How to get more traffic to your hubs
59Hi Chase,
I saw your question and since my answer was turning into a long one, I decided to write a hub about it. Over the next few days I will add more information.
First of all I took a look at your hubs and they are excellent. They all seem to be of a very high standard with heaps of great information.
The next step to get traffic is to become part of the HubPages community. By this I mean if you want people to take an interest in your hubs, you first need to take an interest in theirs. Check out some hubs that interest you, be genuine (most people will recognize when you are not) and leave comments.
In case you are wondering, this will also help you to gain search engine traffic.
How? Many hubbers will have already optimised their hubs and titles for search engines. Established hubs will be ranking well, and will also have their own followers. As traffic comes to a hub the readers will see the comments at the end of the article. Some of these readers will check out other hubbers if they like what they have to say.
If your hubs are related to the topics that you are commenting on, then any traffic that you gain in this way will be targeted traffic. This is an added bonus, especially if you are selling something. These readers will already be searching for whatever the hub is about and may follow your link to read your hubs too.
You can also ask questions (for instance this question went out to all of HubPages which is where I found it) and provide answers for other peoples questions. This is a way of advertising who you are, and what you are all about. People will read your comments, and if they like them they will check out some of your hubs too.
It is basically providing backlinks to your hubs from all over hubpages.
As with any backlinks, don't be spammy. Remember Hubpages is a community and you need to become part of that. You don't have to actually put a link in your comments, although it's ok to say "I wrote a hub along the same lines as this". If people like what you are saying they will check out your stuff.
Once again if you are going to say something along the lines of the above, I would do so sparingly. If you visit everyone's hub and say "I wrote one like this" it is definitely spammy, so use it only when appropriate.
There are also places that you can post a link if you really must, so long as it adds to the conversation. An example of this would be in forums or occasionally when you are answering a question.
Another tip is to follow people. Providing that you are genuine, most will follow you back. That way, each time you publish a new hub your followers will be notified by email. Once again, make sure you are actually interested in the people and subjects that you follow.
One thing that I would suggest is not to make all of your hubs about selling. Have some that are fun, entertaining, informative or even controversial. People tend to buy from those that they know, like and trust, so if you are selling products it will help to first create a rapport with potential customers.
Last but not least is to test different headlines. Often the only chance that you will get for someone to click on your hub, is from them reading your headline. Notice which headlines attract you, and which ones you click on. Think about what it was that made you click on a particular headline, or want to read a certain article. Then try to incorporate this same idea into some of your own.
Anyway, I will polish this hub up a bit over time but I hope that this helps in the meantime.
Is that it? What do I do next?
If you are already doing most of the above, and/or are wondering what to do next, here are some related hubs with heaps of ideas:
- Where to publish articles now that google has changed the rules
- How to get maximum traffic without google, seo or keywords
Happy hubbing!
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Thanks Joe,
I appreciate the comment.
I've been looking for a way to increase my followers and views. Time to hop some Hubs.
Thanks
Chuck
Good advice. As with everything, you only get out of Hubpages what you put into it. If only we had more time! Lynda
Wow thank you so much Max_Power!! I've looked at a ton of videos and articles about traffic and stuff but I haven't heard this before (building relationships). And it makes a lot of sense. Now that I think about it, it would get annoying to other people if I just put my links on everybody's websites/hubs.
Hubpages is so fun!! Getting traffic is like a strategic game!! I love it!!
Btw thanks again for this it was really helpful!
Hey Chase,
Glad to help out. The way that you are going I'm sure that you will be getting heaps of traffic in no time.
SEO is great, but the thing about building relationships is that it doesn't leave you at the mercy of google! Best not to put all of your eggs in one basket I say.
I totally relate to what you are saying about Hubpages. I too am addicted Lol.
Thank-you Lynda for commenting. I like the way that you put that and I agree 100% that you only get out what you put in.
Thanks Poorconservative for your comment. Enjoy your hub-hopping!
Good stuff. Well written, too.
Max,
"The next step to get traffic is to become part of the HubPages community. " How do you do this, Max? I'm a newbie, but want my hubs to get more visibility. Any thoughts
Hi Teamrn,
I think that you are already doing a great job of being part of the community by being active in the Q&A section/forums of Hubpages, as well as leaving comments.
You should receive more HP traffic from gaining more followers. A good way to do this is to start following other people first, and most will follow you back.
Since a lot of your expertise and articles are focused around health, I would suggest adding more hubs with closely related content. This should help you gain search engine traffic for various keywords in this niche, plus a reputation in this area.
