What do you do with old hubs with no traffic?

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Paul Edmondsonposted 13 years ago
I've been updating and removing hubs. I haven't settled on a plan for good hubs that don't get traffic. Curious what others do. My top 40 hubs are 85% of traffic. I culled the heard and have been focused on my best hubs.

Once I'm through them I'll come up with a plan for the rest.
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I have many hubs that get little traffic, but I consider them to be 'good'. Maybe I need to figure out why they aren't searched for & make changes eg title, keywords etc?
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  SimeyCposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  What I have done so far is to revise them, add some fresh content where applicable and then add some more relevant tags and keywords. Really bad hubs, or hubs that will never get traffic I simply delete.
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  Jerrico Usherposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I've noticed a lot of that too- often I think the problem is exposure so what I've experimented with is interlinking by creating "series" from those hubs.
  
  Kind of like groups but with more exposure i.e. adding interlinking in the copy with a distinct link to the other hub.
  
  Another tactic I've tried and found boosts them is if you have two well written hubs that don't get traffic combine them into one longer hub. Google seems to like the longer hubs in my experience.
  
  Combining two hubs has shows some promise i.e. two hubs simular topics or same topics 350 words each into a 650 word hub. You can also add words to bring your pre-1k word hubs up to 1k and see how that works.
  
  In a way this creates a mini-site within hubpages itself. If you have similar hubs this works out great.
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  Barbara Kayposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I changed the titles of a few and started getting traffic. A couple I deleted and I still need to delete a couple more that were just poor topics.
  
  I've notice a few hubs that got little traffic aged and now are getting good traffic. Don't be hasty about deleting. Give them some time to age.
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  lobobrandonposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Barbara I agree with you, my hubs have aged just over a month and the amount of google traffic is increasing without any efforts from my side - no backlinks no social bookmarks not even on my own facebook acc.
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  Delivererposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I tell my employees to click over the ads with sockpuppet accounts. They have plenty here. They get 1 or 2 cents per click I guess. I have plants to improve the pay structure this Christmas.
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  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Did you just say what I think you said?
  
  Am I misreading or are you saying that your employees click ads in your sockpuppet accounts??
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  kimberlyslyricsposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  no you read right, I just threw up in my mouth a little, you?
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  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Yes.
  
  I would hope HP would track that down and ban everyone of their accounts.
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  kimberlyslyricsposted 13 years agoin reply to this
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  looks like yet another troll
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  kimberlyslyricsposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Hi Paul, glad to see this thread just trying to figure the exact same thing out this morning.
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  FatFreddysCatposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I just leave'em up. Who knows, years from now someone might be Googling one of the long forgotten bands or movies I've reviewed and bada-BING! I get a penny!
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  SomewayOuttaHereposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  ...luv the name "FatFreddysCat"....
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  lobobrandonposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  @ FatFreedy - Haha I like the bada - BING!
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  lobobrandonposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Paul, I've just got 14 hubs. But I keep improvising on them none know this as I don't do it publicly Today was the biggest earnings I ever received as well as the highest CPM I've ever seen in my life.
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  Dave Mathewsposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  If your Hub stats are important, one of thos stats is the number of hubs written. Therefore I'd keep them. If your audience your readers has changed, from those you had a few months or so ago, you might want to try sending your hubs out again for newer readers to check out.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Having a lot of well performing hubs will certainly help protect you against Panda.
  
  Having a great cloud of dross in your account is asking for trouble.
  
  Plenty of people with hundreds of hubs got hit by Panda. Plenty of big sites went down. A small percentage of good pages won't save you.
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  Seth Punisherposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Hey Paul! _Just joined your website dude! Lovely, you have a colorful and never monotonous web here! Kool.
  
  Discipline is a thing though *sigh* my Squidoo website is fool of sockpuppets and spammers and trolls; you have them none! Clean guy!
  
  I have even one employee who often plays as a sockpuppet *sigh*. He never gets caught *sigh*
  
  Just wrote my first hub. Hope will see if I win a hubnugget. Missed your hubpatron though, next time I will definitely try. Promise hey! I am almost bankrupt, most cash went to charity. What? Yeah, I just listen to Christ!
  
  Happy Christmas in advance.
  
  Dearly yours,
  
  Seth Godin, founder and CEO of Squidoo
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  waynetposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  LOLOLOLOLOL
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  leroy64posted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Read through this forum. I'm confused by the different approaches. I have combined a few short poems into a collection of poems; but, the hubs that are getting google view surprise me. I am waiting for a year to go by so I can see how performance works seasonally.
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  LiamBeanposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I find that some of them are seasonal. For example painting outdoors or hubs about the flu virus. Those I leave regardless of traffic. If they are technology hubs, particularly hubs about older computer systems, specifically Apple, I leave those as well. Apple products sell well on eBay no matter how old.
  
