Characteristics of Content That Drives Traffic
Finding Success Promoting Product to Earn Money
I have gotten feedback from a group of Hubbers that lost traffic in August 2011 and people are wondering if it's a penalty or what could have possibly caused the drop. Most of the people reporting traffic losses also use Amazon extensively. I don't believe it's the use of Amazon by itself causing problems, but it's the style of the content which is closely correlated with Amazon capsule use. In my previous post in this thread, I pointed out two accounts that went down (culled from the public responses on the site), and one that's done well. I think it's worth reading the accounts paying close attention to the style of the writing and the content and links in the Hubs, forming your own opinions and doing your own tests.
Read several hubs in these accounts
Accounts going down
- http://izzym.hubpages.com/
- http://mutiny92.hubpages.com/
Traffic Holding
- http://ryankett.hubpages.com/
- http://pauledmondson.hubpages.com/
For people that are looking for ways to improve traffic or tips on writing hubs that promote products, here are my recommenadations
- Write in the first person (I)
- Write about products where there is personal experience
- Write about the things in life (Growing organic tomatoes) and incorporate products into the content
- Only include content that is very useful to the topic of the Hub
If my entire account tanked, things to consider.
- Is it worth rewriting
- Should I delete content not getting traffic
- Starting over
Writing in the first person and other tips
It appears that people that promote products that write in the first person are doing better. I usually write in the first person, but not always. I think when I read RyannKett's Hubs that his use of the first person sounds more authoritative and less like fluff when "you" or a passive tense is used primarily.
Example: Opening sentence from one of Ryan's Hubs
I always told myself that if I were to buy a puppy I would not lavish it or spoil it, and certainly never envisaged buying it gifts to open at Christmas! About 6 weeks ago however I bought a puppy and, low and behold, she is being treated like a little princess.
- This sentence is authoritative. It establishes that he has a puppy and it's written in the first person. It follows two of my guidelines of writing in the first person and writing about things in your life.
Sometimes we over do it with keywords. I've felt like a lot of Hub accounts that have seen the hardest hits are keyword stuffed. Read your Hub outloud and see how it sounds. If you feel like the same three word phrase keeps getting repeated and it feels awkward as it's read, the Hub is probably over done with keywords.
- Ryan is targeting "Christmas gift ideas for puppies". He uses it once in his title and once in the content of his page. The Hub reads very well and the ideas flow very naturally. This is a good example of not overdoing it.
Keep the content focused to the title of the Hub. Limit the use of links and feeds to content types that naturally fit in the Hub and that are supporting the topic of the Hub
- Ryan uses few links that are very related in most cases and I didn't see feeds in his Hubs
What should I do if my site has tanked
Most of the subdomains I've seen fall have noticeably at least one of these issues. Again, I don't think Amazon is the issue by itself, but it's the style of content that appears to accompany Hubbers that have fallen. They write Hubs focused on selling a product, but they also do the following.
- The majority of Hubs in their accounts are keyword stuffed with awkward reading. Read the Hub out loud and see if it sounds natural. Focus the Hub on a single keyword like Ryan's example and don't over do it by repeating the target phrase in every sentence.
- It's written in the third person or passive tense. While much of wikipedia is in a passive tense and it does pretty well, the first person appears to do better. I think when someone writes with "you" it makes it easy to create fluff that doesn't say much and it can be easily whipped out without having any knowledge.
Are you looking for the perfect Christmas gift for your puppy. You will find great ones at Amazon where they have a lovely selection of tiny dog collars to very large ones. You can find the perfect gift idea there!
- Non related links. Often, as a percentage of the overall content on the page there are feeds, and links that aren't tightly related to the Hub or matched appropriately. A better use of interlinking is to highlight the words in the text of your Hub and link them to other Hubs.
It's a tough question on what to do if your account has tanked. Mutiny92 said he was open to feedback. Here are a few options to consider and I have some hesitation with this advice because each person's situation is different (this is personalized for him). Note, I've looked at several accounts where people have said their traffic has fallen and they were mistaken. Others have recovered with what I'd consider minimal changes. So, please use caution when considering this advice and be sure that the account in question is truly suffering.
Advice for Mutiny92. I'd go the extreme route if I were Mutiny92 and either fix up or unpublish each Hub. One alternative is to identify the Hubs that did well in the past and fix them up and unpublish the rest.
