Has Anyone Written Articles That Got Lots of Traffic?

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   eugbugposted 17 months ago

   It used to happen, but in the last couple of years have you written any articles that generated lots of daily views? Only one of the articles I've written in the last 3 years gets about 30 views per day. The others get maybe around 4 daily views.

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      DrMark1961posted 17 months agoin reply to this

      Yes, last month.

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         eugbugposted 17 months agoin reply to this

         Was that organic traffic and how quickly did it increase? Was there an initial delay before it started ramping up?

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            DrMark1961posted 17 months agoin reply to this

            It started with newsbreakapp, Pethelpful, but then was picked up by google android and is on the first page for several search terms on Google. It started the second day, has come down a little but still is ranking number 2 for me.

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               BigBrainsposted 17 months agoin reply to this

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                  theraggededgeposted 17 months agoin reply to this

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                     PaulGoodman67posted 17 months agoin reply to this

                     Haha! Here's the comment from my usual account...
                     
                     The way I see it:
                     
                     Google treats the niches as if they're independent websites. Dr. Mark writes exclusively for PetHelpful. PetHelpful is doing way better than sites like Dengarden and Owlcation.
                     
                     This is borne out by my own experience, as well as info from traffic stats sites like SEM Rush.
                     
                     That's not to say that Dr Mark's articles aren't well written, they are, but niches are performing differently and this context always has to be borne in mind.

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                        eugbugposted 17 months agoin reply to this

                        If newspapers or other entities started writing about the sites, would that give them notoriety and backlink juice for improving ranking? Maybe some articles could be commissioned? Wikipedia articles would be nice, but notoriety is one of the basic requirements necessary for allowing a Wikipedia page to be created about something. A list of network sites isn't included on the Hubpages Wikipedia entry. Would it be bad to add one? There are few references to the sites. On one forum I've seen, someone asks does anyone know anything about Owlcation. Someone else says they haven't heard about it or something to that effect. I've noticed Google News picking up a couple of my guides on a couple of occasions. I wonder what that's about?

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                           Jan Stepanposted 17 months agoin reply to this

                           A list of network sites on Wikipedia could maybe work to our benefit. I mean, what's there to lose, right? Every solid idea is a good idea at this point and time.

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                              eugbugposted 17 months agoin reply to this

                              It could go into a table with a description column for each site. I'm not sure whether Wikipedia moderators would allow links to the sites though and would see them as promotional.

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                                 Jan Stepanposted 17 months agoin reply to this

                                 Are you willing to try? I think it could work. But I have no experience in adding content on Wikipedia, so I don't know the consequences if Wikipedia doesn't like what they see.

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                                    eugbugposted 17 months agoin reply to this

                                    I've only ever added text or corrected it and some references on other pages. I would have to figure out how to do it.

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                                 HubPagesposted 17 months agoin reply to this

                                 What a great idea! We've updated the Wiki for the site, but we did not add links to the individual sites. Thanks, Jan and Eugene!

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                                    eugbugposted 17 months agoin reply to this

                                    Good! It'll save me having to do it
                                    There's probably also a way of redirecting searches to the Hubpages Wikipedia page if someone searches for any of the network sites.
                                    
                                    Edit: There's details on how to do it here here.
                                    
                                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirect

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                        DrMark1961posted 17 months agoin reply to this

                        I did want to point out I have over 700 articles and about a third of them get 0 traffIic per day, or just a little. Even for the other sites, I think it is important that we all publish a lot more than we used to. The article I was talking about that did so well last month was not much different than the articles that get no views at all.
                        I do not know if that is a function of the internet as it is today, with a lot of stuff barely being seen, or something to do with Google downgrading the niche sites like Dengarden and Owlcation. All I can say for sure at this point, at least based on my own results, is that if you publish more you have more potential views.

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                           Kenna McHughposted 17 months agoin reply to this

                           I've noticed that too. Now, I am writing more articles. But they are not coming out fast enough!! My clients come first.

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               Jan Stepanposted 17 months agoin reply to this

               Newsbreakapp is a perfect place to be. Some of my articles got featured there and did help me out a bit with numbers, although they went down with time.

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                  Natalie Frankposted 17 months agoin reply to this

                  You republished on NB?

