Seven Good Habits Of Highly Effective Hubbers
Writing hubs for pleasure or profit is a rewarding experience, but can be even more rewarding when we know that we are at our most effective. So here are what I think are the Seven Good Habits Of Highly Effective Hubbers.
Researching Good Keywords
Effective hubbers understand the importance of keyword research. If you are writing for pleasure then keyword research is needed to make sure that the prose or poems enjoy the largest possible readership. There is little or no joy in spending hours on a short story or poem only to discover that nobody is reading it. Without keyword research you may still get some page views from fellow hubbers, but fellow hubbers only number a few tens of thousands. Or perhaps less active hubbers. But if the keyword research is completed then you open up your hubs to the possibility of being read by anybody with internet access who is interested in you subject. Admittedly writing a poem or a piece of prose to include keywords at the right density is an interesting thought, but keywords for every hub need to at least be considered.
When writing commercially, choosing the right keywords is fundamental to making a reasonable income. Change one word in a keyword phrase and it could change the Adsense payments per click form pennies to pounds, or cents to dollars. Effective hubbers know this and spend the time checking out keywords at the earliest possible stage in the creative process.
Writing Original Content
Effective hubbers write unique content for their hubs. Original, unique and informative or entertaining content will get crawled and indexed by the search engines quickly, sometimes very quickly compared with a poorly re-hashed PLR document that already appears on the internet in possibly hundreds of places. I think most people can write original content on almost any subject which they are interested in, given a little experience in writing factually. Or if hubbers don't want to write informative hubs, then write prose or poems, which, if they are genuinely your own work will be unique and will get indexed. If the subject of the poem is obscure, along with the keywords, then traffic may still be limited but at least it will be ranked in the search engines as highly as possible because it is unique and original writing.
Participating In The Community
Effective hubbers participate in the HubPages community by allocating some time to answering questions and posting in the forums. This is important activity as it helps build internal links to profile pages and hubs, which is good for a hub's authority in the eyes of the search engines. Participation also exposes the effective hubber to the community resulting in fans signing up and internal traffic to hubs. This may not do much for Adsense clicks, but increases page views which apparently increases HubScore, although the exact details of the HubPages algorithm are not known.
A word of caution though. While browsing the forums can be entertaining, if you want to be an effective hubber you will limit your time for this interaction. Otherwise it's possible for minutes and hours to pass by without any significant use of valuable time. Interact with the community by all means but effective hubbers don't waste time aimlessly reading when they could be posting, or more importantly writing and researching new hubs.
Building Backlinks
Effective Hubbers understand keywords and write unique content to get a decent ranking in the search engines. This ranking can be further improved if time is used in building backlinks to hubs. These could be from other personal websites, quality article sites (EzineArticles) and directories, and even sites where they have emailed the webmaster and asked for a link. It all takes time and effort but when the number of backlinks increases, it adds authority to a hub, which improves search engine position. It can feel like a chore, but effective hubbers recognise the importance of this activity and allocate time to it.
Developing A Routine
Effective Hubbers have a routine for producing hubs. It's not a sporadic activity but a regular part of the daily or weekly routine depending upon the time available. Time will be set aside for HubPages and within that time allocation, there will be a plan for researching, writing, link building, an so on. Without the routine, activity can follow peaks and troughs, or stop altogether for a while. Personal circumstances can change, meaning the routine needs to be adapted but it is still better to write, etc, little and often than have big bursts of activity followed by nothing. A regular routine keeps the skills sharp and produces hubs regularly.
Understanding HubPages
Effective hubbers spend time researching and experimenting with the HubPages platform. For example, they will produce longer and shorter hubs, with and without specific capsules to test the effectiveness, if any, of the different capsules in drawing traffic. The help pages will have been read thoroughly so that the different features of HubPages are understood and can be used. This helps with forum discussions as help can be given to newcomers and others who are “stuck” with aspects of the Hubpage system. It is easier to write and use HubPages to its maximum advantage if the finer details of the way it works are understood.
Transferring Skills
Effective hubbers will take everything they learn at HubPages and transfer the skills into building their own websites, for fun or for commercial purposes. Although HubPages may be a great platform for writing and getting paid a little in the process, the site belongs to somebody else and hubbers don't have control Transfer the skills to build your own site and write original content regularly and it's possible to have domination of a suitable niche within about a year. And nobody else determines the rules regarding revenue share for advertisements, when the site is under personal control. It's a much better way to control your own destiny, then keep adding writing to a website that ultimately you don't own.
Those are my seven habits for highly effective hubbers – try and develop them and your HubPages experience should improve along with your earnings if that is what you are interested in.
