Deleting Low-Performing Articles

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   Kenna McHughposted 5 years ago

   Some of us have mentioned deleting low-performing articles from your Hubs. I sense they do it because it increases views/impressions. How does that increase views/impressions?

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      paradigmsearchposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      If you mean on the remaining hubs, as far as I know it doesn't. However when I have a hub over 3 years old and it's still collecting dust, I move it for a new life elsewhere.

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         Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         If you have another place for the article, I can see moving it. But, deleting it?

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            Wesman Todd Shawposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            I always put them on Blogger. I have some there which I plan to look over, and then re-write for here. They were up to my standards 6 or more years ago, but my current standards are much higher.

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               Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Wesman,
               
               That's a good idea. I might try moving some of my low-performing articles to another website and see what happens.

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      Wesman Todd Shawposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Easy - it doesn't.

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         Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Good point.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      It doesn't.  However to retain views, I sometimes delete the contents and replace them with text from a new hub that deals with the same general topic.

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      jwashingtonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I was thinking of doing this when I have enough hubs. One benefit I see is tailoring your hubs to one or two niches. So, if someone wanted to read, say, about Epilepsy and topics around it, they may come back to the same profile as a reference (for example, like the subsites on HubPages).
      
      Instead of the same topic, it could be the same genre. So, if your niche is health, than whomever wants to read about health can refer back to your profile.
      
      It could be counterproductive too; unless your hubs are so different under one genre updated often, deleting hubs for one niche may be less benefitial.

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         Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         J,
         Good points. My Hubs are different, but some follow a similar category. I just can't delete my articles.

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            jwashingtonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Yeah. I haven't written much so I'm still getting a feel if I want to put the effort into writing more.

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               Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               J,
               Your topics are unique but relevant, which is good. You are on the right track.  It takes time and effort.

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            TIMETRAVELER2posted 5 years agoin reply to this

            If you decide to delete, low views should not be the reason.  You should only delete if you discover, as I have from time to time, that your article duplicates another one that you have written, has too much online competition and has no chance of getting good views or has writing flaws that are so bad that they cannot be corrected.  There are reasons for low views but if you don't know what they are, you may be deleting a piece of work that can be upgraded and improved to the point that it will be moved to niche sites where it can have a chance of getting views and earnings.

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      jwashingtonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Let me ask. When you write articles, do you have a sense of what types of hubs you can write and be qualified for or is it luck?
      
      I know I'm thinking of deleting articles on the basis I don't know what to edit; and, they'd serve no purpose just siting on my profile.

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         Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         J,
         I operate with a purpose, and then I angle my articles toward that purpose. I check SEO, google it to see the probability of success.
         
         In the beginning, I joined HP to write about film industry careers. That was eleven years ago. Those articles are still up. Some are in niche sites, and some are not. I wrote about film careers because I am passionate about film and work in the industry.
         
         I am also passionate about other things like helping people and getting spreading the truth or educating others.  If I can inspire someone to live a better life and be happier, that is worth more than a 6 figured passive income.

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            jwashingtonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Oh! That makes sense. In regards to your original question about deletion, maybe set aside those that are not in your career focus?
            
            The non-related articles, how are they contributing to your specialty and career focus? Are they creating revenue?
            
            Another question is are your articles evergreens (new term in my Rolodex) or are they out of date?
            
            If HubPages had a folders to separate our Hubs, that would be great. I know I wouldn't want to delete my articles either. It also depends on your goals to and how much what you have may or may not be benefiting you in the long run.
            
            Your post gave me better context of your question.

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               Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               J,
               I am fortunate because I've studied in many fields. All my articles relate to personal experience and are evergreen. They contribute to my revenue.

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   DrMark1961posted 5 years ago

   Many people will tell you that if you publish on this site, or on one of the niche sites, Google cannot tell who you are and will look at all of the content on the site as exactly the same.
   I do not believe that. Is Google really so stupid that they cannot tell certain HP authors apart?
   If you have 50 articles, and 25 are on the first page and have good traffic, and the other 25 are relegated to page 47 and rarely have page views, should you do something about it? I did. I deleted the poor performing articles.
   Did I see an upturn in the other articles? Definitely. Can I prove that the increased traffic was not due to time or some other factor? No. Anytime you do something to your articles other things are happening at the same time.
   Do I have great traffic? Yes, at least as far as the others who have discussed their traffic on the forums. Do I think that it is because I eliminated some of the very poor performing articles from my page? Yes, I do.
   Do you have to believe that this will work? Not at all.

