SEO Tips From HubPages CEO Paul Edmondson

A recent blog post by Paul Edmondson, CEO of HubPages gives some tips and advice on the characteristics of content that drives traffic. Basically, he discussed what makes content effective when it comes to readership and search engine rankings. This is all, of course, a response to the recent decision of HubPages to switch users to a personal subdomain instead of before where we all shared the common "www" subdomain (something I don't really agree with but have no choice but to comply).

This switch was all because of Google Panda, an issue I've discussed profusely. It's so obvious how much HubPages was impacted by the Panda algorithm update. And now, he gives tips on how to get by during this authoritarian regime of the Panda and I must say I did learn a thing or two from his advice (it's also available as a podcast that can be downlaoded from the HubPages blog).

In this article, you will be encountering some of my thoughts and reactions regarding the different tips and advice he gave. He is the CEO after all and I'm sure he has a team of very skillful people who specialize in search engine optimization so it's only right that we heed his advice and learn from his examples.

Basically, the advice was to write about "growing organic tomatoes". I found it funny and even replied that it's a weird advice. But then you have to realize that people of the world are weird and they do have weird desires to grow their own organic garden. Plus, if it's something that you've personally done in your life, you'll surely be able to write helpful information based on experience regarding the topic (one thing that he emphasized on).

This is also why he expressed that it is better to write in the first person point-of-view, writing with "I" instead of "you". This is because patronage of readers can increase when they see that the author is talking about an experience rather than just trying to sell something. This is more on the Amazon ads though (something I'm not really part of but should really consider for some extra income).

That's a lot like how I write especially with some of the gadget reviews I have. Come to think of it, I would usually only write about a gadget if it's something I have. And that makes a lot of sense because I have empirical data regarding the product and therefore I can really share what it's like to have firsthand experience of using it. I would love to link you all to my gadget reviews but then I have to consider another one of Paul Edmondson's advice that writers shouldn't go mad on backlinking (something I'm guilty of).

Google notices it when links are not related to the content and so it is better if you just link stuff that's related to the blog post that you are currently writing. This will not only increase the quality of your content (make it not look like spam) and at the same time make you score high with the search engine algorithms.

Then there's the part about deleting or revising Hubs that aren't getting any real traffic. I feel really bad about this but then the subdomain switch is seemingly making this very inevitable. Now that I have a personal subdomain, my bad articles are dragging down my good articles. But then my big problem with this is that I sometimes have really good articles, those that I really poured my heart and soul into, but aren't really ranking or getting traffic. This furthers my theory that Google, in spite of its efforts, many times will penalize high quality content by mistake. And so out of sentiment, I don't really feel like deleting any of my Hubs but I guess eventually I will have to.

As I have said, I'm not really so fond of the switch to the subdomain. I really need to assess what's going on with my Hubs especially the newer ones. Tomorrow is actually the last day of my HubPages 30-day challenge and can be a perfect opportunity to analyze how Google Panda and the switch to subdomain has affected my rankings and traffic (I have said before that my old Hubs weren't affected as much but I'm not yet sure with new ones I'm posting).

Maybe I can discuss one by one the different articles I wrote throughout the challenge and talk about how it is doing with regards to rankings, traffic, and earnings. Although I don't know yet how I can discuss earnings generated by this whole challenge thing because I recently discovered that Google AdSense bloggers are not allowed to post screenshots of their earnings.