Squidoo Versus Hubpages

[USGTMauthor]

I am pretty much a newbie to all of this. I have a very simple squidoo lense for over a week and and an even simpler hubpage with only one article on it for only a couple of days. I looked at my google analytics stats and low and behold the hubpage sent 15 traffic to my blog and none from squidoo. I am wondering if it is true that google likes hubpages better. Has anyone else seen this?

Thanks

[Intrepreneur]

Originally Posted by USGTMauthor

I am pretty much a newbie to all of this. I have a very simple squidoo lense for over a week and and an even simpler hubpage with only one article on it for only a couple of days. I looked at my google analytics stats and low and behold the hubpage sent 15 traffic to my blog and none from squidoo. I am wondering if it is true that google likes hubpages better. Has anyone else seen this?

Thanks

Hubpages virally spread your lens link throughout their website under other people's articles and in other places. This helps your article get seen by more people and with giving ranking power to it. Squidoo don't do this as well as hubpages do. Basically your lens is left on an island (no links to it to gain traffic from) unless you do something about it. (this usually means making it popular somehow).

To increase traffic on Suidoo, when you set up a Squidoo account comment on other people's lenses every now and then to get at least a tiny bit of traffic trickling through and some link juice to start getting your profile (when you comment on other lesnes you get a link back to your squid profile) noticed by the search engines. Your profile has links to your lenses so it's all worth it. Overall you're probably best with HubPages as they're more likely to bring you traffic with less effort.

[SantiSantana]

In fact I have often heard the opposite; google liking Squidoo better and Squidoo doing some changes in their ToS to make sure that remains the case.

But I think that would be all things being equal, meaning two pages of the same type of content getting the same traffic, so what is happening is most likely what the above poster said; Hubpages actually helping you by spreading your content within their network for higher visibility.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by USGTMauthor

I am pretty much a newbie to all of this. I have a very simple squidoo lense for over a week and and an even simpler hubpage with only one article on it for only a couple of days. I looked at my google analytics stats and low and behold the hubpage sent 15 traffic to my blog and none from squidoo. I am wondering if it is true that google likes hubpages better. Has anyone else seen this?

Thanks

First of all, a week is way to short a period of time to come to any conclusions
about anything.

As far as whether Google likes HubPages or Squidoo better, what Google
likes is relevant content, at least in theory. And while I have seen
examples of page 1 listings that are pure crap, for the most part, depending
on the niche, the info you find on page 1 of Google for the relative
keyword(s) is usually decent. Some niches, better than others, but for
the most part, decent.

One thing you have to be careful with HubPages is that they are very
strict...much stricter than Squidoo. If they even suspect you're using
your HubPages for the purpose of making money, they'll shut you down
in a heartbeat. I use them to send people to other articles and not to
squeeze or sales pages.

Squidoo is a little less strict but since the porn spammers of a year or so
back, I find they don't get the traffic they used to. But again, that's just
for the niches I am personally using. Other niches may perform better,
especially if...

1. There isn't as much competition.
2. The content out there isn't as good.

But again, a week is way too soon to tell. Either way, don't put all your
eggs in either basket. Use as many platforms as you can including article
directories, blogs and even converting some of your content to video and
posting it on YouTube and other directories.

I have found that volume, as long as it's all good quality content, is
ultimately what will bring in the traffic.

Hope this helps.

[Billy Rey]

there's just to many factors for you to conclude anything. try making a test of 10 hubs and 10 squidoo lens. the results would be more factual.

[bravo75]

Who comes up with these names? Twitter, Squidoo, hubpages etc. Where they all doing crack at the time?

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Use both.

[WinsonYeung]

As Steven Wagenheim have said, just 1-2 weeks is too short to experience anything.
You should also keep building backlinks to your squidoo lens if you want to get more traffic.

On a personal experience, Squidoo len is no use for me unless I start to do SEO for it.

[Eric Graudins]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

One thing you have to be careful with HubPages is that they are very
strict...much stricter than Squidoo. If they even suspect you're using
your HubPages for the purpose of making money, they'll shut you down
in a heartbeat.

