Slapped By HubPages. What Next?

[travlinguy]

In the last two days I've received two "Overly Promotional" notices about a couple of my hubs on HubPages. One was for an affiliate link in my content, the other was for "excessive" links pointing to prohibited sites.

Apparantly, sales pages are prohibited. All of the content on these hubs is high quality, informative and original. I've removed the affiliate link and knocked the number of outgoing links down to their standards. Still, I just got a third notice for the same things.

Using a special report I got in the War Room I was able to get these hubs on Google page one pretty quickly for some pretty competitive keywords (one in only two days) so I don't really want to abandon HubPages all together though I will if I have to do too much redirecting, writing landing pages, etc. I tried the same keyword technique on Squidoo but it hasn't worked well there.

So, the question is, what are the best free blogs without these restrictions? I just went through the TOS for Blogger and don't see any restrictions like HubPages has. Any others? Thanks in advance.

[jamjar919]

Squidoo takes a lot more time to rank, but I find that the results are better than hubpages in the long term.

Blogger is a very quick to get started program - Google owns it, so they rank pretty well. You can use affiliate links and sales pages on blogger.

Wordpress does not allow affiliate links and such.

I also got a couple hubs prohibited for linking to "Prohibited sites"

[JamesGw]

I haven't had any issues with hubpages aside from a decrease in traffic due to Panda. That said, you're better off just putting the content on your own sites.

[Benjamin Ehinger]

This is why I always advice to build your own blog on your own domain because then if you get slapped it is your own fault. Plus once your own pages are ranked they are more likely to stay there. I only use hubpages and squidoo for backlinking to my own sites.

Plus, if you think about the hassle you are going through and the amount of money you could have been making if you had a hosting account and your own blog, then you will see why spending $10 a month is necessary.

I hate having to trust other sites to keep my hard work and content up. I would much rather have my own hosting and domain.

Benjamin Ehinger

[travlinguy]

Originally Posted by Benjamin Ehinger

This is why I always advice to build your own blog on your own domain because then if you get slapped it is your own fault. Plus once your own pages are ranked they are more likely to stay there. I only use hubpages and squidoo for backlinking to my own sites.

Plus, if you think about the hassle you are going through and the amount of money you could have been making if you had a hosting account and your own blog, then you will see why spending $10 a month is necessary.

I hate having to trust other sites to keep my hard work and content up. I would much rather have my own hosting and domain.

Benjamin Ehinger

I'm with you. I have a couple of unlimited hosting accounts and use them for my primary domains. I was doing exactly what you've suggested, getting backlinks back to my own properties. HubPages started out great. My pages were getting indexed within hours and then started showing up on page one for some great keywords.

I'm just looking for alternative free blogs in addition to all the other stuff I've got out there. You can't beat free. There's another tread going where the opinion is Squidoo is good.

I have seen very little traffic from my lenses but they haven't been up that long. Blogger is also an option but I really don't want to deal with Google if I don't have to. Did I really say that?

[thriftgirl62]

Several months ago Squidoo announced they are no longer supporting lenses related to affiliate marketing and so did Hubpages not too long ago, ie .. outgoing links and pages with affiliate ads, etc.

The negative trend against affiliate marketers continues with Plimus now refusing to allow affiliate marketing products that Clickbank won't approve anymore. Brand new products [SEO, Ranking, Linking, etc...] that were scheduled months ago for launching NOW and into the future simply don't work. They are old and out-dated before they even hit the market because all these "little guys" even with a "team" rarely have more than one programmer and they just can't keep up anymore. Go where the big boys go, sites like: OnDialog | PURLs - Personalized URLs | landing pages | microsites or www.ez-1.net/rank

24 hours a day x ONE is NOT humanly possible to keep up with all the changes even if he could stay awake and work 24-7 which is both impossible and unreasonable!! There is no such thing as impossible and even unrealistic doesn't matter - if you can't find a way, make a way. I know all that but when it becomes unreasonable, that's when it's a done deal.

Don't cry because it's OVER, smile because it happened.

[bigcat1967]

I haven't had any issues with hubpages aside from a decrease in traffic due to Panda. That said, you're better off just putting the content on your own sites.

Yep - I saw my hubs go down after Panda and I just add pages to my sites - I'm not sure I'll do Hubpages or any Web 2.0 prop again...

[thriftgirl62]

Originally Posted by travlinguy

I'm just looking for alternative free blogs in addition to all the other stuff I've got out there. You can't beat free.

Here's something that might work - I found this site not too long ago and NO, I'm not an affiliate for them or anything - I could be getting "rewards" for telling people about the site but I don't have any Blogs registered there but I would if I had some Blogs like you do!

FREE TRAFFIC Especially for BLOGS!! This PR4 Site has been helping people get to Page ONE on Google since 2008