  Sometimes I'll delete a hub that has been better written by another hubber. Or if the hub is a discussion that is so old it is no longer relevant, but that's rare.
  
  More often than not I'll update a hub as conditions change. I'd rather they be current than not there.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Where Panda is concerned, I reckon 'not there' is better if an update doesn't work.
  
  I have a feeling Paul is wondering if the ratio of very low traffic hubs to high traffic hubs is important. I personally think it is more to do with reader reactions (poor user metrics) than traffic. But who knows?
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  WookieWonderfulsposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  this is possibly the longest thread iv seen in a little minute. i keep mine, only as a record of what iv written and so i can continue to develop. ill look back in years thinking 'what the hell was i thinking?' hahaha
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  cmoneyspinner1tfposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I am not removing my HUBs because of lack of traffic. I think the content is what is referred to as "evergreen". A tip I followed from another HUBBER was to share some of your HUBs via the YAHOO Contributor Network. YCN lets you republish your stuff there. Although I have not as yet republished any HUBs, I did take my old stuff at Suite101.com and put it there.
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  TIMETRAVELER2posted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Share like that and Google will penalize you for posting duplicate content. It is bad idea.
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  cmoneyspinner1tfposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Share like that? I find your response interesting. Interesting because I often read that response by others. So are you saying Google will penalize if I share my HUBs like that but not if I share my Suite101 articles like that?
  
  I hear a lot of people say Google will “penalize” but what does that mean?
  Does Google send you a “Warning! Warning! Danger Will Robinson message or what?”
  What do they do? Bury your links so they don't show up in the search results? What??
  
  I mean because first of all Google may be the BEST search engine on the planet, but they're not the ONLY search engine. So say somebody uses Bing or YAHOO and searches for my content and finds it at different sites and it's still my stuff – What's the big whoop?
  
  So can you or somebody clarify this what this duplicate content nonsense is about? Because to me it's silly! But I'm coming late to the table, so what do I know.
  
  I mean if I make a dress for my daughter to wear. Right? Then I turn around and make the same dress for all the girls in the neighborhood and they all wear it. What's it to anybody else if I took my stuff and did it over again and again and again and again?!!
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, that's exactly what Google will do.
  
  The "big whoop" is because the vast majority of people on this planet use Google. If the only search engine sending you traffic is Bing or Yahoo, you're not going to get much traffic.
  
  Because lots of girls wearing dresses doesn't annoy anyone. But what if a reader is looking for information and wants to consult several sources? They look on Google and find an article. Great. Then they go to the next result to see what else they can find out - what? it's the same article! Let's try the next result - same darn thing again! Who is this stupid writer, obviously they don't know much if the best they can do is churn out the same old thing again and again and again...
  
  That's why Google doesn't want to serve up the same article more than once.
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  cmoneyspinner1tfposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Mam. I take your point. I'm not directing any anger or frustration at you. OK?
  
  But consider this. This is how I'm thinking. Google is a search engine. It's a computer program. Not a human being. Computer programs are supposed to help human beings. Not hinder them.
  
  A computer programmer should be able to write a program to avoid the “scenario” you just described from happening without penalizing a person who the right to share their own information as many times as they want to!
  
  So when I hear a term like penalize, to me that goes along with doing something WRONG!
  
  It's my stuff and it's not wrong for me to publish with whatever site wants to publish it – hard copy, written, or online, digital or whatever!
  
  Google search engine is a computer program written by software experts. They can't write a program to work around displaying the duplicate results?! Why not write a program that shows: TOP results displayed and another button that says something like – Click to view similar by different author or say something like that!
  
  Wouldn't that fix the problem serving and reserving the same thing?
  
  - All that brew ha ha about “Google Authorship” which I don't bother with because it's proved to be a nuisance to me. Not everybody is on Google Plus. Should they be penalized for that? But that's a side issue. Don't want to get off topic.
  
  You follow my thought process thus far?
  
  I'm saying:
  Don't rewrite the program (or revise the algorithm or whatever they do) that should help everybody – the person SEEKING and the person who wants to be FOUND - to help the person searching while penalizing the honest worker AS IF they're doing they're something wrong with their own work!!!
  
  The folks who work at Google are friggin' geniuses.
  They should try to think like ordinary people who aren't!
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  I didn't think you were.
  
  Google is already set up to show similar articles. What we were talking about is writing the same article in multiple places. As far as the searcher is concerned, it's useless and annoying to have the exact same article listed several times - and it's the searcher who is Google's customer.
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  cmoneyspinner1tfposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  OK. I get you and I'm done.
  
  I'm just an ant moving right along in a world of giants. I'm a customer as well a vendor. I'll just learn how to work with the tools I'm given! What I try to do is share links and redirect the traffic to the HUBs.
  