That's not quite the case.

If you write an original article on hubPages, it is allowed to have 2 "self serving" links, plus links to other sites that are relevant to the content of the article.

(A self serving link is one that goes to your own website, or one of your affiliate links.)

If you publish a non original article, it will be labelled as "Duplicate content", and you are not allowed to have any self serving links in it.

If you breach these rules and HubPages discovers it, the article will be unpublished and you have the opportunity to correct it.

cheers,
Eric G.

[BIG Mike]

Originally Posted by Emmanuel Betinis

Use both.

Let me re-phrase that...Use Everything!

Don't get yourself caught up into only using one or two WEB 2.0 properties to generate traffic - if they change policies, go under or whatever, you're dead in the water.

It's better to spread things around and develop a strategy like multiple, nested link wheels to maximize your results and not feel the pinch if you're kicked off a given site.

Just take a look at all threads on this forum where people are constantly griping about Ezine Articles - it's great to use them, but don't build your traffic foundation on them.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by Eric Graudins

That's not quite the case.

If you write an original article on hubPages, it is allowed to have 2 "self serving" links, plus links to other sites that are relevant to the content of the article.

(A self serving link is one that goes to your own website, or one of your affiliate links.)

If you publish a non original article, it will be labelled as "Duplicate content", and you are not allowed to have any self serving links in it.

If you breach these rules and HubPages discovers it, the article will be unpublished and you have the opportunity to correct it.

cheers,
Eric G.

Well, that doesn't explain all the people who have written original articles,
well written, with only one self serving link in the resource box of all places,
and have had their accounts shut down.

Search the web for all the horror stories.

There are tons of them.

So I guess you should consider yourself lucky at this point in time.

Me? I'm not taking any chances with my account.

[Eric Graudins]

Steven,
I don't deny that people get banned from Hubpages.

What I quoted are the rules of hubpages relating to links to your own money making activities. There are also many other issues involved which cause people to be banned for various reasons.

But what I CAN say is that hubpages will not shut you down merely for including a link to something that will make you money.

My own hubs, and those of many of the people I know at Hubpages are proof of this.

Cheers,
Eric G.

[Steven Wagenheim]

Originally Posted by Eric Graudins

Steven,
I don't deny that people get banned from Hubpages.

What I quoted are the rules of hubpages relating to links to your own money making activities. There are also many other issues involved which cause people to be banned for various reasons.

But what I CAN say is that hubpages will not shut you down merely for including a link to something that will make you money.

My own hubs, and those of many of the people I know at Hubpages are proof of this.

Cheers,
Eric G.

Well, if that's true then there is a lot of misinformation going around about
HubPages.

My own personal pages are magazine length articles with no outbound
links other than to other articles.

So far, they've allowed me to keep my account.

Maybe I'll "attempt" one article with a link to a squeeze page and see
what happens.

If they shut me down, can I blame you?

[Fun to Write]

Originally Posted by Eric Graudins

Steven,
I don't deny that people get banned from Hubpages.

What I quoted are the rules of hubpages relating to links to your own money making activities. There are also many other issues involved which cause people to be banned for various reasons.

But what I CAN say is that hubpages will not shut you down merely for including a link to something that will make you money.

My own hubs, and those of many of the people I know at Hubpages are proof of this.

Cheers,
Eric G.

I support what Eric is saying.

I have one hub page that has original content about a certain electronic gadget. This page has been up for quite a while. It has one direct link to an affiliate site. I've made money from this hub. This hub is also linked to a very popular EZA article, which feeds it constant traffic.

I think you can't be too blatant and go overboard in your content.

Do a test Steve - in a niche other than how to make money.

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by BIG Mike

Let me re-phrase that...Use Everything!

Don't get yourself caught up into only using one or two WEB 2.0 properties to generate traffic - if they change policies, go under or whatever, you're dead in the water.

It's better to spread things around and develop a strategy like multiple, nested link wheels to maximize your results and not feel the pinch if you're kicked off a given site.

Just take a look at all threads on this forum where people are constantly griping about Ezine Articles - it's great to use them, but don't build your traffic foundation on them.