- Unpublish all Hubs that won't be fixed up
- Rewrite Hubs in the first person (prioritize the Hubs based on the best previous traffic performers)
- Remove non related links and feeds from Hubs
- Read the Hub outloud and make a judgement if it's useful, the content aligns with the title, and that it reads well. Reduce the fluff. If it isn't useful don't republish.
What's the best way to go about trying to bring an account back into Google's good graces?
Here is an option (If you have a few Hubs).
- Unpublish all your Hubs - It's safer than you think to do this as Google has a long memory and will check back often for a page even if Google is given a page not found message.
- Sort your pages by their traffic history so there is a prioritized list to order your work - all time, week, 30 day, whatever fits your situation best.
- Rewrite or edit the best opportunity Hubs first.
- Make each Hub so that the title focuses on a single keyword and then write the Hub in the first person and make sure that if the Hub is read outloud that it reads well. Don't overuse keywords.
- Monitor how that Hub ranks for it's title. Once it cracks page one, or you're confident that it's doing well start working on the next Hub. When multiple Hubs rank on the first page of Google for their title, it's a sign that the domain is healthy. Review this Hub to see if the site is healthy
- I suggest unpublishing Hubs because we've seen the subdomains that fall largely exhibit a penalty or Panda like symptom where some content can pull down the entire subdomain. Ideally, we want a situation where good content can't be affected by content Google doesn't like.
* There have been very few recoveries from Panda or when a site experiences a massive drop in traffic since Panda. Google recommended putting poor quality content on another site. When HubPages moved to subdomains we separated the content out by author which in effect put all content on a new site. We are now seeing certain subdomains lose traffic and others gain. For individuals that lose traffic, I recommend finding ways to separate the content out to see if a pattern emerges for the type of content that does well vs doesn't.
Type of writing to avoid. Does it smell like a doorway page?
One thing that's important to avoid is content that smells like a doorway page. The concept of a doorway page is writing something that is designed to rank well in search engines by optimizing keywords, and layout, but the sole purpose is to get the user to click on a link to get the user to another page. Here is an example.
- A page titled "Download free anitvirus software"
- Content: "Are you looking for free anti virus software. There are three makers of software to protect your computer from viruses for free, but this is the only one you need...."
- Link: A single link to a site to download the software or multiple links to places that lead to the same site
- May include other easy to automate or low effort content like feeds, youtube
A content rich landing page and a doorway page can seem almost the same. I'd say a content rich page does the following.
- Provides 75%+ of the information needed
- Offers original thoughts, analysis and research
- It links to multiple resources that are viewed as high quality
- Reads naturally
Comments
Hi Paul,
This brings up some questions.
1. If we unpublish a hub and we decide to republish it later will it not show up as duplicate content even if it is tweaked a bit? Is there a length of time to hold before republishing so that this does not occur?
2. Would it be smart to have all of my travel hubs published under one name and have other hubs (say restaurant or food related ones) under another account name? Now that I have a body of work, that could be done. For new hubbers it might be best to stick to one topic until they work up a portfolio?
3. Of late I have tried grouping some of my related hubs at the bottom of my recent hubs with photos to some of them. Is this a good idea or could that be considered duplicate content?
4. When we had HubCamp in Houston I asked the specific question about keeping older hubs that get few readers and the answer was to keep them. Now because of Panda have you changed your mind? It would appear so with this posting.
5. Are all RSS capsules bad? Specifically with travel hubs I generally add an RSS current weather capsule thinking that it relates to the area and might be of interest to people. Good or bad idea?
Hope you can advise. My traffic and income seems to be tanking even though I keep writing what I think are good hubs. Thanks!
I would like to change some titles that seem to tank. In marketing, title is so important. For example,I have a hub on forgiveness that involves the actual forgiveness of a criminal. It could be changed theoretically to hone in on forgiving a criminal or another attention getting title. What do you think?
Something else that your post that got me thinking Paul. You mention asking yourself whether deleting content that isn't getting any traffic, I'm curious why this would be beneficial?
What about profile page rank? If it is 3 or 4 does that have any bearing on this issue?
@thooghun I suggested deleting content that doesn't get any traffic for people that have lost major traffic. The idea is that some content can pull down the rankings of all content, so to eliminate anything that is creating value as insurance to getting the site back in good standings. I wouldn't delete content if the rest of my site was doing well.
@PeggyW If you unpublish a Hub, edit it and republish it at the same URL it won't be duplicate.
