Topic Diversity Hurting Hubbers

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   GmaGoldieposted 12 years ago

   I like the new website name with my profile name but I am wondering IF we are hurting ourselves by being so diverse with our topics. 
   
   Wouldn't Google prefer a travel.hubpages.com to an unknown such as me gmagoldie.hubpages.com?  Isn't the topic the real item of interest?  We have the categoris - why isn't that in the website name?  Shouldn't everything focus specifically upon the topic?
   
   Can we possibly divide into topics and conquer Google's panda pixelated image of us.

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      Jason Menayanposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Some people have guessed that as a reason, but I don't see any evidence that that's the case.
      
      The account I publish under (livelonger) has a very wide range of topics under it, from technology to food, and my traffic is doing really well, much better than even pre-Panda.
      
      I would much more strongly recommend writing things that you really, really know and care about, not trying to "write for AdSense," and avoid any keyword-stuffing or the like.

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         MelissaBarrettposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         See how I miss the obvious. I had no idea you were LL.

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         SunSevenposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Ditto.

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   2. 86

      Bubblegum Senpaiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      The way I've worked with that is I try writing on niche's that I know about. Don't get me wrong, I do love anime and bubblegum music, and that's part of what makes it so much fun to write, but I don't over-diversify myself. I do the odd article on other things, but I find if I try to be an expert on everything than the quality of my hubs goes down.
      
      A jack of all trades is a master of none, I guess. Anyhow, that keeps most of my hubs in the same few topics.

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   3. 77

      Greekgeekposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I've got articles on Hubpage-like sites written before I knew SEO. Their URLs are utterly useless for SEO purposes. However, two get 800-1000 hits a week each, and their pagerank is 3-5 (with the PR5 getting less traffic, showing how little PR matters these days, but anyway). They get by with no keywords whatsoever in their URLs.
      
      Having a domain name that doesn't help SEO is the same thing: you're failing to fully exploit one factor that might give your article a relevance boost, but there's so many others -- page title, headers, link text, image file names, authorship, backlinks, etc -- that also contribute.
      
      Here's another way to look at it. Before the switch to author domains, all pages on Hubpages were treated as equally likely to be well-written or poorly-written. They were all in the same User Generated Content bucket. Panda surveyed the bucket's collective contents, said "meh" and spat on them.
      
      Now, each author gets a personal bucket. Okay, your pages are not grouped by niche, so you don't get the "relevance" boost,  but at the least you may avoid drek-by-association penalties and, hopefully, get a small "author who writes actual content" boost.
      
      Of course, having a niche-relevant word in the domain is even better. But not having one won't hurt. It just fails to take advantage of that particular ranking factor, just as it failed to do so when the url was www.hubpages.com.

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   4. 84

      Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      As Greekgeek says, it's always good to have your keywords in your domain name, but it's not absolutely critical. It's the content that matters.
      
      I also have a diverse range of topics and my traffic is doing OK. 
      
      However, I have to admit I wonder if I'd be doing even better if my content was more focussed.  After all, if you start a new website or blog, all the best advice says you need to pick a niche and stick to it.  Our sub-domains are each our own little website, so it seems only logical the same advice would apply.

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2. 80

   GmaGoldieposted 12 years ago

   Jason,
   
   Very wise advise - thank you!  I am just frustrated - I thought I would be building and the traffic is slower - very sad.  Perhaps God is saying to close this door.

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      SuperheroSalesposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Don't give up, Gma.  The big think I've learned in life is that things almost never go as expected.  If you can get back to writing for the sake of writing and stop worrying about the results for a short while my guess is that, before you know it, you will begin to see the results you wanted again.
      
      P.S. I write on a diverse line of topics and it has actually helped my Hub results remain fairly stable (or even better) than usual.  While certain topics I write on do tank as a group, many others will flourish at the same time- leaving me ahead in the long run.

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      shoganposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Goldie, there are lots of things I'm unsure of, but I feel confident that God and Google aren't on speaking terms.

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      1. 80

         GmaGoldieposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         That should be the quote of the month!  Love it! 
         
         "Confident that God and Google aren't on speaking terms!" 
         
         Thank you very much!

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3. 78

   A Little TRUTHposted 12 years ago

   I had a similar thought with the domain change. If you're thinking on a commercial note, why not open a new HubPages account with the keyword phrase you want to rank for as your hubber name and have at it. I think it might be best to put dashes between the words in the hubber name/ keyword phrase in the URL so that search engines can recognize the words easier.

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4. 72

   relacheposted 12 years ago

   I have an obscure user name, and a diverse bunch of topics, and none of that seems to be hurting my traffic in the slightest.

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      Lisa HWposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      relache, my experience has been similar.  Pretty much nobody would be searching for my author name, but the subdomain switch and whatever has/hasn't gone with it has resulted in higher across-the-board traffic for me.

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5. 49

   mywriteupposted 12 years ago

   i second that  \m/ \m/

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