Squidoo and Hubpages - Still worthwhile?

48 replies
Hi Folks,
I've never really utilised Squidoo and Hubpages, but with my new project I want to make sure I am getting full leverage of the content I create.

Is it still worth setting up both of these to publish my content?
Has the Google update had any major impact?
Are there any immediate do's and don'ts to using these 2 vehicles?

Thanks!
Gordon
#hubpages #squidoo #worthwhile
  • Profile picture of the author Hamida Harland
    Personally I haven't used either in a long time. I used to get massive traffic using Squidoo, but that fizzled out when they became really strict on the type of content they allow. Squidoo don't rank that well anymore either.

    Hubpages do seem to rank okay still (although from what I've heard they were affected by the latest update). The reason I don't use them is because they're covered in ads, they only allow a minimal amount of links to your own site, and the links from them are no follow unless you keep your hub above a certain score. The hubs that do rank well normally only do so because the owner has built lots of links to them - personally I only build links to my own sites.

    The best way to get full leverage for the content you create is to put it on your own site - not on third party sites that you never have full control over.
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  • Profile picture of the author DanielleLynnCopy
    Originally Posted by The Great Gordino View Post

    Hi Folks,
    I've never really utilised Squidoo and Hubpages, but with my new project I want to make sure I am getting full leverage of the content I create.

    Is it still worth setting up both of these to publish my content?
    Has the Google update had any major impact?
    Are there any immediate do's and don'ts to using these 2 vehicles?

    Thanks!
    Gordon
    Hi Gordon,

    I'm not a huge Squidoo or Hubpage user, but I have set up accounts with them - I've gotten a bit of extra traffic from them, but as Hamida said - it's even better to build up your own site!

    (with quality content of course)
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    • Profile picture of the author The Great Gordino
      Thanks for replies - I publish the content on my own site first, but since there are so many other ways and places to leverage the content, if squidoo and hubpages are a waste of time, I'd rather use that time to do other things, if that makes sense.

      More opinions welcome! ;-)
      G
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      • Profile picture of the author mavericx
        I've heard they can be good for some deep-linking strategies....but I don't know too much about it.
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        • Profile picture of the author mavericx
          Sometimes I still see squidoo pages appear in google on the first page for certain search results; but as someone else said, I think you are better off building your own site with good content.
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          • Profile picture of the author LilBlackDress
            There are lots of sites you can use to get great backlinks for your site that are faster and easier than Hub and Squid. I like Tumblr and Zimbio.

            I do like Hubpages but found it harder to get things indexed at Squidoo. I stopped using Squid after they locked a ton of accounts including mine (which were later unlocked).

            As others have said the key is to build your own properties but these other web2.0 sites can be helpful.
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  • Profile picture of the author nerrutis
    YES!
    And squidoo delivers better than hubpages, but its more difficult to start and understand the behavior of a website.

    Thank you!
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  • Profile picture of the author Gaston Wolf
    I usually use hubpages and squido lenses to link back to my money site, good for link wheels or what ever you want to call them. Target some related keywords with hub, with a link to your money site and backlink the crap out of the hub. It can provide traffic and a valuable backlink.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kenwrites
    If it is for backlinking to your own sites, Hubs are getting better and quicker rankings than Squidoo Lens.

    Is it still worth it to set up both to publish content? Sure, but as others have said if you are using them strictly for backlinking limit your time on them.

    The Google update affected all of them. But in the end it still goes back to quality content. Squidoo lens though seem to be have been affected more than the Hubs.

    People still make money writing strictly at Hub Pages or Squidoo. So yes, they are still worth the time for backlinking.

    Don't oversell in your copy and take advantage of every opportunity to put links in. Limit the Hub Pages in-text link to your sites to one or two and use the 'Link" module at the bottom just like a resource box.
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael Shook
      I do have some of both kinds. I don't use them much becasue I always wind up feeling exhausted after working with them.

      I have found it much easier to write on my own sites and obtain some other backlinks that don't leave me feeling dazed and confused.
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  • Profile picture of the author kevinw1
    I get very good results from Squidoo lenses, both for high PR backlinks and for traffic. However, these are lenses which are years old and have developed high rankings over time, and I have quite a lot of lenses which feed into each other. Have not had such good results with Hubpages.
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    • Profile picture of the author aminwasu
      I have hard time with hubpages. Every time your score goes down the links become nofollow. I gave it up. If i spend the same time at ezine, It would give me good link juice and it rank really high in Google searches.
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  • Profile picture of the author masterjani
    For backlinks and traffic point of view it is worth to create accounts on both of them
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  • Profile picture of the author josephl
    I agree with kevinw. I use squidoo as links are dofollow. Just rewrite your content and insert a few images. btw squidoo allows anchor text as well. one thing i like about squidoo is that i get indexed very quickly. i did use hubpages but you have to a score of above 75 to allow links to be clickable. and i feel it is not worth the hassle. Botha re time consuming - that is the downside.
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  • Profile picture of the author paintbrush4u
    I agree with some of the posts....
    From what I have seen and read... the latest google's farmer update has ravaged the hubpages model but for some reason, squidoo seems to remain unaffected....