I wouldn't move content around unless the accounts has been impacted by Panda or penalty. However, if it has, moving small amounts of content is a good way to test if you've fixed the problem.
I wouldn't consider it duplicate content, but I don't think it's a good idea to overdue the related content section. It's better to link to Hubs naturally based on the text of your Hub.
I would only delete old Hubs that don't get traffic if the account has been hit with Panda/Penalty. For 95% of people, their accounts are doing fine.
Very few people use RSS effectively in Hubs. If the RSS feed isn't useful, I'd leave it out. If my account saw a big decrease in traffic, I'd leave them out as well. At best, they are marginally helpful when used perfectly. Most people don't use them effectively in my opinion.
This is fascinating. I never published pre-Panda. I'm not sure I ever analysed it, but I go automatically for first person unless I'm writing creative writing prose-i.e., fiction, not an article
What about removing content in accounts that are doing well? For example, I have removed some hubs that I wrote years ago when I didn't know WHAT I was thinking. Even though my account was doing well at the time, does removing this content help strengthen what remains?
If you don't think the content is useful, interesting or adding value in any way, then I think it's fine to unpublish. Generally, I don't unpublish unless there is a specific reason.
Melbel,
Consider a change and / or rewrite of the hub or hubs in question. Do one Hub change at a time knowing what you know now through becoming a much more experienced writer. This may be a greater way to re-release a Hub as such, rather than moving it or deleting it.
I am looking at a few of my early hubs that seem to be laughing at me with the lack of traffic for them for the last few months. I'm looking at these to see if a few changes may help get them on track once again.
Paul,
My concern would be how much traffic would be lost, and how long it would take for it to gain back traction, if one hub was unpublished and republished a few days later after some tweaking to modules and some additional editing.
I have no idea if it was republished on the same account or a second account would make much difference in that scenario.
An interesting read, Paul, and this tends to lend some support to my theory that one of the biggest challenges people have on HubPages is the mistaken belief that they write well.
About 3 days ago I unpublished about 20 of my hubs with a plan to rewrite most of them. My questions is: How long does it take for my currently published hubs to regain their Google SERP? Thanks!
After removing some of my content I filed a reconsideration request.
What a privilege it is to bump into the ceo of Hubpages while browsing. Good luck to you and your team. Keep up the fighting spirit!
The traffic to my Product Hubs are now a mere 30 with 54 hubs which is so pathetic. I did not know that there were many people who lost traffic. I was considering doing some link wheel building to see if that would help. my amazon revenue is affected so I guess I will unpublish all the hubs, do some modifications and then publish it again and do some link building too.
@relache I think many good writers looked for a formula and for a long time there was a repeatable style of writing that worked. I think it's different now and folks need to adapt. It's pretty tough to take for many how much things have changed in a short period of time. We are doing our best to educate folks on best practices.
@Uzdawi - You'll have to test this out. Each writer has different results. I'd encourage folks to test a site with very limited amounts of content and then add to it once they get those few hubs in good standing.
I don't know exactly why I or anyone else clicked "funny" on this one. Herd mentality I suppose.
I totally agree - as is wise, and pat myself on the back for mostly already having incorporated these styles and tips sub consciously.
I look back on some things I've published and shudder at what I'd NOT been thinking. Luckily, there's the old delete button, the edit button, and another thirty two ounce long winded beer of text writing glory in the refrigerator.
Hi Paul I guess for up coming hubbers who came along after the Panda should have less problems with traffic now. If we follow your advice I don't see how we can go wrong.
I have one question. Should we just stick with one category or should we write on a variety of topics? I do the latter and I think I will be doing well in a couple of months. I have some PR 2, 1 and 0 hubs. I know it's not much but it does show progress and in a couple of months those ranks will go up.
Thanks for the info Paul. Seeing this hub makes me happy to be a part of the family.
I agree with all this, but still think that RSS feeds are a complete waste of time and bring little value to either the reader or for SEO (could argue that they are becoming the same thing anyway).
I noticed little change post-Panda but then my articles did well enough for readership but very poorly for making any money. That hasn't changed a bit!
@cardisa I think writing about your interest and expertise is best. I write to make something informative or interesting (at least to me).
It looks like your Panda recovery is currently in full swing Paul, it would be great if we could have an analysis of accounts which benefit from this huge upswing v those that don't recover at all, or to be more precise whether this reveals any fresh ideas or new patterns. There could well be a lot to learn from this, and you lot are best placed to analyse data here!