  So my bottom line is: Better than an ant than a pawn. (O.o)
  (Believe me those two thoughts connect in my head.)
  
  It was nice talking to you, Marisa!
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  tsmogposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  As some who know me from articles during the ZzZ days I use the csv files to build an Excel worksheet to predict a hub performance, discover its trend over 7-Days, 30-Days, and Ever (average per month) and then use those for a predictability formula (probability for 7 - 30 - ever multiplied together). I factor the score, the probabilities, the trend, and the predictability together to get an index number. It is relational only to my personal portfolio.
  
  The score would be important in that formula offering balance with an overall HP view of article position. The trend offers a view of most recent to history to overall as a ratio. That indicates if it is being read with a when. If it use to be read and its average per month was high vs. recent month (6:1) activity is very low then I would ponder why. The obvious is the trend to read is not there in the example. The predictability quotient offers most likely to perform well based on all trends factored together. Or, the best of the best and the worst of the worse.
  
  Once I created the spreadsheet model using copy-past the same-same formulas I only had to download the csv file and copy-paste the data into a new worksheet from the Master worksheet. Maybe 5 minutes to 10 minutes. Then I could use sort and filter. I do this monthly, even though I started over deleting my hubs and now have about twenty. But, I have those studies for well over 100 hubs for reintroducing them in the future renewed.
  
  If I am ambitious I assign my group names to the individual hubs manually. then I sum the csv data for those groups and use the same master formula so I can define which group is performing how. I then can flip a coin or view the data to decide. I am proactive with "build on your strengths." Discovering those is primary after a long enough period of developing data, recording how articles were marketed for effect, and which articles are acting as anchors.
  
  Key factors are firstly documenting marketing efforts for individual hubs. I market my portfolio page more than my individual hubs. I feel that offers more potential foe any article to be read. Remember I only market through FB, Twitter, and sometimes Pinterest primarily my whole HP career. Keeping records is easily done with Excel or even a spiral notebook to discover performance trends, changes in overall score, differences in predictability, and an infrastructure index number for internal comparisons.
  
  I did the study over 18 moths or so. The market place was primarily HP and the social media marketing I did. The net result would be the same with greater SEO marketing. Of least one discovers . . . which ones are the strengths and surprisingly some perform better with the index number than the score when trends, probability, and predictability as a comparison. That is when I decide editing of hub content, context, and focus is all that may be required to raise the score and enhance overall performance in the next months.
  
  Next, come Google Analytics and where is that Google Market . . . a different story.
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LindaSmith1posted 13 years ago
I removed all but one of my hubs. I put 19 of them on another site, beginning Nov 27 and earned over 5 bucks just for posting them which is more than 27 hubs earned since first post from Aug to November. Some I am saving for my sites, or I may post them elsewhere, depending on what I decide after revamping my blogs and websites. I may post them on Another site where I can use Amazon.
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thooghunposted 13 years ago
I have started to delete hubs without hope very cautiously.

No visible impact on the authority or views of my sub domain so far (if anything, the reverse).

I'm guessing that deleting dead, but qualitative hubs is fluff, and that only deleting hubs that trigger adsense "tripwire" words or no-nos has a positive effect on subdomain authority.
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prairieprincessposted 13 years ago
Some ideas: write some related hubs, and link to those. Bookmark them in different places than you already have. Write an article on your blog / website / other article place that relates, and link.

Add some different graphics or videos, and re-share. Add in some long-tail keywords based on your search analytics.
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  rocheljposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I like the suggestions of prairieprincess.
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thejeffriestubeposted 13 years ago
I often find if a Hub isn't performing, there is usually a reason, other than no interest. I find spelling and grammatical mistakes in them, or just wierd flow and odd language. I try to doublecheck all my work before I post it, but well, sometimes things slip through. I usually makes changes until I'm happy with it again, post some links and ping it, and see where it goes. A second shot at traffic is better than just removing it, I think.
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prairieprincessposted 13 years ago
Thank you, Roch! Another idea that I use sometimes is to change up the groups, so that your unlooked for hub is placed beside a used hub. As well, place an RSS feed with a related tag, in your newer hubs, that will pick up the older hub (make sure it's related, of course.)
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Wesman Todd Shawposted 13 years ago
I made two or three into redgage pieces just so I could see what they would do somewhere else.
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Pcunixposted 13 years ago
Umm.. You are asking us??

Shouldn't you be telling us?
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  yes, that did cross my mind
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  David 470posted 13 years agoin reply to this
  LOL me too!
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  especially since HP have access to all the data from everyone's accounts
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Will Apseposted 13 years ago
Google has said that even relatively small amounts of poor content can get a site (or subdomain. by extension) Pandalized.

So poor stuff isn't worth keeping, full stop.