OPA!

Well said.

[Eric Graudins]

Originally Posted by Steven Wagenheim

If they shut me down, can I blame you?

Why not. I've got broad shoulders.

But if what you are saying is correct, they would have no reason to shut you down.

But they will shut down the accounts of "drive by spammers" who flood their system with dodgy user accounts, and spammy articles filled with links to dubious products.

Remember that Hubpages is primarily a place for authors to publish their own articles on a variety of topics.
It gets lots of traffic, which some people believe is a green light to spam it to death with anything and everything.

Much like Craigslist.

And Hubpages will take certainly take action to remove what they believe is against their terms of service and rules.

Steven, you are allowed to have multiple accounts on Hubpages. Why not open another one where you can test out what I'm saying.

cheers,
Eric G.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

If you look strictly at size Squidoo is bigger. However if you divide size by page views Hubpages is the winner. I read this on a blog and the guy had verification.

I personally do much much better on HubPages. I find it is much easier for me to write and rank and make money. I also like the interface better.

Whatever works.

[JMPruitt]

I use a combination of both. The key to using any social media site is to become involved in the community. Spend time commenting on other people's pages, make them relevant, and don't get into bashing them just because they are competition.

remember all that "competition" is also possible JV partners in the future. Get to know them and you will 1. increase your popularity within the niche , and 2. make contacts that will be profitable for you in the future.

[Joel Gray]

Use both along with other marketing methods such as social site techniques, blog carnival submission, article submission, rss feed submission, website directory submission, and a press release and you will see a rise in traffic.

Joel

[jonrpatrick]

I'll echo most of what you've heard here.
First, use both. If you don't, you're leaving money on the table.
Second, Hubpages is strict. To put it another way, they are a PITA. You have to be careful to create unique content on them, or they'll unpublish your page. I end up dealing with this about 1x a week, and I'm sick of it.

However, I stick with Hubpages based on a quick experiment I did last week.
I created a squidoo page and a hubpage on a keyword. I did the work between 11-12:00 at night.
The hubpage was indexed and showed up on the first page of google the next morning by 9:30.
The squidoo page didn't show up on a google search for about 36 hours, but ranked MUCH higher.

So far, they've roughly kept their relative positions. This just reinforces what we hear so frequently - google likes squidoo better.... but in at least 1 instance, my hubpage was up much, much faster.

[Eric Graudins]

Originally Posted by jonrpatrick

You have to be careful to create unique content on them, or they'll unpublish your page. I end up dealing with this about 1x a week, and I'm sick of it.

Sorry, this is not correct.

Here's the rules.

1. If you create a hub with original content which does not appear anywhere else on the internet, you can have 2 self serving links.

2. If your publish a hub with content that also appears somewhere else, the hub will be flagged as "duplicate". This affects the score that the hub receives, but the hub will not be unpublished.

3. A hub marked as duplicate cannot have ANY self serving links.
If it does, then it will be unpublished by hubpages when it is detected.
You then have the opportunity to remove the self serving links, and publish again.

4. If you keep breaking Hubpages rules, your account can get banned.

I've had content on hubpages indexed in as little as 20 minutes sometimes.

If you want to use hubpages, make yourself aware of what's allowed, and what isn't allowed. Stay within that, and you'll be fine. If you don't want to stick with their rules, don't post there. Simple.
Cheers,
Eric G.

[kevinw1]

Use both, and other things.

Just for a SQ/Hub comparison, though, here are some real life numbers:

In May and June, a couple of weeks apart, I published a Hubpage and SQ lens on the same topic. I used the same original article for each, but re-wrote it to make them different enough to be seen as unique content. I used the same keyphrase in the title, plus a few different words on each page so the titles are slightly different, and tagged the pages with that keyphrase plus some other relevant ones.

Stats are: 32 visits per day to the SQ lens (65% from G), 24 per day to the hub (no way to tell what proportion is G).

SQ lens sent 4.6 visits/day to my money site, hub sent 1.75 visits/day.

