More News Sites Launched!
Hi all! We launched PetHelpful's Pet News category several months ago, and it's performed so well that we've begun adding news categories to other Network Sites. Each category is used by a site-specific news team here at HubPages to drive more traffic and engagement on social media, in turn boosting site traffic as a whole.
Here are the sites that currently have a news category:
• Home & Garden News (Dengarden)
• Tech News (TurboFuture)
• Delishably News
• WanderWisdom News
• Exemplore News
• WeHaveKids News
We hope you'll check them out!What does "performed so well" mean? How much did it improve the traffic and boost site traffic?
I'm not sure whether this is good or not. Time will tell.
I do have an issue with the main network site that hosts my articles and that is: why is one writer allowed to dominate the whole category? There used to be a good mix and I would see a good selection of my own writing mixed in on the front page. However, the whole category is dominated by one writer with mainly repetitive titles.
I've struggled with low traffic for two years now and this is not helping. Surely the networks should focus on a variety of topics and titles?I see two of yours on the home page under popular articles, but I know those can change often.
Most of the niche sites look like that now. With the switch to the Maven platform they started showing the newest articles on the homepage. It looks like the person you are talking about is basically writing an article a day which is unfortunate for everyone else.
I always thought this was a bad plan, it hurts those with established articles and doesn't showcase the great evergreen articles on the site. I wish they would go back to the old system when there was a good mix of author's and articles being showcased. Not only does the current system punish those that don't write on a regular basis, but it also lacks in showing what the sites actually have to offer.
I did find something intersting. I read one of your witch articles and the whole related articles section consisted of your articles. I read a different article on Exemplore by a different author in a different category and theirs was almost the same. They did have one of yours and one or two by another author, but mainly all their own articles were recommended. Pethelpful and Owlcation's recommend sections show the newest articles like the home pages. I wonder why Exemplore's recommend section is set up differently, and if any other niche sites showcase all the same author under their articles.As the writer who I believe this comment is about... I agree that more variety should be in a category from different authors.
I'm not sure how many people actually directly find articles from the niche sites and go to the categories, as it is my impression most things are found through Google searches. However, the category could look more elegant with variety. The section I believe you are referring to looks particularly rough on mobile.
It wasn't my intention to dominate or distract from other writers... or come off as though I was putting together slipshod or recycled work.
I wrote a ton in 2021, which is when I wrote most of that series. I usually go back and forth from writing standalone pieces (for any niche) to something more akin to a series. That's helped me to keep a consistent rhythm with writing. I don't have a full-time job anymore, so I try to keep a routine with writing. I'm actually going to be focusing more on editing and other opportunities in the present.
There is something to be said of Exemplore's numbers on Semrush. I'd rather not go into the specifics of that here and end up somehow breaking rules. Message me, and we can chat.
I think if the niche site was doing better it would attract more writers who like to write about tarot and similar interests. The editors who have worked with me on Exemplore articles have been absolutely kind, so in that sense, it is a supportive place if you like to write on alternative subjects.
I would prefer to come off as someone who likes to collaborate and be a team member than someone who is competitive and self-interested. I'd rather work with others to help keep the life of sites going rather than be a catalyst for decay. I hope this is coming off sincere.I may be wrong, but I suspect the change is because Google is obsessed with "freshness" nowadays and HP is having to react.
Newness is increasingly associated with virtuousness in Google's eyes, it seems.
If the intent is to drive more traffic to the articles on the niche site, then why do more news articles appear in the Read More widget?
Why not populate that with articles from the site itself?I don't see how this helps bring traffic to our articles. It just keeps readers engaged with the news section.
In addition, I noticed that the news articles don't have the video at the top advertising HubPages. I always felt it interfered with the readers' engagement since it was confusing.
We were told not to mention "Hubpages" on the niche sites, so I reported that those videos referred to HubPages a time ago. But they still do. I see that someone must know they are no good since they were eliminated from the news articles. Therefore I think it's time to remove them from our hubs too.Amen to that. They're still overlaying the top 1/4 of the screen when scrolling on a mobile device and the close button not working. I'm not seeing any ads either using Firefox on an Android device, just blank placeholders.
Edit: It seems I had enhanced tracking protection turned on, which disabled ads.I have seen some traffic increases from sites that I had not seen before so I asked an editor about them. This is part of her reply:
"The recent uptick in traffic from MSN is a result of the new Pet News category; we've started linking to evergreen content in our news articles, so people on MSN are clicking back to your articles from there."
I am still not sure how readers are finding the articles through the new category but it does seem to be working. Some of my articles have seen thousands of more page views.
The videos on Pethelpful have improved a lot over the last year or so but I am not sure about the other niche sites. I personally would like to get rid of them too but it may be increasing reader time in some cases and giving the ads more time to load.Do ads pre-load while a reader is watching the video and before they scroll down an article? (or at least the ones that are chosen for display are "picked" depending on a reader's surfing history and then they just have to be displayed on scrolling down ) I thought blank spaces appear on scrolling, then an ad loads maybe 5 to 10 seconds later? They're still really slow loading on my phone. Maybe it's just the specific phone is slow.
I am not sure. I think writers are more likely to ignore the video an go ahead and scroll down so perhaps we are not waiting long enough for the ads to load?