As a side point, why doesn't Hubpages have a 'saved' hubs or 'favourite hubs' feature? Would make referring back to hubs of interest a lot easier, as things stand you need to comment or risk losing it in a stupendously huge pool of content!
A favorite hubs feature would be great!
There is a bookmark feature in the right sidebar on hubs
So there is! I had honestly never noticed, I'll remember that then.
Alrighty I deleted some stinky hubs and every RSS feed I could find. When I have time I will go back through some hubs and read them to see how "they sound aloud" I probably need to edit a few. Hopefully next month I will be back in Google's good graces... :/
I agree withb you about Amazon because I have not used it for a long time and never used RSS. Istill got cut down very badly. Another thing, Paul, I have got 'A' which means SUMMARY marked against all my hubs but quite a number of my hubs have a Summary. How do I get rid of it? Thank you for trying to help us down-trotten creatures.
Thanks a lot for giving us these inspiring and enlightening tips.
Thank you for this informative hub. Being new to HP I am still trying to find my way around and haven't tried to post a hub. I am however learning a lot about HP
Very interesting and informative post. Thank you.
Thanks for the good info. I have to admit my HP visits have always been much lower than I get anywhere else as a whole. (I doubt that Hubpages is the CAUSE.)
I've removed RSS feeds, recategorized things, and decreased my keyword density (and changed headings) although for the majority of my hubs it wasn't over 3.5-4% to begin with... or at least not with the checker I used. (sometimes I did find "incidental" keywords over this...not the ones I intended!) I don't just write about products I own though...but I don't elsewhere either. (I would have little to say if I did, I'm not a very good consumer.) My first person pages don't do better. I'm not disputing what you say (believe me, I know nothing when it comes to all of this)
Unfortunately, after all of this my numbers seem even lower today. Oh, well.
Key things I wonder about (since it differs from other places where I write) are:
1. the fact that my new standalone subdomain is not closely related from Hub to Hub. If I were doing a website, everything would be related. My hubs are just a hodgepodge. Thoughts? Should I break things up into separate subdomains? I can't see myself losing anything.
2. I imagine you are correct about the style kind of thing. On the advice of a "successful" Hubber I did a building spree last year on "Buy ___" whereas I think more of a "how to approach" would be better. Not sure of that, but a possibility. I do try to provide buying tips and sometimes safety tips versus just product descriptions but that's not worthy I guess. I do have a number of informational pages on topics from kids or seniors to health and even management topics. I don't see them doing any better though. These pages are definitely based on personal knowledge and some of my professional background.
Oh, and I wanted to say thank you for posting this as a blog.
What's the "passive tense"?
Is it American for passive voice?
You want me to write about growing organic tomatoes? That's the solution to addressing traffic loss and rankings? haha. Honestly, I'm against the whole switch to subdomain because my traffic and rankings have been impacted significantly.
I agree with you Harry Santos because the same happened to me. My traffic halved immediately. I wish they would give us the choice to switch back or not. This is not fair because the money earning is so down especilly for the time we spent. It is not fair.
Great advice, Paul. And how gracious of you to write to us about this issue. I can see some mistakes I have made mentioned in your Hub. I will work to correct them ASAP. Thank you!
Thank you,Paul. It is very helpful to read this kind of information. Although I was not writing pre-Panda, your advice works well for me too. The questions asked and answered also helps; they make your points quite specific. Your hub is one of the many good things about HubPages. Thank you.
thooghun 9 months ago
Thanks for the tips Paul, I'm curious what you mean when you say read the hub out loud, and focusing a title on a single keyword. I suppose you're saying we should focus less on how a SE would read our content and more on how the end-user would? I wonder if Google is even able to distinguish between the two?
I am fortunate enough to not have been hit by Panda overmuch, I'm currently roaring past pre-panda values. However, I know I am absolutely guilty of trying to compromise on hub titles, and I will make a point of trying to make them more user-friendly. But my concern here is losing ranking for secondary keywords I have touched on in the titles, headers and anchor text.
I find that the content that my best performing content tends to be the following. 1) Quality outbound links, 2) Between 500-1000 words in length (strangely my 1500+ word hubs do not do well). 3)Use of text modules seem to help 4) 1 image per around 200-250 words. Oddly, my success has been with large and competitive keywords rather than long-tail niches, go figure!