If I have a page with low views but good user metrics, I keep it anyway. So I am gambling that Google is using user metrics in some way to decide what constitutes thin and shallow content.
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I take issue that crapola can rank high with google, but good articles can stay buried. 'Poor' in terms of SEO rankings is not the same as 'poor' writing.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I think you are confusing the issues. Plenty of well written, content rich pages will only ever have a trickle of visitors for a variety of reasons:
  
  Very few people are interested in the subject (let's say it is a critique of an obscure 17th Century philosopher).
  
  Plenty of people are interested but the page is poorly titled/optimized and search engines don't know what to do with it
  
  As good as the page is, there are even better pages around.
  
  There are pages as good which are located on more authoritative sites.
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I'd say my hubs with little traffic are mainly the first reason, and a little of the second. But to get rid of these pages, does that mean my frequently visited pages will do even better? Anything to back this up?
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  Marisa Wrightposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  You see, most of the time we agree, Will.
  
  If the Hub isn't getting traffic because it's badly written, or very short, I'll bin it. I wrote several Hubs for contests where I wrote on subjects I didn't really know well - those were just a consolidation of research, not original enough, so they're gone.
  
  Otherwise if I think I did a good job on a Hub, I delete it ONLY if it becomes unFeatured. Google doesn't like little websites, so I don't want my sub-domain to fall below 100 Hubs.
  
  What do I do with deleted Hubs? If they're relevant, I'll use them on my blogs. If not, I'll split them up and post them on Bubblews.
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  cmoneyspinner1tfposted 10 years agoin reply to this
  Split the HUBs up and post on Bubblews sounds like a good idea.
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Pcunixposted 13 years ago
For me, killing one of my hubs is like killing a pet. There may be times that it needs to be done, but it is not something I do lightly.

A long time ago I wrote a bit about being a peacock (not here). Biologists say that a peacocks feathers are detrimental to them, so the display is actually a form of genetic bragging: "Look, I am strong enough to afford all this!"

I feel "strong enough" to be able to carry some poorly performing hubs. I'll do what I can to help them improve, but if they remain poor, I will carry them. The only ones I would ever kill are ones that I do not like myself and cannot fix up enough to at least meet my standards. I've done that now and then (more so at my main site than here), but not often.

That's how I feel about it.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  But do you check the view times?
  
  If the view times are very low it means that it is not just a question of very few people being interested or high competition for the keywords. It means somehow you failed to meet readers expectations.
  
  Failing to meet readers expectations can be a threat to your entire sub domain.
  
  For example, Chrome users have the option of blocking a site if they flash back to search in ten or fifteen seconds. That data is collected by Google. If it is not already being used by Google it might be in the future.
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  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I do check view times. But if I like it, it stays.
  
  I have enough money. I can afford to carry my weaklings.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  You do understand that your whole site gets hit by Panda for a small amount of poor content?
  
  So that means your whole subdomain plunges if a fraction of it is judged to be poor.
  
  As long as you understand that, that is fine.
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  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I understand. I'm happy with what Google sends me. It can't be that bad and my traffic is climbing sharply, not plunging.
  
  As I said, it would be like killing pets. I don't write with money in mind. I write because I have something to say. If it makes money, fine. If not, see my previous comment.
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  Jean Bakulaposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I also have some hubs that I think are good, but don't get attention. I have tried changing titles and revising them, but some of them just get passed over. I am going to slowly take off a few that always fall below 75. Some people say that they put the ones they take off here on their blogs. I can do that if the hub is Metaphysical in nature, as my blog is only Metaphysical stuff, but most of those do well here. My book reviews only do well if many people liked the book, then they want to discuss it. But they are my lowest scoring hubs if people didn't like or read the book. Publishers spend a lot of money for advertising the few books they publish, so much that I can't compete, so think I may drop doing book reviews. I hate to, because I read so much and it's so easy then to just write my opinion of the book. It appears I need a new niche! I also feel like it's chopping off a body part to "retire" a hub.
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  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I suppose you could always create another HP account - our "dregs" account, so to speak.
  
  That would be an interesting way to manage things you want to keep regardless of their popularity. HP could even make it easier to swap things between them if they saw the idea as useful.
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I have a few bwtn 71 & 75. Is the hubscore a good indicator of what should go? Some of my pages with less traffic have higher hubscores
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  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I doubt they are going to disclose the secret sauce of hubscores, so I don't think this line of enquiry will be fruitful :-)
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I unpublished two hubs on 70 yesterday, and today they say 75 (and now another hub says 70) - how bizarre. No rhyme or reason.
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  Debby Bruckposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  You have such a unique approach to answering this question. Something tells me you carry a lot in life, forgiving many, treating everyone kindly, looking on the bright side and all around positive perspective.
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Randy Godwinposted 13 years ago
Wow! I would have to delete all of mine if low traffic was any indication of quality!
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  skyfireposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Seriously, take Googles or any SEOs advice with a pinch of salt. People writing for ZDnet, About and Gigaom are not good writers, they're just part of a brand and that's why this doesn't apply to them. You can spot low quality, less than 300 word snippet on their sites all the time.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Well, I suppose the rest of us are not protected by a brand. So maybe we should take Google's guidelines seriously.
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  skyfireposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Sure, go ahead, take it seriously.
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LindaSmith1posted 13 years ago
I found these two links about Google from their webmaster

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … ality.html

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/ … wer=132575

They have some decent information depending on what you are looking for.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Thanks for those links.
  
