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May, 2011:

Rescuing Page Break Lenses: All Hands on Deck

May 20th, 2011
by Greekgeek.
7 comments

Non-Giants have been frantically reporting a page break problem for a few weeks: our multi-page lenses suddenly had their page breaks destroyed, so they're all piled together on one long page that nobody could read. In many cases, the conflation of too many video, eBay, and/or Amazon modules on one page has caused loading problems.

Well, now we know why. In a misleadingly-titled announcement, "For Giants: A special note about the Page Break Module," we're told that the page break module "experiment" will be going away for Giants in a week. Apparently SquidHQ forgot that this module was released to ALL members of Squidoo, and they didn't see the bug reports.

On the one hand, the page break module was not very well implemented. We had to create own page-to-page navigation at the top and bottom of the page via a navigation menu or the "Big Arrow Link" module. On the other hand, some of us had mastered Page Breaks and found them to be powerful and useful.

The Page Break allowed us to write a multi-page article such as my How Google's Panda Update Impacted Hubpages and Squidoo, which needs to be  that long to cover the topic adequately, but does better broken into pages like a standard news or expert article (think WIRED magazine).  The page break also allowed us to create a themed lens on a big topic, like my Volcanoes lens, which was originally a single-page lens, later divided into subtopics. I used my lens traffic stats to guide me on what sub-topics to focus on in more depth, addressing common visitors' queries and using the keywords they used most often to title the sub-pages.  Traffic increased exponentially as a result of my responding to my readers' wants.  I've done the same with some of my other most successful lenses, resulting in my best Squidoo traffic and 2 top tier lenses.

In my non-Giant niche account, I used the Page Break to create a holiday buyer's guide to an entire line of collectibles. There's no way to do this on one lens, since there were too many products. Instead, I divided them up into the sets in which they were released, groups of six to eight, with personal reviews, photos, Amazon and eBay modules on each item in the set. It took so many weeks to build that I only caught the end of the holiday season, but it's my top seller in my niche account -- or was, until the loss of page breaks killed it.

So, RIP, page break. How do we recover this lost functionality?

Page Break Recovery Plan...

(more...)

An Extended Riff on SEO as Poetry

May 3rd, 2011
by Greekgeek.
3 comments

Or at least, keyword-based search engine optimization, which isn't the sum total of SEO any more than backlinking is.

Under a vague sense of "buy low, sell high," I thought I might give Hubpages another go. Some years ago, I was so discouraged (and annoyed) after they locked all my well-trafficked, educational hubs on ancient Greece for being "overly promotional" that I abandoned HP for years (It also didn't help that I kept getting idiot comments like 'u wrote it wrong it wuz better in the movie' when I was recounting myths based on ancient sources). But despite the frustration over all that work down the tubes, I do understand that you've got to submit to the rules on a publishing site, or publish elsewhere. So I did. I moved that content to Squidoo and Mythphile.

However, I've been keeping a closer eye on Hubpages since Panda. I think I might learn something by experimenting there and trying out different SEO approaches, niches and/or writing styles on a site that's built just a little differently than Squidoo. I have a hunch Google traffic will come back over time. I want to see if my hunch is right. Also, since they favor non-practical creative pieces over there a little more than on Squidoo, I thought -- hey, let the inner writer off its chains and cut loose a bit.

This is triggered partly by a previous post on Squidbits and partly by seeing a writer over there divide the online publishing world between virtuous writers and SEO black hatters. I fear it's preachy and a little arrogant to be teaching, but I wrote a hub that's a tutorial on keyword optimization using the paradigm of writing poetry.

My Lens on the Google Panda Update

May 1st, 2011
by Greekgeek.
No comments yet

Yes, you've probably already seen it: I've written a 3-page article discussing the Panda update's impact on Squidoo and Hubpages traffic, and what lessons we can learn from it to stay ahead of the Google wrecking ball.

You may notice that the root message boils down to, "write unique content that your readers find USEFUL," which isn't exactly earth-shattering, but it's amazing how many people try every approach but that one.

Unfortunately, if you publish on an open article-submission site like Squidoo or Hubpages, your content is partly judged by association, so you can get marked down by Google even if that's exactly what you're doing. Fight back by encouraging quality content on your favorite sites and leading by example.

I think Hubpages is taking some good steps to put its house back in order (as is Squidoo). We'll see if Google agrees a few months from now.