, some of which, like google, yahoo and bing, list multiple times for global geographical areas (is Europe, Asia, Australia ect)
Most of my hits are coming from google (including google.ca and google.co.uk). I don't have the amount of hits that a lot of Hubbers have, but the percentage of outside hits is far more than the inside.
It takes a little while for the search engines to index your hubs, though significant internal traffic helps. One of the things I did (and got a bit lucky) was to hit a very hot current events topic with my first hub.
I also realized that once my "BYLINE" was indexed I started getting alot more hits, in that the search engines were beginning to bring up not only the article on the search topic but also my "related" articles.
my traffic is close to half n half these days, took a while to get there and I expect to increase the traffic from outside the site as my hubs get noticed by google. Internal traffic is good tho as we do comment on each others hubs thus adding a tid bit more content as well as just making the page a high traffic one
Whoa, didn't expect to see so many inputs from seasoned hubbers after just one day offline. Thanks Folks!
Wow ... 22,000 hits! I just got my first 100!
Give it a bit of time...and a whooooole bunch of writing, with maybe a little marketing thrown in .
Anyway, I just thought I'd return here to give you some precise numbers (thought I'd check my hub stats now to see if my estimates on where the traffic is coming from were still correct). I just rolled over 23,000 hits today, and 2,377 of them are from Hubpages.
I think that it's true most of the traffic is from Hubpages while you're still pretty new, but as time goes on and more and more of your articles get indexed in the searches that seems to turn around pretty quickly.
Ah, I see. It's good to know that there are actually lots of traffic coming in from outside of HP.
I just got a bit curious as I read some advice on this forum that seemed to suggest that you really need to be active in HP to get your Hub scores up as well as for more visitors; that to me sounded pretty much like saying too that hubbers are the main source of readers. Then I checked my stats everyday. OK, I'm just starting out so I should wait and see; now I know.
And also, since hubbers are mainly writers, I was beginning to wonder if the hub topics I choose then ought to be more appealing to the writer type. Besides, spending many hours a day hubbing is not something I could or should do at this point (my kids are already grumbling that I don't seem to have time!) so there is also another concern here.
Thanks wychic!
You're welcome, always happy to help . As to something that applies more to writer types...I've written some articles on other sites that had to do with common grammatical mistakes, creative structure, good places to earn money from writing, and about freelancing in general and those do seem to be really popular.
Overall, on all of my sites just about anything "how to" seems to do really well, especially if it has to do with making money, managing money, or developing skills that will allow people to make money online. Between my writing on three other sites, freelance writing, and freelance transcription I also don't have much time to just dink around on Hubpages to participate in the forums and such, but other than having fewer fans than most that have been here as long it doesn't seem to have affected me too much. Granted, my hubscore is also lower than most people strive for, but I have quite a few product reviews in my collection and they never seem to score very high, so we'll blame them .
I found tweeting, facebook and stumbleupon helps my outside hits. Sure, I get a lot of hits from other Hubbers but I think the more sites you link to yours (such as above) the more you get the site out there. Since I started linking them, only a few days after joining, I noticed I was getting a lot of hits off of AOL, Google and Yahoo. Now I've had over 300 hits since I joined two weeks ago. Good luck!
readership is always bugging me too but i tell myself to give the hub a bit more time to simmer. if it's still floating around like a dead fish after 1 or 2 months, then it's time to get a bit concerned.
my take is just to focus on good solid content. write something that you yourself would want to read. if not, who else would?
I guess I'll wait until my hubs get indexed by the search engines and see what happens. At the moment, it just doesn't surface even if I keyed in half my hub content into the search string. Cheers Neil.
Here's a quick tip for you Jack - write 7 articles on one topic - all in the same niche but from different angles - the different angles using different keywords initially.. for example..