  This is one slightly scary question that Google suggests we ask ourselves.
  
  'Are the topics (on a site) driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?'
  
  Well...
  
  This is one reason why it is worth writing those pages which will never get many views but you enjoy doing- but only if the few visitors you get hang around and read to the end.
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  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Well?
  
  I've always been able to answer that question as Google apparently wants it answered.
  
  That didn't stop Panda from killing me :-)
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LindaSmith1posted 13 years ago
The one thing I did find was that content needs to apply to the site. So, if somebody has a site for health products, they don't want to add poetry to it.

But, we have a hub here, which is still here, a DIY to sell drugs. I am sure that will get a lot of traffic even though it violates TOS for here, for google, the whole 9 yards. I wonder what PANDA would have to say about that one.
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ladyhowto4uposted 13 years ago
I usually change the title, add new key words, perform a "mini-rewrite", or add new content, pictures, visuals, you-tube videos, link to my other hubs, re-twit, or resend them out to my traffic sources, etc. I also try to spin some of my hubs as much as possible to whatever is happening that is garnering attention in the media. After all the work put in creating, proofreading and publishing hubs, I feel like I would do myself a disservice by deleting any of my hubs. So for now anyway, I plan to see the number of my hubs grow, tweak them once in awhile and continue to find ways to boost or increase the traffic to my hubs.

--ladyhowto4u
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  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Good point about the work put in. In that respect, these things are more like my children than pets!
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tlpoagueposted 13 years ago
I am one of those that tries to revamp my hub if it is doing poorly. If after some time they are still doing poorly, I will unpublish them until I can fix them to a better standard. I am still in the learning process of traffic, linking, and writing what people are interested in.
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  Jean Bakulaposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I am still learning pretty much too. I am going to try Infobarrel, and see if I can write shorter hubs there, try to get a more internet savvy kind of writing going. The hubs I put on HP are often long and the product of something I've studied hard or at least read a book so I could learn something writing it. I have to enjoy what I am writing about. I am also getting disgusted with all the rule changes. But I like the ease of writing on HP, and the community feel.
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relacheposted 13 years ago
When you say no traffic do you really mean zero views, as in the Hub just stopped receiving traffic one day and has just gone forward with none?

If that's the case, I have no Hubs that get zero traffic. On http://www.hubpages.com/stats the lowest stat quoted is for Hubs with more than 10 views per month. I've only got 5% of my Hubs that fall below that and even those get some views every month.
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  only 1 of my hubs gets less than 10 views per month. I've unpublished it - doubt it would make much difference though
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STAFF
Paul Edmondsonposted 13 years ago

This is a histogram that shows the number of each hubs in the bar graph. The X axis shows the pageview range. So, 35 hubs that don't get any traffic in the last 30 days, and 40 that get over 419 pageviews a month. The top ten drives the majority of my traffic and the top 40 is about 85%.

I've also made Hubs just for the community in the past or newsy type stuff with a short shelf life. I'm studying up on the impact of this type of content on a site. Thanks for the thoughts.
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  are you going to unpublish the ones that get no traffic & let us know what happens?
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LindaSmith1posted 13 years ago
Jean: Wizzley allows affiliate marketing for Amazon and several others
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Kangaroo_Jaseposted 13 years ago
I've never deleted one hub off of the site. One just never knows what will work, not right now but over time.

I have one hub that for 11 months never gained more than 8 views per day. But over the last 5 weeks, it is now my best performing hub at over 70 views per day.

I review my poor performing hubs which I deem those that get less than 3 views a day or less. For poor performers, I will check spelling, grammar, keyword density and natural flow of the written content to title. (To make sure I'm not deviating off topic from the title)

I also will redo title, check over summaries and tags.

Sometimes I just rewrite the content and shake and bake for a few weeks before revisiting that hub if traffic has not changed.

Like yourself Paul, I have a few hubs that were written for the time they were written and are relevant in the past. But they are old 'reference' hubs and I leave them if I end up reflecting with conversation with others of those times.

Finally, it just seems a few hubs are going to stink in terms of traffic no matter what is done!
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Will Apseposted 13 years ago
I reckon people are still assuming lack of traffic = a poor quality page. As I said earlier, there are plenty of reasons why a good quality page won't get traffic.

It is the pages that get very poor reactions from readers who actually visit them that you have to worry about.

