Pitching Articles to Hubpages

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   eugbugposted 23 months ago

   Should authors submit their proposed title first so that they can be refused if there's an existing article that's similar?
   I recently had an article that was years old and had a lot of traffic pushed way down SERPS because of a more recently written one on the same topic.

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   1. 81

      Brenda Arledgeposted 23 months agoin reply to this

      It actually won't let me create an article if there is one already named like that.
      
      I always get upset because i have my titled picked out & they refuse to let me use it

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      1. 94

         eugbugposted 23 months agoin reply to this

         It's not just the title though. Sometimes articles are about exactly the same thing. I was trying to get a physics article to rank high for years. Then someone wrote a guide and now its top of the SERPS, so mine hasn't a chance. As far as I understand it, Google doesn't like duplication of content on the same site either.

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         1. 81

            Brenda Arledgeposted 23 months agoin reply to this

            I think the article has to stand for itself.  If someone else has another article that is better...we can't stop that.
            
            There are no limits to what others are allowed to write about & I don't want limits put on me here at Hubpages.
            
            It's confusing enough here.  We jump through alot of hoops just to communicate.

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2. 88

   Jodahposted 23 months ago

   This happens to me quite a bit too, Brenda. I wonder how similar the title has to be though for it to be refused as already existing.

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   1. 92

      EricDockettposted 23 months agoin reply to this

      It's not so much the title as the url, or permalink as it is called in the creation tool. When you enter a title, it automatically generates the url for your article. You can change the url, and of course, you can change the title at any time.
      
      If you are trying to use a title and it isn't letting you, change your url (permalink) slightly and try again.
      
      (Edit: I mean to say you can change the url as you create the article. You can't change it afterward.)
      
      Although, I highly suggest not stepping on other writers' toes by choosing exact or very similar titles to already published articles. We should even avoid very similar topics that are already on the niche sites if we can help it, which I think was Eugene's original concern.

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   2. 81

      Brenda Arledgeposted 23 months agoin reply to this

      Not sure John...but I wish they would do something to make it simpler.
      Because a poem is not an article.

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3. 97

   PaulGoodman67posted 23 months ago

   Eric is absolutely right, in my opinion, about it essentially being the url that can't be duplicated, not the title.
   
   Eugene, on the other hand, seems to be talking about the keywords being chased, as far as I can tell. A rival article just needs to be chasing the same keywords to usurp in the SERPs, the title doesn't necessarily need to be the same.
   
   Of course, there is some overlap when it comes to keywords, url, and the title, but they are all different things.
   
   Essentially, it's a Wild West situation, as far as HP is concerned. Dog eat dog. Only the urls can't be copied and that's for technical reasons, as they function as "addresses" and so have to be distinct.
   
   That said, I suspect HP will maybe sometimes put two articles with very similar keywords in different niches if they're both good and there's scope for it. It's sometimes possible because categorization is often not an exact science.
   
   I also think that there's generally far less chance of an article getting into the niches at all, if the topic/keywords have already been well covered. It's therefore something best avoided.

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   1. 94

      eugbugposted 23 months agoin reply to this

      I have requested that an article be moved from Owlcation to Dengarden because it was in competition with another one and this was done. My article was 8 years old at the time, 2 years ago, but the other article was even older. When I wrote mine, I didn't think of checking whether there was already content on the same topic. More recently a 2 year old article on Skyaboveus has pushed my 10 year old guide about knot tying totally out of search results. I requested that it be moved to Dengarden, but the site curator wouldn't allow it. Just say my articles are pulling in thousands of views because of backlinks. Wouldn't it be unfortunate if their traffic is lost because similar articles are approved? On the other hand maybe newer articles could be of superior quality and potentially be better earners. On the subject of the first article I mentioned on Owlcation, my guide had a huge amount of detail and went into the subject in greater depth with lots more photos and diagrams, but I could never compete with the older guide that was short and sweet and Google always ranked higher, maybe because it gained backlinks to it in the early days when Hubpages ranked higher.

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      1. 97

         PaulGoodman67posted 23 months agoin reply to this

         If there are two articles chasing the same keyword: A and B, where Google is lukewarm towards article A but likes B a lot, wouldn't HP protecting A and banishing B be against its own interests?
         
         My view is that HP is going to seek the most search engine traffic possible.
         
         Perhaps you could explain how your pitching plan would work. You don't really say, but it sounds like you're suggesting that HP should manually assess articles before they've been written, based on the title and keywords it's potentially chasing? If that's the case, I can't see it happening.
         
         Also, I may be wrong, but I don't think that individual links gain more value because of age. I think there's certainly a hierarchy when it comes to the value of links (some websites have more gravitas), and that older articles tend to gather more links, but that's not the same as a link gaining in SEO value over time.

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      2. 81

         Brenda Arledgeposted 23 months agoin reply to this

         Awe...so its just here on the niche sites. 
         I can see as the years pass by that it's going to go down lower in the ranks.
         
         Not much you can do if they won't move it.  You could try to update the piece  or maybe take a drastic move and delete it.
         
         Then rework it...and publish it again...thus maybe putting it on top.
         But then you risk losing your Title.

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4. 94

   eugbugposted 23 months ago

   Anyway as far as I can see, writing about something very similar which would put a limit on the range of possible keywords that could be used in a title is pointless because Google usually doesn't allow more than one result from the same website. They say they may allow more than one and it happens, but often not from my experience. As an example, I wrote two math guides about calculus, but only one ever ranks for the keyword "calculus" on the Owlcation website. Unfortunately I can't use a different keyword because that one is essential.

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   1. 97

      PaulGoodman67posted 23 months agoin reply to this

      Yup, the old days when HubPages might hold three out of the top five Google results are long gone.
      
      It seems like a dream now just thinking about it, but it really did used to happen.

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5. 94

   eugbugposted 23 months ago

   If well known authoritative sites wrote about the network sites, would that give them authority in Googles eyes I wonder? One complaint about Owlcation for instance that I read on another site is that they couldn't find any information about Owlcation, outside Owlcation. How could that be changed?

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   1. 97

      PaulGoodman67posted 23 months agoin reply to this

      I don't believe that writing about an article or site changes much with regard to Google and SEO. They would have to link to it.
      
      If the BBC said here's a good article about calculus and then linked to your article, that would help you (and the site). Without the link, there's no direct SEO effect.
      
      Despite all its sophistication, Google is still pretty mechanistic. It can't understand a recommendation like a human. It measures things like the number of links and their authority, basic data on how readers react with the page.
      
      Finding out information about Owlcation might be something a human likes, but it would have no direct impact on the SERPs.
      
      The SERPs are the big priority because unless you rank, nobody will even see the article.
      
      That's my understanding.

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