    Question for the community... did anyone outside of Google see this Google Farmers update coming.. and did you expect it to wreak havoc like it did....
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    • Profile picture of the author fitz10
      Originally Posted by paintbrush4u View Post

      I agree with some of the posts....
      From what I have seen and read... the latest google's farmer update has ravaged the hubpages model but for some reason, squidoo seems to remain unaffected....
      Hubpages has, statistically speaking. been more affected by this update than Squidoo. Squidoo experienced a drop off in traffic a few years ago, which it never really recovered from, but Farmer hasn't effected it as much. Hubpages had a 67% drop due to Farmer and lost 102,820 positions, which according to Sistrix was the 4th biggest drop out of any website.
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      • Profile picture of the author Damien Sayer
        Ok... I think it's still worthwhile as an added link building avenue... is there any software that can speed up the process at least? or is this pretty impossible by the nature of where these sites are held.....?
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  • Profile picture of the author msmir75
    I know they are good for linking purposes but other than that I don't care for them. You may be aware of this but I found this directory of other better places where you can submit your stuff (tells you page rank, no follow, etc)
    http://www.vretoolbar.com/articles/directories.php
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  • Profile picture of the author Damien Sayer
    Is there a tool that automatically creates a hub or squid lens? in a similar vain to some of the autobloggers? if not, is there no market for it?
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    • Profile picture of the author Tom E
      In my experience, it has dropped in rankings. Then again, I have friends whose lenses have stuck.

      Bottom line: Only use your own sites. This time around, the Google algo change hit sites likes Ezinearticles - next time, who knows which site is on the chopping block. You can't go wrong with your own site, as long as you don't just fill it up with junk/dupe content
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  • Profile picture of the author PMinc
    Since the big change was ushered in, I've put more energy on Hubpages and I'm actually quite happy with the results.
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  • Profile picture of the author tritrain
    Squidoo is doing well.
    HubPages has been hit hard by Florida/Panda.
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  • Profile picture of the author mr.gaurabborah
    I was using hubpages from last 3 months. I had writter few good hubs there. I was getting a decent amount of traffic to my site without any linking. Until 3 days back all my hubs where taken out for keyword stuffing. My keyword density was well below 5%. They say there were other reasons too but what i don't get is I have to wait 3 months to know about this. This is strange.
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  • Profile picture of the author Raindance
    For me Squidoo is like digg. Get to the first page and get overwhelmed with traffic.

    And when the recent algo change happened, it was only Squidoo that was spared by Google. Every other web 2.0 property took a beating. You can even now look up lists of sites that suffered the consequences of the change and Ezine tops it but no mention of Squidoo anywhere. Squidoo was hurt previously really bad in a former update of Google, since then they've worked hard and done their best to not receive another shock.
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  • Profile picture of the author pizzatherapy
    I usually use hubpages and squido lenses to link back to my money site, good for link wheels or what ever you want to call them. Target some related keywords with hub, with a link to your money site and backlink the crap out of the hub. It can provide traffic and a valuable backlink.
    jason009 is totally right on.

    I agree that you should put your content on you own site first.

    But I think Hub pages and Squidoo Lenses can be used to help get backlinks.

    This is a great strategy: target key words and link to your money site...

    There are tons of other free blogs and platforms you can put content on that will give you plenty of link juice such as blogger blogs and word press hosted blogs.

    They certainly can't hurt...
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  • Profile picture of the author kevinw1
    Be aware that in response to Panda both Squidoo and Hubpages are now requiring unique content - so you can't just repurpose something you've already written, you have to at least spin or rewrite it.
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  • I use the squidoo lens all the time. It works great for traffic to my sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author rich8169
    @the great gordino: I am using both Hubpages and Squidoo and recently found out that Hubpages is stricter when come to potential duplicate content (even though it's not 100 % identical) and they will take down ur page for you to make revision and republish again! So, the do is make sure rewriting ur content and NOT spin it on both sites!

    Cheers! TGIF
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  • Profile picture of the author nebraska
    Hubpages, for me, have been steady amazon and adsense clicks...like clockwork. Squidoo Lenses are great places to do product specific content and shoot for sales directly. Infobarrel has also shown good traffic and adsense revenue.