Of course, everything that I have said assumes that Panda is really capable of working out what content is shallow, thin, badly written or worthless to readers in other ways.
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LindaSmith1posted 13 years ago
No misread. That is exactly what was said. Inn fact it was explicit in saying that employees are told to click on ads with sockpuppet ads.
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Garrett Mickleyposted 13 years ago
I usually print them out and snail mail them to Google with a sticky note attached that says "Y U NO RANK THIS?"
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  tnvrstarposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  LOL this was funny )
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Greek Oneposted 13 years ago
all my hubs get at least 2 views a year, so they are all high performing
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  SomewayOuttaHereposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  ...ya but, define 'year'...and 'view'
  
  mornin' GO!
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  kimberlyslyricsposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I win 1 view every 367 days sorry eh? is this a Canadian thread I am assuming? :
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sholland10posted 13 years ago
I have learned a lot here. Paul, I am glad you posed the question because I am still learning. I have been here for 8 months - keeping in mind this is the first time I have posted online and monetized. Still haven't made any money, but the experience has been great. I have really low views now, and reading suggestions here and seeing info links posted will help. I spend a lot of my time reading "how to" improve hubs on HubPages. I do not know what it was like before Panda because it was starting when I started. Thanks for the great discussion everyone, and now off to check on "pinging" and RSS feeds.
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jax1911posted 13 years ago
Good info that I was wondering too. Thanks.
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PaulGoodman67posted 13 years ago
I stick them in the trash bin.
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  Jean Bakulaposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  This has been interesting. I was just at the point where I was planning on deleting a few hubs that have been up about 5 or 6 months and only have about 100 views. Now people are saying a small number of views may not be that important. On a pretty regular basis, some of the ones under 75 go up higher. Maybe I'll just cull very few.
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skyfireposted 13 years ago
I may delete the content if the traffic to particular page is <100 views (unique visits) for a particular time period.This is only in case of content from which I wish to profit.

For my programming blog, I don't let Google decide what's right and wrong for my site. They're free to penalize or remove my site from the search. I have some old tutorials and stuff on that blog, these are part of my memories. These old pages are still shared on facebook, twitter and Diaspora.

I've posted that material so that others may find it useful, I'm not going to remove that just because they're less searchable or Google finds it useless. That's not how Web was built in the first place. If not google, there is Yacy and Bing or DuckduckGo users who will find it.
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  Pcunixposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I'd like to take that and shove it up Google's.. oops, never mind.
  
  But yeah, that is EXACTLY how I feel about my old "worthless" stuff that Panda has caused to be devalued. I am NOT going to delete it. I moved some of it to a subdomain, but I now feel I shouldn't have bothered.
  
  +1 and then some.
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DIYweddingplannerposted 13 years ago
Even though I've been here almost a year now, I'm still a little cloudy over what constitututes an acceptable number of views and makes a hub worth keeping in the line-up. I hit pay-out at the end of October which I thought was good since most people said it took them a year or more, but I'm not getting 100's of views a day on single hubs like some people here say they are getting. So what's the gold standard for views per day your hubs should be getting or should you not care as long as you're making money overall? Or is Paul saying he is looking at each hub individually to determine if it is making any money and if it's not, canning it? I'm not Google Analytics savvy enough to even know how to do that!
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Any page getting a few views a day from Google has a chance of decent traffic one day.
  
  Like I said before, it's the view time or average time spent on the page that effects my decision most. Low view times means it just isn't working for the reader and deserves to go.
  
  I know when a page is lousy anyway. I did my best. It didn't work. Tough. I can't get sentimental about it.
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  Randy Godwinposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Just because one has hubs which DO get hundreds of views daily doesn't mean it will last. You can lose all of this hard work literally over night if Google decides to penalize you for some obscure reason. Take it from someone who knows, there is nothing you can depend on here.
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  SirDentposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Has your traffic still not returned Randy?
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  kimberlyslyricsposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  or are traffic lights handy?
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Arlene V. Pomaposted 13 years ago
I keep what I write. If I keep my Hubs long enough, it's like they've become my friends. I wrote a Hub and asked Hubbers what they did with Hubs they didn't like or didn't generate much income. Most of them kept them and improved them. As long as I keep my Hubs, I will work at improving them.
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viryaboposted 13 years ago
I had started my experiments as well. I started a new account and decided to dedicate it ONLY to some particular niche that wasn't doing well on this account.

Anything related to it on my account here ,instead of being deleted is moved there. And im adding new hubs that are related to the niche.

Surprisingly, my traffic here has been improving, and the other account isn't doing too badly either. Better there now than it was at the bottom of the tub here.