Hub visitors have a higher adsense CTR and a higher eCPM when on my site, but not enough to outweigh the greater number of SQ visitors.

SQ lens is ranked #6 on a G search for the keyphrase, hub is ranked #31. Both have had substantially the same amount of backlinking done.

Make of that what you will

[KellyK]

Squidoo takes a little longer to index. However, if you've got decent content, Google will eventually "take to" your lenses.

Both platforms have their pros and cons. I tend to prefer Squidoo because I like the interface better and they aren't as strict as Hubpages. I still like Hubpages. They do well with Adsense on their own and are indexed quickly.

With Squidoo, I can be a bit more free with the design and I do love the community at Squidoo.

[Emmanuel Betinis]

Originally Posted by kevinw1

SQ lens is ranked #6 on a G search for the keyphrase, hub is ranked #31. Both have had substantially the same amount of backlinking done.

Excuse me, Kevin...

What amount & type of backlinks did you blast over to the two properties?

[kevinw1]

LOL, Emmanuel, that was 6 months ago - sorry, I don't remember specifically. Nothing secret or special

[peetred]

I hate squidoo. I love hubpages. End of story.

[hinduhead]

hubpages seems to recognize duplicate content from other sites, i submitted a article that has been submitted to a few ather directories and i got flagged as duplicate? is this common?

[Best Affiliate]

Use squidoo for linking power to your money site and hubpages for traffic. You have to maintain a 75 user account score for your links to be dofollow on hubpages, but hubpages does well in google and Bing both. You can get hubpages ranked easier than squidoo and faster IMOP. Additionally, huppages gets indexed a lot faster than squidoo unless you do some sort of link wheel and link several other sites to your squidoo it will take forever to get your squidoo lens indexed. At least from my testing that is the case.

[anuj291]

Squidoo was the most popular growing Social site.. but as far as i remember Hubpages are more preferred by people these days

[jonrpatrick]

Originally Posted by Eric Graudins

Sorry, this is not correct.

I should have added more information to make that more clear.
Since I add a link to another site - be it blog or my aff. link - to each hubpage, I don't get just the 'duplicate' note but unpublished as well.

My frustration (the "I'm sick of it") comes from the fact that Hubpages is as inconsistent applying their rules as Ezines!

I have hubs with content almost exactly what I have on Squidoo that's been fine for a long time.

I have hubs substantially changed from anything else, and hubpages will flag it.

It's extremely frustrating.

[grumpyjacksa]

strangely enough....

hubpages has always sent me drips of traffic - even from crappy hubs i used to build.

but...

both my worst and best performers are on squidoo...

on the social side, i found HP easier to "fit into"...

but at the end of the day, squidoo has the higher PR...

and they are less full of bull...

just my 0.02c

pj

[rickyou]

I have had better result from Hubpages in terms of traffic and adsense clicks. But I use both of them

Rick

[Neil V]

I have been using Hub pages for over a year now and it rocks, i mean in terms of traffic.

Squidoo works but depending on the keywords i find not as well as hub pages.

I have found so many different opinions on both but i can tell you hub pages work well if you know how to use this.


here's one of my best tips. if you are opening a new hub page account then make sure you first two pages of content are well written and does not contain links pointing out. In fact dont point any outbound links for the first two posts.

I get my profile approved by Hub this way. And in a week or so, i go ahead and create affiliate style pages with direct links to clickbank and affiliate pages.

Once your profile has some level of maturity, you will be shocked as to what you can do on hub pages. And yes it ranks well.

You just have to figure out where the traffic spots are on hub pages.


Since i am new to warrior forum, you can ask away with any questions you have or send me a pm and i will respond to you.I cant pm you because i have a low post count. I have been using hub extensively over the last year and getting great results.

The best advice. Test this on your own. By the way i do believe that Squidoo also works well but am still testing this and have not cracked this nut as yet.

Neil

[tommen]

I have used Squidoo in the past, but switched over to Hubpages.I started writing 2-4 original hubs per day a month ago (November 1, 2009) and the hubs are slowly starting to get traffic.I bet they will get a lot more traffic when the hubs get older and "mature".