    One thing I like to do is submit an article to Yahoo Contributor Network, (Associated Content) and if they accept it, I take their upfront payment and buy backlinks, blog comments, articles, etc., and link to the YCN article. It doesn't take too much to get the traffic coming in. Over time, YCN pays $1.5 per 1000 views, which can add up as you grow your portfolio over there.

    Now if they deny the article at YCN, I usually move it over to Hubpages, Squidoo, or Infobarrel, rather than submit it only to YCN performance payments.

    I do mostly product reviews, so most of the content works well on the other sites, especially hub and squid. Infobarrel is good for staright up adsense revenue so general content pieces fit in better over there.

    One of the unseen motivations for publishing on YCN is the opportunity to get your work syndicated on the rest of the Yahoo sites. For example, a golf review article I got accepted over there stands a chance of getting syndicated on Yahoo Sports, which interests me greatly as I'm wanting to develop my writing career and move on to more lucrative gigs.
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  • Profile picture of the author misterkailo
    All my traffic from Squidoo and Hubpages are dying. They are getting about 0 to 2 visitors per day. Back then, they were getting over 10 per day at least.
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  • Profile picture of the author uleesgold
    Banned
    I have not used Squidoo much, but I feel like getting back into it after reading this forum.

    I recently signed up for Tumblr and I'm impressed by how much prettier its interface is than Blogspot.

    There is a little bit of instant traffic with Hub Pages because its broadcasted on the site when a new Hub is published.

    I recently got into the habit of backlinking my hubs in different ways rather than on the same site all of the time ( I wish I had not have done that .)

    I'm looking at my stats now for Hub Pages and overall the number of unique page views is quite low comparing to Blogspot.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Agency
    Squidoo still effective I still seen my lenses apeared in Google search on the particular keyword and of course squidoo and hubpages are good source of traffic too.
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  • Profile picture of the author O0o0O
    Squidoo and Hubpages should be an integral part of your overall internet marketing strategy rather than a single strategy itself. Those pages should link to your main website where you are selling your product and/or promoting a variety of other products. Having several websites like these linking to your main site will help it rank well in the search engines.
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    • Profile picture of the author The Great Gordino
      Thanks for the replies folks, just the sort of views I was after!

      It seems to me that if Hubpages and Squidoo both require the content to be unique, then that time spent rewriting could be spent on either writing a whole new article for my own site, and/or using the original article at other places where I don't need to change it.

      Is that a sensible view?
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  • Profile picture of the author mark healy
    i only use it to create more and more backlinks to my sites
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    • Profile picture of the author sooner918
      I still make money off of my Squidoo lenses,and Hubpages is something I gave up on at least 8 months ago.Hubpages is too full of ads,and they are often directly related to the links which you are trying to promote for yourself.No thanks,I have to pass on that.My Squidoo lenses quickly rank;and as mentioned earlier in the thread,they make great link juice!
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  • Profile picture of the author turntablist
    anyone really making money off squidoo.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Trader
    Link each of the hubs or lenses to different inner pages of your money site, then develop links to the the hubs and lenses, and finally, social bookmark everything. That will get your content noticed and help to boost the traffic and (eventually) the page rank of the inside page of your money site.
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  • Profile picture of the author alexander13
    I don't use squidoo or hubpages to sell or make money directly but for the link from a high quality domain. If you're looking for traffic, rankings and direct cash from your hub or lens itself it sounds like wasted effort.
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  • Profile picture of the author samjaynz
    Hubpages seems to have taken a hiding from Panda- traffic down around 45% month on month (so far) - this is according to Google Analytics.

    I don't think Squidoo has been hit so badly.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ephrils
    I haven't used my Squidoo pages in forever. Still, every now and then I get sent about $10 from them so some people are still finding them. I've moved on passed these free services, but they can be good for quick testing, or just as throwaway fun pages. I'm definitely not looking to them for anything permanent anymore.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lyanna
    I don't use Hubpages so I can't comment on that but Squidoo is still okay for deeplinking the inner pages of my websites as well as some of my blog posts that don't get a lot of link love. Generally, other bloggers tend to link my home page only. Squidoo is great for links and a little bit of traffic if you actually bother to put good content in.
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  • Profile picture of the author Zach Crawley
    I would only use hubpages or squidoo now for sending the traffic to an opt-in page. Links from these sites aren't as good as they use to be.
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  • Profile picture of the author The Simpleton
    After the recent update by Google a lot of Web 2.0 properties seem to have been affected, and to add to the users' misery, these sites have become strict on the kind of content they allow users to post. Squidoo isn't so bad but hubpages have become really strict nowadays. Still, if they're part of your traffic generation plan, then there's nothing wrong in utilising them.
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