I think something is working out, but im still observing while treading slowly.
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LindaSmith1posted 13 years ago
I saw that also on unpublished hubs. How can scores go up on something no longer published, while scores on the published ones go down.
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  Baileybearposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  dunno, but that's weird
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  janderson99posted 13 years agoin reply to this
  This Forum Topic is "Much Ado About Nothing" - "Sundry Times Publicly Acted" which made its debut in of 1598–1599. Hubs have many purposes including link building - the value of a hub is not dependent on its traffic. Google ranking does not depend on traffic. A site with high PR may still not get traffic - simply because the keywords are not searched for. Many hubs were published purely to provide links for other sites. Hubpages is a great place for back linking. I expect an announcement shortly that all unpopular hubs will be deleted. This would be a shame as there are many hubs written for a small audience on very narrow topics of interest to very few readers. These hubs provide a valuable reference resource.
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  IzzyMposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Hi Linda, I see you have published another hub. I take it you are staying after all. Welcome to Hubpages
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2uesdayposted 13 years ago
I have seen a hub's score rise after I unpublished it. I thought it might work in the same way that the hub score often rises if you do not publish a new hub straight away.
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LindaSmith1posted 13 years ago
Not really. I found a way to increase earnings though, and it is working like a charm. I only put things here that I really don't care about that much.
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  IzzyMposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Shame you didn't find that way before you removed everything.
  
  Having said that, chill out, take a step back and take your time over what you do or say.
  
  HP is a great platform. Some of us are not finding it so great just now, but it will be again.
  
  Instant money isn't everything. We want to build that magical 'passive income', and it may well come in time.
  
  Welcome back, anyway
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IzzyMposted 13 years ago
I would prefer if Paul, as a person 'in the know' would just tell us what to do. Is it better to dump unviewed hubs after a period of time?

Course, we don't need to dump them, that can be re-published elsewhere.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Staff here certainly have a lot of data that they could use to help clarify issues like this.
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  Garrett Mickleyposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I was under the impression that they're attempting to gather our opinions through this post for their own research.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  It may be that or it may be a subtle way of suggesting we think carefully about our less successful content.
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  PaulGoodman67posted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Yes, if they tell us in a rulebook way it looks bad, so we must learn to read to read the runes. Thats okay with me. :-)
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  Garrett Mickleyposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Perhaps you are correct.
  
  I just think it's sort of short sighted to say that they should be telling us what's best for our hubs. As far as what's good for SEO and what Google wants, they only have the same resources as we do. Aside from, as you said, site data. Even a lot of that we can get to from sites like Alexa (and others).
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I would hire a first rate statistician or 2 and mine that vast hoard of data. Then put out what is learned in a subtle but persuasive way.
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  Garrett Mickleyposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Had I the resources, I would do the same.
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  Will Apseposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Well, we live in hope.
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IzzyMposted 13 years ago
Things are moving too quickly with Google I think. It always used to be the case (before I joined) that dead hubs could suddenly come alive one day, and so were worth hanging on to.

Once a hubber had learned how to write, and improved that hub as far as possible, then it was just a waiting game, but not wasted because that hub became part of his, or HP's internal backlinking.

But now, with Panda AND with subdomains, its a whole new ball game.

For those of us with a slapped domain, this is an important issue. Less so for those doing well.

I'm still reluctant to dump them, but if they are pulling my subdomain down, I will.

On the other hand, are they what are keeping the views I have?

Paul, on one of his hubs, suggested unpublishing all hubs (on plunging subdomains obviously), and republishing them one by one to see how it goes.

I can't do it. I've thought about it. I did unpublish about 20 one night, but most of them are back because I looked again at them and thought they were OK hubs.

I'm still in the doldrums.

That's OK, I am learning, slowly but surely, how to find other traffic sources.
But I do want my Google traffic back.
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thejeffriestubeposted 13 years ago
Izzy, you're a damned good writer. You need to keep writing. I know it stinks that the Google Machine hates us, but that's ok, because right here, right now, you have an audience. We want to know what you think about things. And I'll be damned if I stop writing, or turn my hobby into an SEO heavy, keyword dense, write-about-this-product-cause-everyone-searches-for-it kind of deal. This isn't my second job. It's what I've always wanted to do.
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  IzzyMposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  I love this sentence.
  
  I always wanted to write. I don't know if I'm good or bad at it, but I always loved doing it.
  
  My teachers in school said I could I do it, then much later I found in life I could write a mean condolence letter.
  
  I'm almost famous for it.LOL
  
  I was scrabbling around on the internet, looking for paid work (after joining up to all those silly sites that wanted your opinion of advertised products) when I stumbled upon Hubpages.
  
  It was like a dream come true - a place to write AND earn money.
  
  Maybe one day it will pay my overheads. That's all I ever wanted of it.
  