(I just checked this on my phone. It switched to Portuguese first since that is my native language, and then after the video showed the ads were also visible until I scrolled down to the bottom of the page. At the bottom the ads were not visible until I moved over them.)
I also saw roughly 2k in page views for a Pethelpful article over two weeks or so (from MSN), but it has since dropped back into oblivion. I'm not sure how helpful an increase in views over a few weeks or a month is suppose to help our articles long term though. Sure the uptick was nice for that short time, but with thousands of writers on the niche sites, how often are we to even be linked? I saw one author linked in two different news articles (same author article, same word link) but I doubt that's the case for most writers.
The few news articles I looked at only link to one writer's article (which makes sense considering the news "article" is so short) and the related section only contains other news articles. I do not see this bringing long term traffic to the site as a whole. The few people they link to, will see an uptick surely, but nothing lasting which is what we as writers are looking for.
I would take a steady 50 views a month over a short two week 2k any day. The potential for the steady views to increase is higher, than it would be for me to get another article linked by staff.
The links are not all related either. I clicked on one from wehavekids and the word I clicked wasn't even found or discussed until the last paragraph. If I was actually looking for information I would have backed out of the article long before I got to the bottom of it. There are two links on Exemplore that don't even link to Exemplore. One goes to Dengarden news and the other to a non Maven/TAG site, not sure how that is suppose to help the writers on Exemplore.Links have an SEO power, too - though it's not as strong as it once was, it can still make a difference.
I presume, rightly or wrongly, that this move also relates to Google's obsession with "freshness."
HP keep a regular supply of new, Google-friendly material appearing and this helps the entire niche.
Just speculating aloud...Considering that Pethelpful news has been around for months now, per HP (I had no idea as I don't actively read here) and I have seen maybe a 2 week increase in traffic, I'm not seeing the advantage.
I haven't seen a news section that shows related content from authors just other news stories. If the content only links out to maybe one or two author's articles how is that suppose to help us?
If the content is actually related maybe the reader will stay, read, and even clink on another recommended article, but if I get taken to a site/article I see as unrelated I'm clicking right back out. Which was the case for most of the links I looked at.
This seems like a way to help Maven/TAG earn more, not necessarily us writers.
Editors have been link stuffing my articles on that site for months (with no Pethelpful content) and I still haven't seen an increase from that tactic either. I don't think random links are nearly as SEO helpful as HP is making it out to be.
I also don't think the same audience clicking on these news blurbs are necessarily even interested in reading long evergreen content. Which could account for why most of my articles never saw and have yet to see an uptick in views from this new section.As far as not having any related links from authors, I do want to point out that one of the recent new stories mentions Muscovy ducks, and if the reader clicks on that word link within the news story (to learn more about Muscovies) then they are led to my article on reasons to keep Muscovies as pets. I wrote the article back in 2019 and although it is on the top of the front page in Google it has only had about 5000 page views. I saw the same number of page views this week just since the news story was posted about a Muscovy duck.
So I do think we have some traffic as a result of the news section. A lot? That is impossible for me to say at this point.I didn't say they were all unrelated, but most were not that relevant. Although when most news articles are more like social media blurbs, I'm sure it's harder to find the balance between related and what will keep this type of reader around.
If you are a linked author for sure it helps, but after your linked news article is not news worthy anymore what happens?
My article dropped back into oblivion, which I fully expected. It was never a popular article though and had maybe 5-6k total views in 10yrs. I believe it's also on page 4 or 5 of Google, and likely doesn't see views because of that.
Maybe if one of my more popular articles that appears on the 2nd or 3rd page of Google gets selected I will see longer sustained views. I'd like to think it would, but I doubt it.
I'm hoping this news section will help the niche sites climb back up in the SERPS. That's the only way I see it helping authors long term.
I don't get it. Maybe I'm a little slow about these tech things. I looked at We Have Kids News. I don't see how clicking on a news story gets more traffic to my article on the site. If a potential reader clicks on a story, for example, on yahoo (given that it's a story that the "site-specific news team linked to), will it take them to the niche site news section? Then they will see the categories at the top and click on one that interests them, then (maybe 
) see our articles? What is this really about, another way to increase ad revenue? \__/LOL, now I'm reaping the benefits of this. One of my articles has gone viral so it works! Many thanks to the site-specific news team for choosing my article, one of HP's least tech-savvy hubbers.
See this forum: https://hubpages.com/community/forum/35 … gone-viral
"Read More" and "Related Stories" just seem to lead to more news stories. This content is generated by editors I think we established, Lauren Gordon being one of them. Maybe the strategy is to discontinue stale, shared revenue content and replace it by rapidly generated daily content with no ongoing requirement to share revenue? (Remember some authors here were offered an option to do this on some of the other TAG sites a few years ago?) Isn't this the model that The Spruce, Family Handyman and others use?
Thanks for the explanation Dr. Mark re MSN. Recently, I've seen some articles that were attracting little attention zoom into the stratosphere with views. When I checked the referrer it said MSN but I couldn't track down how or why. It seems to be working and I might be able to afford a better quality bottle of wine.
If it helps with traffic (and SE rankings?) then I am all in favor of this move. In a world where social media is huge, it makes sense.
I think this is great! More traffic to niche sites must mean higher SERP ranks for the sites in general. Anything that generates quality traffic to HP niches is a win for the rest of us. I noticed TurboFuture on MSN the other day.
