Go ahead, test it for yourself. I built two hubpages yesterday using modified PLR. I did my keyword research on nichebot as usual. Found what I thought was low competition, high demand. You know the drill. I used one article of content and added the requisite fluff to spray it across the hub. Added some video modules, a couple of photos and I was done. Two hubs from keyword research to publish completed in less than an hour.
Big deal right? Until I went and looked in Google this morning and found it was already indexed. I have Squidoo lens that I built last week that are still not indexed. Granted I haven’t promoted the lens much, but I didn’t promote the Hubpage at all. Sometime within 16 hours Google came and spidered and indexed my hubpage. How nice.
Why all the G-love? I have no idea but you can bet I’ll be exploiting that as long as it lasts. My thought yesterday was to build basic hubpages to get them on the web. No outgoing links to any of my sites. Let them sit for a month or so. Get spidered and ranked by Google. Maybe get some pagerank. Then go back and add a couple of links to my blogs and websites. Then again maybe it doesn’t matter. Just add the links straight away. I don’t want my hubpages flagged from the start by the management though.
The thing that I wonder about is hubpage freshness. It’s important to keep your lens fresh. It keeps you ranked high for lensrank. My unfounded theory is that Google might appreciate higher lensrank as more authoritative. But what about hubpages? Is freshness that important? I suspect it can’t hurt. But then again it’s not like a blog where change is expected.
The hardest part is going to be finding keywords to use. It always is. What to build your site on? I have to remind myself not to overthink this. Even if I build a hub that gets no traffic, no ranking, no love…it doesn’t matter. It only takes 15-20 minutes to build. It’s free. There is no downside. So what if it flops. I’ll build another one.
I was building hubpages and lens before to compliment whatever niche blog I built. Now I’m just going to build the shit out of both. On whatever topic I can come up with. I’ll be able to use them as excellent sources of links. Kind of like blog farms but with more authority. Plus if the lens and hubpages get a lot of traffic I’ll know it’s a niche worth pursuing. If they don’t then maybe I shouldn’t waste my time with building that niche blog or website.
BTW - I honestly would love to show you the hubs and some of my lens that I have built. And let you see for yourself the rankings and crap I say I have. I just can’t risk it. 99% of you are honest and would just like to know what it is I’m doing. Whether it sucks or not. But I’m afraid of the few imbeciles that go around flagging lens, hubpages and blogs for their amusement. It can be a hassle.
15 responses so far ↓
Scott Lyons // Apr 3, 2008 at 12:27 am
Splork,
Maybe they use whatever wordpress uses in their code.
On monday, I was writing a random post on my “shopping” blog, actual content without any affiliate links just to mix things up a bit.
A few minutes after I hit the “publish” button, I checked google and it was indexed already. What’s strange is that it’s not there at all now.
I hate this business but I love it.
Scott
Lisa // Apr 3, 2008 at 6:19 am
I love your blog. Came across it by accident and recognized the name from the PLRpro forum.
I hadn’t heard of hub pages until I read your post so
I built one this morning for a low competition keyword and it was indexed about an hour after publishing (or could have been less). As I write this it’s still on the second page of ‘latest hubs’. It was also top of page 3 of google for the main keyword. That seems pretty amazing to me so thanks forthe tip!
Splork // Apr 3, 2008 at 7:52 am
Scott, yea I know how you feel. Some days it seems to make more sense to come home from work and go cut someone’s grass for some extra cash rather than sit in front of the computer and do this mess.
Splork // Apr 3, 2008 at 7:52 am
Hey Lisa. Thanks for Reading. Hubpages is turning out to be pretty cool.
Scott Lyons // Apr 3, 2008 at 4:35 pm
I have not even looked at hubpages yet. Do they allow blatant affiliate links?
Also, is it as much trouble as squidoo?(5 bits of content to start, repeat every week, etc.)
Scott
Grizzly // Apr 3, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Ok Splork you have tweaked my interest. Is there anyway I can entice you to write a post for my site about this - I keep hearing about hubpages but am woefully ignorant and I think it’s time I catch up as this appears to be right up my alley. I’d just send a link here but I think you could win over my readers best if you appeared on the blog and charmed them directly. You would of course include your link in the post and I would build you up as the greatest thing since sliced bread in the pre-amble. Let me know - I’d love to know about this and I’m sure it could benefit my crew. No worries if you aren’t into it - I’ll just have Vic do a post about you… ha.
Splork // Apr 3, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Yea, I’m scared of Vic and his vlog these days. Best to stay on the good side of that. Sure man I’ll do it, but I’m no sliced bread. I’m pretty much making it up as I go.
I’ll try and knock something out in the next couple days. I’m a 8-5 cubicle dweller with a softball game tomorrow night so it may be this weekend before I can write this article faking like I know anything
Once you see how easy it is you’ll be like “and I leaked page rank juice for this!?”
Grizzly // Apr 4, 2008 at 7:19 am
Excellent. Anytime you can is fine and Softball? You apparently live in warmer climes than me. Still plowing snow in the yard…
and I love leaking juice for a good cause…
Talk soon.
Vinny Lingo // Apr 5, 2008 at 11:06 am
Hubpages are awesome. I think just about every one I’ve made got indexed by G in less than an hour. And they seem to be ranking well for the most part. That service definitely deserves more love than it gets. Definitely seems to be getting more love from G, lately.
Splork // Apr 8, 2008 at 10:01 am
I have a couple of Hubpages accounts. I haven’t really done much with the splork account. I wrote up a long hub and would like for anyone, everyone, to join my fanclub. I plan on using this account for Lost Ball type of topics. Click here to join my fanclub. Thanks.
Sell Squidoo // Apr 8, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Imagine what 10 Hubpages can do when they all link up to your site.Hubpage is great and you don’t need to be a programmer to use this tool.
Jay | Wealthy Affiliate Insider // Apr 16, 2008 at 10:41 am
I’ve been on hubpages for almost 12 months now, have 4 accounts and some great results. Most of my profile pages are either PR 3 or 4 and the effects of linking out from them are great.
I think what makes hubpages so great is the internal SEO - it works even better than Squidoo I think and Google loves them more.
Couple of things that bite me though - you can use affiliate links but if you use more than 2 clickbank hoplinks on the same hub they’ll flag you - because they say that its the same domain (Clickbank I guess) even if it redirects to different merchant sites). Pretty weird but I guess they’re just trying to protect their assets.
Jenny Ford // Apr 18, 2008 at 1:02 am
Hey, Splork, if you’re worried about keeping a Hub fresh just drop in an RSS feed from a blog or an article author, and you need never touch the page again.
I have Hubs I haven’t touched in months that still show on the first or second page of Google results.
Splork // Apr 18, 2008 at 6:21 am
Thanks for the tip Jenny.
migpir // Apr 28, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Hi Splork,
I read the build up Grizzly gave you on his site and I thought I pay a visit. One thing, I tried going to Hubpages.com today and it was a parked domain. Can Google even slap domains now?
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