  Thanks Jeff for your kind comments:)
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LeanManposted 13 years ago
I have removed a couple of hubs that were not performing, but they were unrelated to the other content in my niches that I write on and as standalone hubs they linked to none of my other work.. my worst performing hubs are all indexed by google and the rest and do get some traffic and potentially they could get more - but they also provide backlinks and ensure that a subject is covered for those that really want to read up on it..
In my mind a hub that does not perform that well is no worse than an article posted somewhere for the backlinks - so why delete it?
There are many reasons for a hub not to perform and for most of mine I know why they don't do so well;

Position in the serps, not going to get much traffic if the hub is on page 6! But think about it - if you regularly get 1 or 2 hits every few days and you are on pages 2 or 3 for your keywords and the pages above you have few backlinks then you could improve your position and traffic through a small backlinking campaign.

Not enough searches for the keywords to produce traffic (at the start I didn't use keyword tools to find the right keywords and titles and at times I did not really care I just wrote!), you could always change your title and change some of the wording to aim for a different (more searched) keyword phrase.

Other hubs have already ranked for the keywords that I was after (you won't see a hundred pages from hubpages on a search for a keyword even if 100 people have written hubs and optimized for it - first come first served as far as I can see!!) I would like feedback from others if they have managed to knock another hub out of the SERPS for a keyword, or if it really is first come first served!
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  IzzyMposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Many hubbers have overtaken my hubs in the SERPS with newer hubs, but that is because my subdomain is slapped.
  
  Even scraper sites are doing better!
  
  As a side note, a good friend of mine on here with a slightly-slapped subdomain (not as severe as mine) had a unique hub ranking really highly.
  
  Then a prominent hubber came along and wrote a similar hub, half the length and with less useful info, and knocked the first one off its perch.
  
  So yes, it happens.
  
  So basically if your subdomain is doing well, you can aim for just about any keyword and get a high ranking, no matter how well that hub is written.
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  Garrett Mickleyposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  What did you do to get slapped?
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  SirDentposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  Nothing. Panda slapped a lot of great writers here and elsewhere on the internet. I was slapped also but right now have recovered and doing better than before but that doesn't mean I won't get slapped again.
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Mark Ewbieposted 13 years ago
I do have a large number of poorly performing pages. This has been a cause of some concern to me.

In many cases my Make Money Writing pages have been outranked by other Hubbers. As a trusted member of HP it would helpful to me to have the authority to delete those competing pages.

I would also like the ability to move some, well any, of my excellent pages to a higher position in the Hot hubs section. This would give me more traffic. I have tried voting all the others down but it doesn't make any difference.

On a sadder note even I have been forced to admit that if a page of mine is poorly written, spammy, on a subject that no one is interested in, gets no traffic and is beyond saving - it may as well be deleted.

Some Hubbers may find this hard to believe but my God... I've written some crap in my time.
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STAFF
Paul Edmondsonposted 13 years ago
So, at first I pruned some Hubs that were low traffic and that I nolonger want to maintain, Now I've been updating my best performing Hubs. Interestingly they've seen a quick boost in traffic for the ones I've updated.

i added polls to several of them, cleaned up content and brought them up to date. I've done about 20 of them. i'm going to go through the top 40 and see what happens.

For now, I'm not going to do much with my Hubs that get little traffic. I've talked with a few of the best SEOs I know and they have different opinions. Some say to update or unpublish articles that are hanging around but no one is finding. I think that they are probably not hurting me if they don't get traffic.

Imo, Hubs that get traffic should be the first priority to update. I'll let you know how it goes.
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barryrutherfordposted 13 years ago
I deleted 10 just yesterday. so far my Hubscore remains the same
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Will Apseposted 13 years ago
Unless you believe Panda is completely random, there must be certain characteristics of content- or peoples reactions to content- that mark it for slaughter.

It would be good to have a better idea of what those characteristics were.
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Beautyfeatherposted 13 years ago
Promote the old hubs in craiglist
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Beautyfeatherposted 13 years ago
Promote the old hubs in craiglist
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IzzyMposted 13 years ago
SirDent got it right. Absolutely nothing. One of Google Panda's updates did it to me and many others on August 10th. Since then, some have recovered and others, like, me, haven't.
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  SirDentposted 13 years agoin reply to this
  My last slap was on Sept. 6. NO traffic and it stayed that way up until about a week into the poetry contest. The only change I made was to publish hubs. I published two day for the first few days of the contest and traffic returned Nov. 10 but with a large increase over the traffic I had before.
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dilipchandra12posted 13 years ago
I keep on changing Tags for my old hubs with less or no traffic. It works, get some traffic as well.
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successfulbloggerposted 13 years ago
Paul,

I know with your expertise I can't give you much advice, but I think I can shed a little light on this one. I wrote a hub on the Google Sandbox basically on how time eventually adds value to your hubs in search engines. I had a hub I thought about erasing and it now ranks on the first page of Google. I don't erase any hubs once I saw that happen, I will go back and retag or add subject matter.
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