Make sure also that you are linking to your own articles, from within each hub. Google sees a link as a 'vote' for another page on the web, so it is beneficial to gain more votes for your articles.
Linking will also help people to find other (of your) related articles after arriving at one of your pages.
You obviously have a lot of knowledge in your niche, and a lot of experience writing. For these reasons I would consider putting together an ebook (at lulu.com) with embedded links to your articles.
You can do this using existing content, once you have added a few more articles. This won't affect rankings etc, or be considered duplicate content because it is published out of the reach of search engine crawlers. Of course you would probably edit it anyway, to allow for the different format.
Another great option in your case would be guest blogging on high traffic sites in your niche. If you are not sure about guest blogging just yet, why not start by making comments on these blogs outside of hubpages? It is a good way to start getting noticed, and to provide links back to your hubs.
If you use twitter and/or facebook you can also place links to your articles on those sites.
Ok, this is getting kind of long Lol:) so I will edit this hub and place links to my other articles that cover some of the stuff that I have talked about here.
A few other quick suggestions would be blog carnivals, social bookmarking, articles sites and press releases.
Consistency is the key. Keep adding quality content only, as well as refining and linking existing hubs. At the same time remain active and therefore visible throughout Hubpages. Work on gaining more followers. As people find your content, the hope is they will start linking to it and boosting traffic and search engine rankings.
I hope that this helps!
Thanks also to Wrath Warbone for your comment. It is greatly appreciated!
Yikes, it couldn't have helped MORE! I do have a few questions and I'll take it point by point:
1. I'm trying to be a community person; I joined 15 mos ago, but didn't become active until a few mos ago.
2. you say closely related content to health topics. I interpret that to mean, if a wrote about CAD (recently did) I ought to write a 'sequel') There are so many related topics. Make a separate hub about a related topic?
3. "Make sure also that you are linking to your own articles, from within each hub" Link to my independently written freelance articles? I didn't think we were supposed to do this; or am I wrong in this assumption?
4. Also linking (in my hubs; will that increase search engine ability to FIND ME?
5. I've heard about lulu; will have to look into it; I'm famous for 'looking into stuff;' infamous for NEVER doing it!
6. I've started to take a much more active role in others hubs and commenting on their blogs. Am hoping that'll lead somewhere and at one time I had my own. The computer software I have has a blog program and publishing link and supports AdSense, Youtube and lots of other stuff. But, it's not going to get any attention-even if I work it up- if I can't drive traffic to my blog. AdSense hasn't done it in 2 months. WHAT'S A REASONABLE amount of time?
Thanks so much for allllllll your many pieces of advice and many suggestions, Annie
Very well written hub and without the confusing technical terms. I am voting up and useful!
Tracy, I agree w/ you about the technical terms. Some of us weren't raised w/ computers, aren't techies (nothing against you IT people out there!) and live in a totally different world.Great way of reaching me! Thanks again.
Thanks Tracy for the vote, and your comments. They are appreciated:)
Hi Annie,
Sorry to confuse you with some of my comments. To answer your questions:
2)Yes a 'sequel' is a great idea. The more related niche keywords you have in your hubs, the more likely people searching for that niche are to find you.
3)By linking, I meant to link your text from one hub to your other hubs. You are already linking some of your text to other hubs and articles. You should also try linking to some of your own hubs.
If someone reads one of your hubs, links will also make it easy for them to find your related hubs. You can do something similar to what I have done above (at the end of this hub) to make it really easy for readers to navigate. This will be especially useful when you have a lot more hubs.
As for linking to your freelance articles, you can do that if they are relevant and you want to send traffic that way. I don't think that Hubpages has problem with this, unless you are going overboard. My understanding is they would only penalise you for this if your hub was a low-quality article designed solely to promote and gain traffic for another site.
4)Yes linking your hubs will help them to become more visible in the search engine results. Each link to your hubs is a vote for that hub, even if you were the one that linked to it. Basically it is just one page linking to another page, and that is how google sees it.
Of course you would not overdo it, especially at hubpages where having too many links would be seen as overly promotional.
Try not too worry too much about the technical stuff and SEO. Just get the basics in place and then work on some of the many other ways to generate traffic. If you were only relying on google for traffic it would be a long battle!
6) Not sure I understand the question fully (I get confused easily these days Lol;) but it sounds like you're asking what is a reasonable amount of time to generate decent traffic to your blog?
Two months isn't a lot of time, especially if you are learning as you go. Depending on how dedicated you are, I would say 3-6 months is the earliest that you would have enough traffic to make any income worth talking about.
