Should I republish Guides With Zero Views?

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   eugbugposted 24 months ago

   Some guides that used to get 40 views per day, now only get a few views per week. I've nothing to lose really by republishing

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      greenmindposted 24 months agoin reply to this

      By "republishing," do you mean saving the content, deleting the article, and republishing more or less the same content using a different url? It's a pain and will take a little time, but if there's already a lot of good work in the piece and it's only getting 10 views a week, then it may be worth it. I have a feeling urls can get dinged early on and basically never recover, no matter what you do to the article.

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      1. 94

         eugbugposted 24 months agoin reply to this

         Yes.

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   2. 85

      tsmogposted 24 months agoin reply to this

      For jest, but true too. Being the curious sort back in 2017 I decided I wanted to do a study on entropy. I stopped publishing and updating. I had 35 featured articles then. Eleven were informational and the rest were poems. Many more moons ago I had many more articles. Long story.
      
      Anyway, I now have five featured articles. Two are informational and three are poems that are on LetterPile. One informational article gets around 90% of my views, which is about 42 per month today. All but one of the unfeatured articles are because of traffic and the other is quality from a review.
      
      Both informational articles are on HubPages, not Discover or a niche site. The better of the two informational articles was published in 2015 and last updated in 2017. It has a monthly average of 75 over those six years. So, today, its performance is (Edited: 56%) of the average.
      
      Anyway, food for thought from another scientist of Shannon's theory of entropy with communication. Following is an interesting article about it.
      
      How Shannon Entropy Imposes Fundamental Limits on Communication from QuantaMagazine (Sept 2022)
      https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-clau … -20220906/
      
      Following is the first paragraph . . .
      "If someone tells you a fact you already know, they’ve essentially told you nothing at all. Whereas if they impart a secret, it’s fair to say something has really been communicated."

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   3. 91

      WriterJanisposted 24 months agoin reply to this

      Are any of these articles pieces that you cab submit to the niche sites?

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      1. 94

         eugbugposted 24 months agoin reply to this

         They're all on niche sites, but I presume they'd have to go through the approval process all over again if they're republished.

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            WriterJanisposted 24 months agoin reply to this

            Got it, but I have to say kudos to you for having so many articles on the niche sites.

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   4. 85

      CyclingFitnessposted 24 months agoin reply to this

      I'd look at them on a case by case basis and look at the competition you face online. Can you honestly say that there's nothing more you could add or adjust that would improve them?
      I've had articles take 5 to 10 years to progress to that number in niche areas so sometimes patience will be needed.

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2. 94

   eugbugposted 24 months ago

   I've probably got about 30 evergreen guides like this with views up to maybe 10 per week or less.

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   1. 96

      PaulGoodman67posted 24 months agoin reply to this

      10 views/per week is crap but I'd probably keep it. If an article has less than 10 views per month, has never done well, and there have been multiple edits over several years, I'm inclined to just delete it.
      
      However, if it once did well, then I would veer towards Europhile's view and just keep it in the hope that a site-wide revival will also revive the hub.
      
      As far as deleting and republishing goes, I'm skeptical of the merits generally. If it worked as a tactic, then every man and his dog would be doing it all the time across the internet. It just sounds too good to be true but feel free to try it and report back.

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         eugbugposted 24 months agoin reply to this

         Have you ever written medical/health guides and did they do well? My migraine and eczema ones never took off. I guess there's a lot of competition in that area.

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   Eurofileposted 24 months ago

   I don't think you have anything to lose in keeping these articles. It seems that as long as articles are reviewed and kept evergreen, editors are happy.
   If you end up getting rid of articles like these, I fear I would have to delete most of my portfolio, as most, if not all, fall into this category!

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4. 96

   PaulGoodman67posted 24 months ago

   I think that it can only be decided on a case-by-case basis. So I'm reluctant to give a blanket answer to a general question.
   
   I mean, if it's a guide that deals with keywords worth >1 cent CPM then the earnings are so minimal as to be discountable anyway, even with 40 views/day.
   
   At this moment in time, my feeling is that any energy would be better focused on producing new material rather than reworking old stuff.
   
   Or just putting time in elsewhere.

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5. 94

   eugbugposted 23 months ago

   I'm pretty convinced at this stage that Google is dumping old evergreen guides in favour of new content. Several of my guides that used to get over a thousand views a day are down to maybe 30 views per day. Since they can't be added to, it seems that changing the publication date by republishing is the only option. Unless of course, Google actually blacklists old content by storing a copy somewhere for a comparison check to prevent us trying on this tactic.
   What if content was unpublished temporarily so that Google deindexes and forgets about it, then we republish? Would that work?

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      Nothenposted 23 months agoin reply to this

      In general, as for me, then the best way is how to change the content or add content that will update the publication date and in theory you can even ask Google to re-check the article.

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