Decimation of traffic, how to rectify?

1. 81

   sriparnaposted 11 years ago

   Decimation of traffic, how to rectify?
   
   Since September, traffic for all my hubs have drastically gone down and still not revived its original status. Do you know the reason and how do I come out of it?

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2. 91

   Rock_njposted 11 years ago

   That is surprising since the fall is when more people are using the Internet and average traffic increases.  Have you checked to see if you have a lot of idled hubs?  If yes, then update them.  That might explain why traffic has fallen off.  Also make your hubs Search Engine Optimized (SEO) to make them easier to find in search engines.  There are plenty of Hubs that you can find about SEO, including one I wrote.

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   1. 80

      Greekgeekposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Hey, if you know SEO, you're aware of the Panda 20 update that clobbered Hubpages traffic across the board on September 27... Right?
      
      Seriously, while SEO can help a little, there's only so much we can do until Panda stops downrating HP sitewide.

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3. 83

   Lwelchposted 11 years ago

   The true but annoying answer.... wait.  There are cycles here.  You will see natural cycles.  My pages are down by 300/day.  Painful, but life.  You can see the site wide traffic at http://www.quantcast.com/www.hubpages.com  Look at your graph and look at that one and see how similar they are.

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   1. 91

      Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It does appear that HubPages overall traffic dropped when the idle hubs policy was implemented.

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   2. 83

      Lwelchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It does.  I don't know if that was due to the idle hubs or another Google indexing.  I find it intriguing how much my graph matches theirs.  I thought it was me until I saw that.

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   3. 59

      foodietaylorposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      What is the idle hubs policy?

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   4. 83

      Lwelchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Hubs that meet certain metrics are not given to search engines.  Your hubs that aren't indexed have nothing in the far right column of the stats.  The H there means that they are indexed.

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4. 73

   That Grrlposted 11 years ago

   Don't sit back and rest your fingers once you've published your Hubs. Find your own audience to read them. Bring the readers to your posts. Look for forums, groups, feeds which people who would read your type of content would look for your type of content in. Move the mountain - don't expect Google to do all your heavy lifting.

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   1. 91

      Rock_njposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Very good advice.  If you want your hubs to be successful, you have to go out and promote them.  Not everyone has time to do that though, but it certainly helps drive traffic to hubs.

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   2. 0

      chrisinhawaiiposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Agreed!  Never just sit back & sulk. When you guys (& girls) push harder to publish more, network more, & promote more, don't you notice that your numbers go up?  I do!  Yes G updates rock the boat, but when we back off, numbers fall even

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   3. 84

      AlexK2009posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Agreed Chris, ignoring the problem seldom works. But panic is even less helpful.
      As we agreed elsewhere, the key is to reduce dependence on Google. That is hard.

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5. 85

   Imogen Frenchposted 11 years ago

   sripama - I am having the same problem, traffic has more than halved since September, even though all my hubs are "featured", and none are "idling". My income is also next to nothing. I don't know why either, and nobody has given me a satisfactory answer.
   
   I think the best thing we can do as hubbers is to support each other by reading and commenting on each others hubs to keep them active until such time as Google traffic picks up again. I guess we should keep on using the site as much as possible and hope that things improve soon.
   best of luck

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   1. 83

      Lwelchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I think that it will be going up again.  The traffic here comes and goes in waves.  Many people talk about refreshing hubs, but I suspect that is just due to time.  I don't have time to re-edit and re-fresh and my hubs tend to spike after a slump.

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6. 84

   tillsontitanposted 11 years ago

   I'm in the same boat sriparna...and I have participated in forums, asked and answered questions, always read hubs and leave comments, I also update and add to old hubs and publish one to two new ones a week.  I think it just might be a cycle and I can only hope it will cycle back to more traffic!  Good luck.

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   1. 83

      Lwelchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It has cycled back each time for me.  Sometimes it takes a bit longer than other times.

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   2. 60

      JJMargaretposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I just started. It is taking a long time to read through the Learning Center and helpful Hubs about generating traffic that I don't have time to create Hubs. I've tried all the above and it's like I'm invisible. How does a newby get her feet wet?

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   3. 83

      Lwelchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I started by doing nothing more than writing.  I did share some of my sites on a support group, but that was only a very small piece of my traffic.  Here is my traffic.  I do nothing but write.  http://s1.hubimg.com/u/7374188.jpg

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   4. 84

      AlexK2009posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      JJMargaret. Leave the reading till later. Once you publish a hub stick the url into the Adwords keywords tool and then add  relevant search terms as  tags and work them into your hub.  And share your hubs on FB. With an appropriate  referral tracker.

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7. 84

   Pamela Kinnaird Wposted 11 years ago

   Mine have been down the last few days, too, and I don't have any answers, but the numbers are up again.  The numbers are never terribly high for me, but I'm okay with them.  The odd thing, though, is that a hub of mine that is usually at the very bottom of my list is now at the very top.   
   
   I enjoyed all the answers on here.

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8. 84

   AlexK2009posted 11 years ago

   Use Google Adwords to improve the tags and title for your hubs and wait.
   Add  or edit summaries.
   Add photos if there are none.

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9. 94

   Paul Kuehnposted 11 years ago

   This is a very good question.  My traffic really took a big hit around the middle of July and it has been slowly, very slowly getting better.  It's a constant struggle, though, in marketing your hubs.  You need the right keywords, and as others have said, you can't solely depend on Google to market your hubs.  It's important to update old hubs and to have the right photos illustrated on your hubs.  Sharing also will help some in driving traffic to your hubs.

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10. 37

    ChristinSposted 11 years ago

    It is my opinion that the latest Google algorithm updates had a great deal to do with this.  I noticed that traffic to my hubs and a couple of my websites both dropped within two days of the huge September update they did.  I lost 300 dollars in revenue last month because of it - so now I am updating all my sites and I am considering my next moves.   I may move my hubs to my personal websites if the trend doesn't start reversing soon.

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11. 84

    lanablackmoorposted 11 years ago

    I'm still in the process of building my traffic, but Yahoo! Answers and other Q&A sites seem to be a good way to get visibility if your hub answers questions that people have been asking lately.

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    1. 81

       sriparnaposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Thanks so much for all the suggestions and propable reasons for such downtraffic. I will keep patience and do some refreshing, though good thing is that all my hubs are featured!

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