Google and I Made Up

If you look back, at my Hubs from around a month and a half ago, you will notice that I wrote a couple of specific Hubs, such as; Two Years and 100 Hubs ago, where I was bragging on my passing several milestones.

In the same month I had accomplished several things, as a Hub writer.

1- I had written and published my 100th Hub.

2- I had reached my 2-year anniversary as a Hubber,

3- I had passed the 100 mark of total followers.

These things did not happen arbitrarily, by the way.

In fact these things took a lot of time and dedication on my part, to improve and increase my writing along with a lot of time studying the best ways to market my Hubs.

As to the first part, I am proud of the fact that my writing skills have improved tremendously (in my opinion, anyway).

And what i write today, is better due of my involvement in HubPages, and with my fellow Hubbers.

As to the second part, several months ago, I made a commitment, to myself, to learn more about the best ways to drive/draw increased traffic to my Hubs.

As I mentioned, in my Hub called; I Got a Hub Score of 98 today, I had been just floating along, writing occasionally, and just assuming that people would read and like my stuff, and that i would get increasing recognition from these "mythical" readers.

But, I finally began to observe and research what other Hubbers had written on subjects like; keywords, tags, search engines, content quality, advertisements, adsense, Hub Ads, google Analytics, and on and on.

I soon realized from my research, that my writings were so poorly optimized for decent levels of traffic, that I finally sat down and put together a plan to bring my stuff up to a higher standard.

The first and biggest problem, that I recognized, was the number of Hubs that I had already written.

Rewriting, reformating, and restructuring over 100 Hubs is a formidable task and this consumed a large amount of my time for several weeks.

But, it was worth it, and even as I plodded my way through Hub after Hub, I started to see increased traffic on most of them after just a week or so of implementing my changes.

I was ecstatic.

I was so happy, in fact, that once I was done with this task, I dove into the Hub Forums and other peoples Hubs, searching for even more ways to pull my stuff up in popularity.

I researched and gathered even more information from my fellow Hubbers on other ways to push the Great Google's Search Engine into leading more people to my Hubs.

I would read, consider, evaluate and then I would implement all kinds of changes; forward links, back links, strategic ad placement, more ads per Hub, links to my Blogs, literally everything that others suggested as another trick to pull, that had made them successful.

I did it all!

I thought that I had finally gotten over the fence and into that place where the grass was definitely greener.

And then, a month ago, the Great Google got mad at me.

Yeah, We kind of "Broke Up".

The Google Search Engine dropped me!

Turned its back.

She even took all of my friends (traffic) and diverted them to others.

I was suddenly alone.

The only friends that I had left were my fellow Hubbers.

My tried and true friends, my fellow writers and readers of Hubs.

Gone were the strangers who stopped by and read and then moved on, sometimes with a little purchase from an ad that was shared with me by the Great Google machine.

I was looking around, and it was as if I had been dropped onto a Desert Island. Just me and my PC.

OK, enough of my little melodrama.

What I found out, after much much more research and study is that the Google Search Engine system has some very strict standards for publishers/writers, and these standards are not chiseled on a rock somewhere, that you can walk over and read.

No, writers like us, we get to study, think, and make assumptions on what these standards are, and we get to push the envelope until we overstep our undefined and mysterious bounds.

And when we do this, the Google Search Engine system reacts.

If we were only mildly offensive we might just have a few of our writings punished with reduced or no traffic.

If we were really pushy, we look one day and there is, suddenly, NO TRAFFIC to our sites.

And that is what I did. I was pushy, and obviously I had gone far over the acceptable edge, in my exuberance to get more traffic.

And I was, suddenly, punished with; NO Google traffic; NO US traffic, NO Canada traffic, NO Australian traffic, NO Asian traffic .......... NO Google traffic at all!

Just some few visitors form the other search engines and, again, of course, my fellow Hubbers.

And me? well, I was left, sitting there, lost and confused.

You see, I had changed and added so many things, across all of my 100+ Hubs that I didn't have a clue which one or more of the things that I had done were the actual culprits.

I asked questions, of course, and I go a few responses that were somewhat helpful.

But there was no magic answer that would erase my sins and bring me back into the good graces of the Great Google Search machine.

I was on my own.

So, there I was, with only one real answer!

Yep, I went to work and plodded through those 100+ Hubs and removed pretty much all of my traffic driving innovations, and brought my Hubs back to a more pure state.

And, guess, what?

After I finished my massive cleanup of ALL of my Hubs, I sat back, and sure enough .....

The Great Google spiders crawled through my newly cleansed writings, and after about 5 days of waiting, they put my stuff back onto their "acceptable" list.

Google and I had made up!

We were in love again!

She visits often, and she tells all of her friends about my stuff.

She even gives them my address and tells them how to find me.

Our relationship is Great!

Of course, I do have a long list of "Honey-Do's" that I have to perform regularly, to stay in her good graces.

But, it's worth it1

So, what did I learn from my transgressions?

I went back and looked at all of those advice Hubs and Forums that I had followed and I discovered one glaring problem that I had previously ignored.

I realized that the whole world of Google; Search Engines, Google Blogs, Google Adsense, Affiliattes and even Google Analytics, are all dynamic systems.

They are always changing, evolvong and expanding, along with their requirements, all of the time.

What was acceptable to Google six months ago, might not be acceptable at all now, or tomorrow.

If you don't keep up with their evolving dynamics and change with them, you can be in trouble, at any time.

And, I, in my enthusiasm to increase my traffic, was often looking at, and following, outdated information.

Oh, it may have been a viable list of suggestions by a very sincere Hubber, a year ago.

But, at times, I was implementing "tricks" that were already doomed to fail, today.

I guess that is what I get for not reading EVERYTHING about improving my traffic, by EVERYONE, and at the same time, pay attention to the timestamp on the HUB or FORUM response.

You see, like my Hubs, all of the others, and the forum's responses, they are out there, even of outdated ...... FOREVER!

So, my fellow Hubbers ...... When you're searching for advice, READ the TIMESTAMP on any advice articles you might decide to follow, and consider if that advice is still valid.

As to me, and my being ostracized?

Well, a couple of days ago, Google and I Made UP!

I had tried to cheat on her, so to speak, and I had made her Mad!

Now, she has forgiven me, and we are once again, happy together.

And, in the future, I will be a very selective implementer of others advice, when it comes to suggestions for cheating on her, again.

All is now good!

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One other thing, and it's a good thing, that you might be interested in;

I now keep a copy of all of my Hubs, in MS-WORD format, and stored in a special folder on my PC. Before, I would often just write a Hub on the HP site itself, clean it up, and release it.

But, not any more.

You see, it is much easier, and a whole lot faster, to edit my writings on WORD than on the Hub site, and then copy/paste them to my HP site where I can just tweak them before release.

As I have mentioned in some of my other Hubs, I am pretty reactive when I get an idea in my head, and I usually pay the price for this, sooner or later.

And I did, by not taking my time and following the appropriate rules and within the actual and latest constraints.

Good Luck!

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Check out my HUB PROFILE where I list my BLOGs, including TALES by DON. This Blog includes some of my Poetry, Short Stories and other of my Writings.

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