Debt
Debt management
credit card debt
how to get out of debt
debt consolidation loans
household debt
debt solutions for business owners
(btw, I wouldnt go near debt as its over saturated)
Okay, so now you have 7 keywords to target with 7 articles - write a hub for each using the keyword in the url, title, and tags as well as in the content at around 3-4% frequency.
next step is to link your hubs internally, use DEBT as the main article (around 1,500 words long), link it down to CREDIT CARD DEBT (using the ANCHOR TEXT - credit card debt - to link to that hub) and also do the same with 1 more, maybe HOUSEHOLD DEBT.
next, link CREDIT CARD DEBT and also HOUSEHOLD DEBT using anchor text to 2 other hubs each - the other 4 that remain, so the biggest hub links down to 2 x 800-1,000 word length hubs, which then link down to 2 x 500-600 wordlength smaller hubs.
final step, link 4 small hubs back to DEBT (the biggest of your hubs) - this is internal linking and helps link juice inside your hubs circulate and not evaporate.
all you have to do now is backlink from outside HP and you're away. okay, it takes a bit more than that but you get the picture..
It's only been 3 weeks. Sometimes Hubs are indexed fast, sometimes there's a backlog. But even if it's indexed fast, I find it takes a few weeks to move up the rankings.
About 90% of my traffic is from search engines. When you first publish a Hub, all the traffic will be Hubbers, especially if you have a few fans. After that, it's almost all external.
Which is what you want, because Hubbers don't click on ads - and that's how you make money. External visitors pay the bills.
it all takes time. keep in mind there are many excellent hubbers who never step foot in the forums and have most of their traffic coming in from the search engines. reading their hubs is a great way to learn. if you click on Hubbers, you will see the top hubbers at any given time, check out their profile and their topics, different writing styles.
I know someone who has never posted in the forums and has excellent traffic flow/sales after only a couple of months. he writes 'how-to' articles with specific keywords/instructions. he gives the searcher exactly what they're searching for along with the product.
recently I've been spending time doing searches on different topics to read the quality of the top 5 -10 entries on google.
much of the info is so poorly written, I'm amazed that it reaches those coveted spots. I've had to end up going to the second page sometimes to get decent information that's not completely covered with ads. it's interesting...
good luck and welcome to HP.
I found that most my traffic is coming from google and yahoo search. How ever, it was about 2-3 weeks to get my hubs high enough in the ranks to draw about 100-200 hits a day.
That is only some, but not all. I still have hubs that are extremely lower in rank, but I'm not worried about them because certain ones attract certaint people.
Context, Content and Expression is what's going to keep your hubs active.
Hi Neil, thanks for the tip. I kinda intended to focus on topics that I'm more familiar with and write a few articles on them while I touch on a few other subjects that I feel I have enough to share. And yes, I would want to cross-link them internally for readers' reference, and of course, to do a bit of self promoting.
Anyway, my hubs are just starting to show up on Google search: I'll see how it goes.
Appreciate the comments. Cheers.
Wow. What great advice. I came here just looking for an outlet (I'm a mommy of two young kids and have gotten away from writing... and I miss it.) I didn't realize there was such a science to gaining readership!!! This definitely has the potential to turn into a whole new hobby for me.
OP - Sorry for replying w/o any specific help for you. (I'm just learning too.) But, I couldn't get over how helpful everyone here was and had to say something. Good luck to you!
Since I hijacked your thread here a little with my amazement, I'll at least pop over and read your hub! Its not a suggestion, but it is a reader...
you need to Daily post in forums, commenting on others hubs. I think if you follow this strategy you can find more visitors to your hub
You can take a look at my latest hub Better Search Engine ranking and see a great new article tool my partner and I are using for building great backlinks.
Oh ya by the way it is absolutely free. There is a paid version but we use the free version and we are getting great backlinks.
Hi Ya'll, Isn't there a place to post your hubs to get them reviewed? I know I have seen it but don't have time to hunt right now. Any help will be appreciated. Dixie W
This is the forum where you ask people to review your hubs.
It seems to me that the people with a lot of posts in this forum have really high hubscores. Maybe that's part of the secret.
This is all very useful and helpful information that answered many of my questions as well...and then some!
Thank you all for sharing!
Wow, I didn't know you could see where your traffic came from in your account. I thought you had to install Google Analytic for that. I already signed up for that, but haven't really looked at it yet. i still have to link it to y hubs and my adsense account too.
But I'm checking out the stats here first!
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