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               Natalie Frankposted 17 months agoin reply to this

               What do you mean it started with newbreakapp? It was picked up by newsbreak?

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                  DrMark1961posted 17 months agoin reply to this

                  I do not think you can publish on that site or submit to there but sometimes they will select an article to feature.

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                     PaulGoodman67posted 17 months agoin reply to this

                     I knew people at Medium who also wrote for Newsbreak. They specialize in local stories.
                     
                     Apparently, Newsbreak were very generous to their writers to start with but changed their system and nowadays it's difficult to earn much there.
                     
                     I've never written for them but I've had links to HP articles posted there that have generated lots of extra views for a time.

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      Abby Slutskyposted 17 months agoin reply to this

      Not recently.

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      Solarasposted 17 months agoin reply to this

      For the last three years here are the daily views of the articles published during those years. I don't know if they are good or bad, but I am happy if they are getting 40+ views daily.
      
      2022: 25, 65
      2021: 58, 6, 11, 3, 44, 96
      2020: 44, 48, 39, 70, 131
      
      Most of mine had a slow start after the first week of transfer to PH.  After one year, they leveled out, until maybe 3-4 months ago, and traffic to my articles doubled.  So it was around half this 6 months ago.

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   FatFreddysCatposted 17 months ago

   That wouldn't help. Nobody reads newspapers anymore.
   
   (Source: former newspaper employee of 25+ years, ending in 2022. I had a front row seat to watch the industry's complete collapse in real time,)
   
   In answer to the original question: I had one article blow up huge around this time last year because Google picked it up and featured it on its mobile home page for a couple of days. Once that bump wore off, its views returned to their normal semi-comatose levels.
   
   For the most part, if one of my articles gets more than 100 views within its  first 30 days, I'm doin' a happy dance. But then, as I'm so fond of saying, I like to keep my expectations low. Therefore I'm rarely disappointed.
   
   I seem to be having a better than average month so far though... (knocks wood)

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   ravirajan01posted 17 months ago

   One of my articles in Owlcation generated thousands of views in March this year.It was picked by MSN .That might be the reason.It is still on the 3rd ranking of Google.

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   CYong74posted 17 months ago

   All of my current earners were written in the past 4 years.
   
   Last year, I wrote 9 and these get a few hundred views in total daily. So I think it still helps to write new material.

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   Shesabutterflyposted 17 months ago

   The last article I wrote was 4 years ago. This year during its peak season I had one day almost hitting 1k. It did not perform as well as last year, but I'm still happy with the views all things considered. The peak season is very short, but I did have a few weeks were it was consistantly getting over 100-200 views. Currently it is sitting around 20-30, but I doubt the content is typically searched outside of the holiday season. A quick analytics review shows this year is not performing as well as last year, but it is up a bit from 2020/2021.
   
   This article is actually the one on Owlcation that staff asked to edit. I do not know how you determine rank, but when I use incognito or startpage my article appears on the first or second page of Google (hard to tell when scrolling). Depending on the terms used, the position changes quite a bit, but I can typically find it towards the top/middle. I do think there are very few key words that actually bring it up though, which could be problematic. I was thinking of trying to come up with a better title after some keyword research, but have not had time to work on that yet.
   
   Most of the traffic comes from organic Google or other search engines, per HP stats. I'm fairly happy with the traffic. It ranks as my 6th highest ever view wise. I wish the peak season was a bit longer, but I do get good traffic during the holiday that pertains to the content.

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      eugbugposted 17 months agoin reply to this

      I have the same issue. Articles still rank high for the title or excerpts from them, but traffic is low. The problem is that the articles probably have lost ranking for related keywords. Another thing I've noticed is that Google now seems to list articles whose titles are more closely related to the search term whereas before, they'd show articles  that are vaguely related, Possibly that's something to do with H2 titles in articles. Once upon a time, I used to use H2 titles that were a variation of the articles' titles, but editors changed those.

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   eugbugposted 17 months ago

   I see now they've removed that table from Wikipedia and reverted it to the previous version. User "Kuru" gives the reason as "rmv promotional addition; no need for a site index". What a spoilsport!

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      Jan Stepanposted 17 months agoin reply to this

      That's a damn shame. And a weird reason to give by the user. HubPages niche sites should be lined up on Wikipedia since they're essential to HubPages and their purpose.

