Tips to Improve Earnings on Hubpages

I will keep this short and sweet. Since most hubpage writers don't think like marketers, I figured I would give a few tips on how to improve your earnings on hubpages. This advice isn't that advanced but should help you "up" your hubpage earnings. And I think that once you read this article, you will be wanting to kick yourself for not doing these things...

Making money with hubpages is easy but when you are trying to make more money, this is when it requires honing and refining your marketing strategy.  You may disagree with some of these tips but bear in mind, I can't can't account for what works for others....I only know what works for me....

I read hubs a lot.  And what I have noticed is the majority of people write articles across multiple markets.  This is okay if you are writer but if the mission of your hub experience is to not only be informative but make money, sticking to one market or niche will make perfect sense.

Here's several reasons why-

1. By sticking to one niche or market, you become very familiar with the type of person who will be most likely to visit.  For instance, I am in the home remedy niche, which consequently is a very large niche.  I have been in this market for around 5 years now.  I understand the behavior of those in the market (in a general sense) and I know what moves them.  Knowing these things gives me a distinct advantage over someone who is casually writing a blurb or article or hub.
2. One market or niche makes writing a breeze because you will likely become an EXPERT in that market...whether you want to or not-  I can tell you more things about gout than I would care to admit.  But I have to tell you that after writing nearly 300 articles on this subject, I can write them in my sleep.  And that gives me an advantage over someone who has to spend the time researching the subject and then carefully writing an article.  By the time they are done with one hub, I could have 3 done.
3. Volume, Volume, Volume-If you can become an expert, you can literally saturate the market with hubs.  This is good because it makes you more visible.  It also gives you a chance to grab traffic from the most important place...organic search...

Bloggers are a hard headed lot when it comes to social traffic. They want comments. They want exposure. They want someone to pat them on the back for a job well done. And social traffic will do exactly that.

But if you are looking to earn and build your hubpages revenue, you will have to come to grips that organic traffic is the traffic you want.

I will give you two scenarios to illustrate this...one is a social visitor, the other is a visitor coming from search...

Social visitor finds your hub while they are perusing the tag feature on hubpages. They are looking for interesting things to read. They read your article on gout because their sister's brother-in-law's uncle has it and they think they may be able to pass along a couple tips when they see him next year during Christmas. They read your article from start to finish and satified, they move on.

Organic search visitor woke up this morning feeling like he had glass in his feet. The pain is so intense that he can hardly walk. He googles "pain in foot, feels like glass" (or something to that effect) and after a self diagnosis, determines that he likely has gout. He googles "home remedies for gout", winds up on a hub page that offers a few remedies with a link to a book at the end of the article. There are optimized google ads that offer a solution as well....

So who wins this battle? Which Visitor clicks more frequently on ads? Which visitor is more likely to buy something?

I hope that illustration helps you understand that it ain't traffic volume that really matters, it is how targeted the traffic you get that really matters. And hubpages will love you for it (after all, they get paid too).

As an aside, a lot of times, it isn't the adsense that you want the visitor to click but a self made ad in which you stand to make much more money than a simple click.  There is a science to doing this right though.  The affiliate marketing business relies very much on niche marketing and finding the right keywords that convert traffic.  For more on this, check out my advice for beginner affiliate marketers.

So, how do you get ranked organically? The good news is that hubpages (and many other web2.0 properties) have earned a lot of trust and authority in the eyes of the major search engines, particularly google, so a lot of time you simply have to understand on page optimization.

...and it isn't as hard as you think....

Basically all that on page optimization means is that you are trying to make your page as relevant as possible to the keyword or conversation that your article is having. The reason why you do this is because google needs to know these things so that they know where your page fits. Makes sense, right?

• The title tag is the first clue. It tells google what the page is about.
• The first paragraph should clearly say what your hub is about.
• Semantic phrases within the body of the article will help it out too...
• Any outbound links that point to relevant on topic stuff in your niche will do so as well (I will talk more on that in a second).

That's pretty much it. Obviously, the shorter the title tag, the greater the chance of google understanding what your hub is about and the better chance it will rank you right out of the gate without any off page optimization (which is a fancy word for getting links to your hubpage).

I actually dive deeper in this topic on my SEO for hubpages hub.  But I want to reiterate that SEO for hubpages is no different than SEO for any other page.  The only major factor is the trust and authority that Google gives hubpages and sites like hubpages.

There is a "dance" that you, the writer, have to do here. On one side, you want to get the organic traffic to make money with hubpages. On the other hand, you want to write compelling headlines to get them to click. Now I can't teach you what works and what doesn't work. But I do know this....

The closer your headline matches the exact search query, the better chance you will have of getting a visitor....

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Before I get into offpage stuff (or the link getting part which is no fun), there are some things that may be of use to you.

You see, many marketers focus really heavily on getting links from outside the website. But in truth, you can also get links on the inside that could propel you up in the rankings without any other links necessary.

Internal linking simply means to link up pages within a site. Since you probably have a gazillion or two hubpages already, this simply entails going to another relevant hubpage that you wrote and throwing in a link with the proper anchor text (the keyword you are hoping to rank for) pointing to the site you are trying to push up the ranks.

Article directories such as ezine articles and content sites such as wisegeek do this so effectively that they rank for all sorts of long tail keywords without much external linking.

Why does it work so well?

Well, I already spoke about how much respect Google is giving Hubpages.  And if you buy that google is looking for the most relevant page for a search query, then it is only a matter of pointing enough links to show that it is relevant.

I have created hubs with the specific purpose of cross linking to one hub to push it up the rankings.

By the way, this also works if you are shooting for a particular keyword that another hubpage is ranking for.  You can push them off the rankings by creating a ton of hubs that say it is the most relevant.

This is a bit tricky because typically the only websites that benefit from the PR juice (at least from what I can tell) are the "hot hubs".  Hot hubs are basically tag pages that will push similar hubpages together to give you a look at some of the best within that particular market.

There are a couple benefits to getting listed on a "hot hubs" tag...

1. Some Tags actually rank for long tail keywords....
2. Some tags carry pagerank which can be passed on to your page if you are fortunate enough to get there...

If you can't get organic traffic for your hubpage simply based on building a solid collection of hubs that link together, the other option is to build backlinks from other websites.  You can do this a variety of ways:

• Linkbait hubs-  One option although not as easy as it sounds is to build a hub with the specific purpose of gaining backlinks.  Many marketers do this by building pages centered around a hot trend that thousands are interested in.  Others will use lists (although this isn't nearly as effective as it used to be).
• You can build the links yourself-  This is probably the most popular option as it requires a little more effort but you know what you are getting.  Typically, what I do is simply rewrite my hubs several times over and throw up on other sites with links that point to my hub.  Places to do this include article directories such as ezinearticles, infobarrel, squidoo, xomba ect.  What makes this strategy so interesting is that you can actually rank in multiple listings for the same keyword.

Now chances are you have an idea of what you are hoping to rank for.  But sometimes it doesn't work out that way and you wind up getting traffic from other keywords that are secondary.  What then?

After a month or two, you will have a good idea of how relevant google thinks you are.  You will know about where you stand and how much work you need to put into it to get it ranked.

But another option is to use analytical data to find out how people are getting to your site. Here is what I do:

• After 2 months, I will open up my google analytics and take a keyword survey over the entire 2 months...
• What I will typically find is my primary keyword, if it is ranking will get the lionshare of traffic.
• But there will be other keywords or conversations that got them there as well.  If I have any conversations that show any kind of great potential, I will create a separate hub for it.
• For the other keywords, I will simply build a backlink or two using the secondary keyword as the anchor text.
• The result?  I will rank for both keywords!