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      Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Dr. Mark,
      I agree. Google is aware of the content. They have an A-List.
      I am curious: How many articles you deleted?  Did you delete them over time? All at once?

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         DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

         I have not kept count, but I think about 50. I have not done this in a while, since for the last few years I have only been publishing about once a month and write longer articles that I hope are more thoroughly researched and will eventually gain more traffic.
         No, I did not delete them all at once. I had some Brazilian recipes and I deleted them after about a year, and then after that deleted the articles on epilepsy (in humans) and on religion.

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      siramaposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      How much time google takes to remove the index of deleted articles? Because one can't publish it on other site as it can be seen as duplicate..

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      EsmeSanBonaposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks, DrMark!  That's the best analysis I've seen yet.

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   psycheskinnerposted 5 years ago

   I few year ago I tried that.  No matter how little an article made on Hubpages, on Blogger it made less.  So now I leave them.
   
   I don't think hubs affect each other for each contributor.  They are pages on the site they are on and counted as part of that enormous multi-author whole.  Ergo having a lower traffic hub has zero effect on your high traffic hubs.
   
   If Hubstaff say different I will believe them but until then I am happy with my strategy.

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      Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Good points, psyche. You tried it and know what works.

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   ReViewMeMediaposted 5 years ago

   I never delete anything, I just link it to get more traffic even if the article is old.

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      Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Re, I link articles, too. Thanks for the input.
      On another topic, What did you think of Alita: Battle Angel?

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         ReViewMeMediaposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         I have not gone to watch it, but I will be buying it on blu-ray to watch and review it.

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   Will Apseposted 5 years ago

   If pages are performing badly because they are triggering search engine spam filters they should be demoted from niche sites.
   
   I doubt if that is the case with many pages on HP but it is hard to be sure. Basically, if a page gets no traffic, HP will dump it eventually without our intervention.

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      Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Will,
      You mean they will dump the article from the niche site and not HP in general, right?

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Yup, that's how it works. I wonder whether they move new articles that are deemed worthy but never get any traffic back to HP? Any idea if this is done?

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         Will Apseposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         It has never happened to me. But that is official policy. Or it was last time I heard. I think a new article on a niche gets a year to attract regular traffic from search engines, or it is demoted.
         
         Presumably, it gets unfeatured at the same time since hubpages. com pages are unfeatured for lack of traffic.
         
         Not sure what you don't trust about Google pronouncements, by the way. They will not tell you much (or anything) about their algos but they will tell you what kinds of page they want to serve up in search results and that is worth listening to.

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            lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            I didn't say they give out wrong info. They won't and they can't. It would take away from their credibility. I don't trust that they are telling us everything they are working on.

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   Beth Eaglescliffeposted 5 years ago

   My experience is similar to that of DrMark. I deleted more than half the articles I had published. (I had more than 120 hubs and now have fewer than 60). All were on niche sites but they were getting almost zero views. Since doing this my total impressions have increased and my monthly earnings have improved dramatically. Why? I don't know. Would I recommend doing this? Absolutely!
   
   Here's my way of making income grow on HP.
   1. Make sure every article is moved to a niche site. If something doesn't pass QA after three tries, delete. Having something sitting around on the old HubPages site is a waste of time (in my opinion) as it doesn't earn anything.
   2. Once on a niche site, I update every article at least once every three months. This could be a new image, a new sentence, or just a rearrangement of the capsules. (This is where it helps to have fewer articles.)
   3. If a niche site article is still failing to get traffic after 12 months (including updating it every 3 months) then delete.
   4. All comments are moderated by me before being published. Anything that doesn't add to the article is deleted. Anything spammy is deleted. If the information is really useful I add a new paragraph to my article and include it.
   
   Writing on HP does not provide a truly passive income. You need to keep updating and refreshing articles to make them work for you.

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   lobobrandonposted 5 years ago

   I disagree with what Dr. Mark says in his first reply to this thread. Google does not have the ability to link the work of authors. It did try this using the rel publisher tag, but that was a failure. They will try to do this again in the future, but for now, it's all domain based. The same article on website A will be on page 10, but moved to website B it can be the #1 article and have the snippet too. All this while very obviously being written by the same author.
   