For people who are half-hearted it is a lot longer (1-2 years)To be honest I haven't even signed up for Adsense yet, I want to focus on creating content first.
Great to hear from you again, and I hope this helps!:)
Max,
This questions: 6) Not sure I understand the question fully (I get confused easily these days Lol;) but it sounds like you're asking what is a reasonable amount of time to generate decent traffic to your blog?
Reasonable amount of time; I know no one can predict earnings, but since the end of January (published my first hub) until now, I've not made one red cent.
Max, In as much as I've made money on my writing before and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want to continue that, most of what I write is my passion and I'd do if I didn't make money. It's my way of expressing what isn't a terribly creative side.
But, my hubs aren't bad and I'd think that in 2 months, I'd have made AT LEAST one penny. This makes me wonder if my AdSense and HubPages accounts are really linked. There's a page where it says to configure the Google AdSense link and I've tried clicking on it to no avail..Any thoughts?
It;s the page where you check analytics and AdSense activity: MY ACCOUNT>EARNINGS
I
Great advice here! Thanks!
I like what you say about posting comments and becoming part of the hubpages community. I only found your page and was able to read this information because I follow fucsia who I learned about because she commented on one of my hubs!
up and useful thank you for this
Now, that was plain and simple. Most people make it sound like anything but, communication and patience. Good hub, do it again.
I agree w/ Junko; so many make it all sound too complicated for we "little brains" who are not born and raised on IT. But, I'll say it again, Max; VUNDAHBAHR
Thank you to all for your feedback and encouraging comments. I appreciate your thoughts and your votes, and will take it all on board. I intend to write more hubs along these lines.
Annie, I agree most of us are here for the love of writing, but it would also be nice to profit in the process! You may need to look at a couple of other options, not just Adsense. From what I have read in other hubs, it takes about 4-5 months to earn about 50 cents a day. That is a best case scenario, from some of the higher ranking writers on the site.
As for your adsense, did you receive a confirmation email? Adsense should have sent one to let you know they had approved your hubpages account. Here is some advice on how to configure your adsense once it is approved http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/70685
I hope it helps!
Thank you,every day it is good to learn something new from people who know what they are talking about
I applied for an AdSense account and got the account and number, confirmation e-mail and Hubpages shows the # on my Affiliate settings page. Hubpages also shows under STATUS that this account is ACTIVE.
However, to the left of the Adsense account is an oval w/ the word 'configure' in it, making me think that there is another step I need to take to complete the process. I need to CONFIGURE the ads. So, I follow the prompts and each time I try, I receive an error message saying that Hubpages couldn't make contact w/ googlel; PLEASE TRY AGAIN.-or something like that was the error message.
I contacted Hub Pages and they said that Google hasn't been responsive a lot these days. But, I've not heard any of you talk of this scenario. One place says my account is active, another says it needs to be configured, The fact that Google shows that I've not earned one red cent, makes me wonder.
Max, I'm new here and am finding out so many things about hubbing, it seems there's so much to learn. Thanks for your hub, very easy to understand. I didn't realize how important it was to comment on hubs, just been busy trying to figure out how all of this works. I was stuck on SEO's and glad to know it's not that important for me right now. Thanks again, Debbie
I'm an absolutely new to HubPages and just browsing around to get a general feel of what I should do next. It's great that I found your hub! Thanks for sharing all these information. I've learned a lot just by reading this.
I'm a new user here and am slowly starting to learn more and more about this website, there's a lot to do here.
Your hub helped muchly : )
Thanks for this hub. Definitely helped a new hubber like myself.
Great info Max. I am going to incorporate some of this for my hubs too. You had a life changing moment.Like no other.
Thank you to everyone for the comments, I am so glad to be able to help out.
I too still have a lot to learn (it is never-ending really!), and as I do I will be passing it on.
My hope is for all of us to achieve our idea of success here on Hubpages, and in all other areas too.
I am glad to help out where I can, and also look forward to visiting, reading and commenting on your hubs.
Cheers!
Wow! You certainly researched and did your homework. Great advice. :)
Thanks AEvans.
I appreciate your opinion, and have a lot of admiration for your writing.
I am looking forward to reading more of your hubs.. Although there are so many to choose from, it may take a while lol!
Thank you for reading and commenting:)
You see, Max Power, this is why I love reading what you write. I always learn something that will be beneficial. Thanks for sharing ways to help others!
Hey Dexter, thanks heaps!
The same could be said for you - I always enjoy reading your hubs.. In fact I am about due to head over there and see what you have been up to. Great to see you again, I hope all is going well:)
Thanks for the advice!
