Google Panda and Understanding How Your Hubs Make Money

Hubpages makes it very easy to write a whole bunch of articles without ever really having any idea what you are doing. Talk of Google Panda and changes to the system are constantly circulated throughout the Hubpages community, but many neglect to ever learn the fundamentals of exactly what they are trying to do by writing articles for profit. The following information will help if you are confused about the Google Panda update, or if you have decided it's finally time to learn how to maximize your earning potential through Hubs or even your own website, so continue reading for an in-depth explanation that even the most novice of internet entrepreneurs could understand.

One of the most important things that you need to understand is that Hubpages is essentially an article database with various community aspects. Since Hubpages is already a high ranking domain in the eyes of search engines (currently PageRank 6 out of 10 as determined by Google), publishing your written content through the HP platform rather than on your own website can produce instant results that would otherwise appear much more gradually. Additionally, the community and ease of interaction between writers on Hubpages makes it easy for beginners to gain followers and exchange comments, etc.

As you have probably already noticed, the Hub hopping tool is the easiest way for fellow members of the site to browse through the work of others. Unfortunately, advertisements are not displayed and there is no chance of increased revenue when someone views your article through this tool.

If you are the type that likes to put the pieces together yourself, then your probably starting to understand why most of the views you receive from within Hubpages itself aren't worth a dime. Someone that is reading for the sake of interacting with other members or just to read probably won't be interested in whatever advertisements are displayed. Since they are doing the exact same thing you are, you can see why they wouldn't be inclined to click on the ad of another unless it was out of the kindness of their heart.

When you decide to create your own blog or website in an attempt to make money through affiliate marketing and Adsense clicks, you have to build general trust for your site from the ground up by generating quality content and building relevant links that point toward your website. This same basic concept is exactly what you are attempting to do with Hubpages, only made a bit easier by the fact that you will be trying to direct traffic to a website that has already went through the process of building trust with search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Targeting topics that will interest fellow hubbers is good, but you have to focus more on building content that will realistically appear in search engines for any given keyword. Some phrases or keywords are searched much more than others, and the amount of money you will earn every time someone clicks on an advertisement will vary based on what key phrases or words your article focuses on. Some write travel articles based on popular locations, others teach people how to do various things; regardless of what you choose to write about, you must always think about whether or not a person viewing the content you are writing would be likely to click an advertisement.

Traffic can always work both ways, and understanding the psychology behind the click of an advertisement is much less direct than one would think, so here are a few examples:

• An article that teaches you how to do something around the house will likely generate solid traffic if it is on a good topic, but you won't get very many clicks if the entirety of your explanation can be performed without needing any additional items or information. At the same time, someone who regularly learns how to do things themselves through the internet may sign up for a do-it-yourself newsletter or maybe even purchase a tool kit on sale.
• Huge amounts of traffic is never a bad thing, so topics that get tons of visitors but seem to have a low click through ratio can still be very profitable over time. Current events, celebrity gossip and similar topics that might have little in terms of direct products to advertise are most often viewed by "serial browsers" who just might end up stumbling upon an ad they like.
• Product reviews or explanations are a very direct way to earn money through affiliate programs like Ebay and Amazon, and you can still get some Adsense clicks over time through topics like these. Keep in mind that since this is such a direct market, the competition will be much stiffer than it would be with most offbeat topics.

A recent Google update entitled Panda has gotten a whole lot of attention from internet marketers everywhere, especially here on Hubpages. The purpose of Panda was to begin directing search results away from relying too heavily on excessive link building and instead begin to focus on social networking websites and quality content.

Although this was the purpose of the update, what it essentially did was take authority away from links coming from website that are low quality, while relying more on links from high ranking domains to determine which site is the best result for any given keyword. This means that you now have to try to build links only from websites that are ranked high by search engines and are relevant to the keywords you are targeting, whereas before people could spam thousands of links from low-quality pages and see some great results.

Basically, the Google Panda update shouldn't even cross your mind if you aren't actively building backlinks to your hubs or website. If you do build backlinks for your hub or website, try to gather links only from websites that are high ranking and in some way relevant to the keyword the link is targeting.

Search engines constantly browse the website using a program that checks for keyword content, image descriptions and filenames, and links. Put simply, if all of the quality webpages that discuss dog fleas link to one specific page, Google and other search engines will recognize this and place that site as the most relevant result or first on the list.

Another important aspect of backlinking is Anchor text. Using simple html code, you can set text to appear instead of the actual web address. The code is as follows:

<a href="http://www.yourlinkhere.com">Insert Anchor Text Here</a>

Ideally, you will want the anchor text used to be the keywords that you are targeting on the page or similar "cousin keywords" that relate or use similar words. Many webmasters agree to an exchange of links in which both websites agree to point to each other, but the most value comes from a website that has a one-way link to your page.