   I did at once have 50 or so hubs, I deleted most because back then they were subdomains. This did have an effect as each domain was treated separately. But, now that the work moves to niche sites, there's no point doing this. Did I see an improvement after deleting those pages? Not really. But I did and continue to have amazing traffic after the niche sites. It took me 7 years to get to a million views and 8 months later I am already at 1.5 Million. No hubs were deleted, I still have a few that get 0 views a day and 7 views a month.
   
   But, instead of deleting those, I work on the ones that are doing well and make sure that I get the #1 spot for the different keywords they already rank for. Deleting some of then non-performers will not increase my traffic, because to do that I need to get to a position above position one on some of my articles, which is not possible. If Google said my content was no good due to the few not getting traffic, I would not have the #1 spot on the rest of if they did, in fact, keep track, the other ones that are doing bad would be doing a lot better.
   
   My hub on whether the tomato is a fruit or a vegetable is one of my best-written hubs and it's one of my lower trafficked hubs at no more than 20 views a day on average because it is on Owlcation and not Degnarden. The domain and not the author is important. Owlcation is still a lot better than HP.

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      DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      1. Have you considered that Google knows you as lobobrandon on the Dengarden site but does not treat you the same on the Owlcation site.
      2. You deleted a lot of articles and are doing a lot better. You attribute that change to the niche sites. You can not be sure of this, as things improved later. Maybe they were going to improve anyway because you deleted some articles.
      3. You mention that Google does not have the ability to link the works of authors. Since we are not Google employees, and do not write the programs that determine how things work, your comments are only based on what you have read. In the past, Google has not always been 100% honest. Are you positive that they are being 100% honest about not having this ability at this time?

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         lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         1. That goes against what you're proposing, right? If they cannot detect that it is from the same author across two websites that are coded exactly the same, they can definitely not track authors across websites built on different platforms. Also, not all my Dengarden articles do well right off the block. A lot of additional work needs to go into them. I'm pretty sure not all of your articles do as well as your top articles. There will be some on PetHelfpul that are not ranking in the top 3 even though most of yours are.
         2. Definitely not, because there was like 2 years and then the niche sites and the jump.
         3. I do SEO professionally so I don't trust a word Google says, it's all testing. And tests do reveal what the algorithm does. Algorithms change and new tests would be necessary, but as of a few months ago, authors don't matter, domains do.

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            DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

            I really enjoyed that line " I do SEO professionally so I don't trust a word Google says".
            I like your replies, but still disagree. I think it would be interesting if someone joined a site like Squidoo (I know but I could not think of another), used the author name lobobrandon, then published a really crappy spam filled article on range hoods. You could see then if your HP traffic was negatively affected, or not affected at all.

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               lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Yes, I've tested the move of the same content across domains with the same author names and the rankings was a lot different. We can agree to disagree. But yes, never trust Google on what they say about their algorithms. If you want real info, track their patents and read them to know what they are actually working on.
               
               I do have some really bad crappy articles under the name lobobrandon on Wizzley Does not affect me here.
               
               Google would never spend so much time making an algorithm for this because the vast majority of the internet functions as webpages and not articles by authors. Those pages do not have author profiles and names. Many do have contributor pages but not in the way we have them here, a profile on the side of each article.

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                  Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Dr. Mark and Brandon,
                  Great banter, it's helpful because getting high rankings and revenue takes work. Being successful with HP is more than just being a professional writer.
                  You need to know SEO with your ear to the changes of Google.

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                     lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     True, also on a side note there seems to have been a big update over the last 24 hours. Most likely the medical sites that have been the target.

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                        Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        Brandon, Google or HP updates?

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                           lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           Google.

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                              Kenna McHughposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                              Thank you. That is what I thought you meant. What does that mean for us?

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                                 lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                                 As always going to have to wait and see. Most niche sites should not be affected.

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   Will Apseposted 5 years ago

   Google did once try to work on a way of recognising individual authors and ranking their trustworthiness/merit, but quickly gave up.
   
   https://searchengineland.com/goodbye-go … hip-201975
   
   Some people still think it matters. Not sure why, given that no one can use the webmaster tools bit anymore.

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      lobobrandonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, I already pointed this out in my first reply to this thread. But it's code that goes on all your pages and has nothing to do with webmaster tools. It was to do with your G+ profile.

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   Kenna McHughposted 5 years ago

   And, G+ is no longer around.

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