Thanks, I just joined Hubpages and this is good advice.
Hi Bentley Mom, and thanks for your comment.
Thanks also to Hotwebideas, and welcome to Hubpages!
Social media seems to be the best way to get traffic nowadays.
I was also wondering how to get traffic to my hubs as I am a relatively new member to the community. You gave some great advice, even in the comments section. I am happy to have my 7 followers thus far, you included :)
I also checked out your hub on the seo and keywords.
Thanks Celebritie,
I have been experimenting with social media lately and haven't had a lot of luck, but I will persist!
Mareezy,
Thanks heaps - I am enjoying your hubs, and the way you are going it won't be long before you have a lot more than 7 followers :)
Max_Power - this is a Never-Ending-Writers dream come true. THANKS for the Sage Advice. Whenever you can, Keep Growing GREENER KIDZ of All Ages by living an eco-lifestyle - even Wordsmiths can Recycle - Reuse - Reduce. EVERYTHING but WORDS!
Learning about HubPages has become my THIRD Occupation!
Way to go Granny Greenie,
Best of luck with it, and welcome to Hubpages! Thanks for reading :)
Another great hub, bro.
Good Hub. Great Information. I am new as well and really being community orientated - however - I am not generating money - under a dollar. How can one earn any money? Must you go into other sites? I was considering Word Press. Thanks.
Hi Deb,
Thanks for your feedback, and excellent questions.
The short answer is Yes - if you want to make money you need to branch out using other sites and methods. I have a lot of faith in HubPages, and wouldn't give it away, but it's always good to diversify.
I know what you are saying about Adsense, which is why I didn't even bother opening an account. The problem with relying on google and sites such as Hubpages is that it can all be taken away from you at any time - As we all discovered following the last algorithm change.. Plus the earnings are pretty crap (bloggers welfare lol).
If your rankings are suffering tho, you can recover by getting backlinks to your articles. I recommend using free press-releases, rss feeds/aggregators, and mass social-bookmarking (eg onlywire.com) to do this. It takes a bit to set up, but is then pretty much automated.
I have a few other tricks up my sleeve, but those methods alone should do it. There are also many other ways to get traffic - you can actually take google and seo completely out of the equation if you want to :)
As for creating your own wordpress site, it is a very good option so long as you:
a) own it, and
b) monetize it (asap)
Wordpress is excellent for creating your site, and I highly recommend it. There are many ready-made Wordpress plugins available to help you with SEO, but you will still need to to backlink in order to rank well.
The great thing about having your own site is that nobody can tell you what you can and can't do with it. The really great thing is that you can also sell it(think of it as virtual real estate).
It is a little more work at first, and a small learning curve, but can be well-worth it. If your site is bringing in say $1000 per month you can flip (sell) it for $8000 - $10,000 fairly easily on Flippa.com
The way that most people monetize their site is by selling products - either their own products, or as an affiliate. There are some excellent affiliate products that will give you 100 percent commissions (amazing huh?)and it is also easier than you think to create your own.
The key to making money is to laser-target your traffic (eg Using 'buyer' keywords) so that the people who arrive at your site are actually looking to buy exactly what you are selling. You also need to set up a free offer (same niche) in exchange for email addresses, so that you have a ready source of (highly targeted)traffic. That way you just send out an email everytime you publish a new post, and immediately you have plenty of visitors :)
If that all sounds a bit complicated, there are ways to market without using a website. One of these (which I am just starting to test this week) is to upload a short video to youtube and direct it to your affiliate (or cpa) offer. If you have visited YouTube lately you have probably already seen this one, and I believe it works fairly well.
Once again - you need to target your traffic, but it can be a lot easier to rank using YouTube than it currently is using Hubpages. This is also an excellent way to re-purpose your existing content on Hubpages (turn it into a video) and drive more traffic to your hubs.
Anyway, I hope this answers your questions, and let me know if you need help etc with anything.
(Lol, and I said that was the short answer! ;)
Cheers,
Max.
I think being a real contributor to the community is the best way to go, especially since I've managed to make over 40 views per Hub here! I know that might not sound like a lot, but I'm very passionate about writing so I'm really thankful... God bless the Hubpages community!
Congratulations Dr Spaniel - it sounds like you are doing really well.
Since it has taken me so long to reply lol, you probably have many more hub views by now! Keep up the great work, and I agree - you won't go wrong by contributing to the community.
All the best,
Max.
Joe Cook 14 months ago
This advice is honest and fair!