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         Fiction Tellerposted 17 months agoin reply to this

         Not just that, but disclosure of the various arms of a private interest is part of transparency. Weird.
         
         They said "site index"? I wonder if they misunderstood, as the niche sites are different sites - not different subdomains on one site.

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         eugbugposted 17 months agoin reply to this

         So I asked them to explained themselves. Some of these moderators are such self-righteous mini-Hitlers.

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            Jan Stepanposted 17 months agoin reply to this

            That's an accurate description, indeed.

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   FatFreddysCatposted 17 months ago

   I've noticed a similar phenomenon. I'm not sure what's changed in the past few months, but lately when I post a new article, it racks up a pretty decent number of views in its first several weeks -- more than I'm used to (not that I'm complaining!), before eventually leveling off. So now I'm on a bit of a writing binge, trying to have a few articles "in the chamber" and ready to go whenever my current piece shows signs of slacking off...

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      PaulGoodman67posted 17 months agoin reply to this

      Yes, I experienced that phenomenon too.
      
      Traditonally, an article would start out with low views and slowly build traffic over the months.
      
      However, in recent times, I was posting stuff that would get good views for a while before declining to mediocre or poor levels.
      
      I eventually got weary of posting new material all the time.

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         FatFreddysCatposted 17 months agoin reply to this

         I was coming off a two-month hiatus where I didn't write anything new, and then the first article I posted after that blew up to almost 1000 views right off the bat. I was like "Daaaaamn! I must be doing something right!" so now I keep chasing that dragon hoping for a repeat.

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   eugbugposted 17 months ago

   This was the conversation:
   
   
   Explanation of Removal of Site Listing From the Hubpages Page
   
   Can you explain why you consider this a "promotional addition"? The table simply listed the sites with an explanation. There were no hyperlinks to the sites. Google doesn't have any references to these sites and Wikipedia fails also because it lacks any information about them. Your removal of the table is analogous to removing a discography from an artist's Wikipedia page. Eugbug (talk) 10:18, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
   
       It wasn't for a lack of trying; the editor attemted to spam 20+ blacklisted links, and originally just did a cut&paste of the adcopy from the site. The edit removed sourced content and added unsourced puffery like "The platform celebrates the 'everyday expert' and seeks to create a community where authors and readers can discover and create original, in-depth, useful, media-rich pages on topics they are passionate about" and "HubPages employs a full-time team of editors and moderators who work with authors to make the content on the HubPages Network the best it can be." Please let me know if you have any other questions. Sam Kuru (talk) 18:43, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

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   PaulGoodman67posted 17 months ago

   Massive turbulence in the Google SERPs over the weekend. I'm not seeing much change with my HP accounts, though, so far.

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      eugbugposted 17 months agoin reply to this

      Neither am I. Maybe it's because things have got so bad that they can't do anything worse to us?

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         PaulGoodman67posted 17 months agoin reply to this

         These things can take some time to roll out, so it's early days, but yes, it's difficult to feel any sense of optimism.
         
         I've previously believed the site has hit bottom several times only for things to get even worse.

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    eugbugposted 17 months ago

    All the network sites have been added to the Wikipedia blacklist. I wonder does that mean that no one can cite articles from them? One of my articles has been cited on a Wikiversity site.

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       Jan Stepanposted 17 months agoin reply to this

       Gosh, that's exactly what we didn't need.

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       Kenna McHughposted 17 months agoin reply to this

       Do they still have blacklists?

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    Kain 360posted 17 months ago

    I once had an article reach 5000 views daily (#1 on Google) back in 2011 on another account. It eventually reached 500,000+ views. Probably one of my favorite moments in my life cause I basically went kinda viral.
    
    I had other articles get 500+ but not too many. It's kinda of upsetting cause sometimes I put effort into writing a dozen or so articles in a series and they never take off. But some of my hubs have been getting views for years, but there are ups and downs.
    
    While I am grateful for some of the success I've had, it's kinda demoralizing when your level of success is no where near it used to be. And my health has been pretty bad lately with Lyme Disease, anxiety, and bell's palsy. I wish I knew of more stable writing / work from home career(s).

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