Increase Traffic to a Hub.. OR delete a Blog or Website and move it?

This question asked about traffic and deleting hubs. I am of two minds to this answer. For 99.9999999% of the time you should never never never delete a hub, you can do so many thing with each hub that will increase traffic, increase you hub score, and help with Google and Google AdSense.

There is a little infinitesimally small time when you need to delete a hub, (or anything for that matter) but that is something you should think long and hard about. I have deleted hubs, but not before trying to fix it up or making it better some how.

Given that I am big on fixing up before any drastic action is needed I'll go through the reasons why you should not delete anything you've written online, and some of the reasons why you should consider deleting a hub or something you've written online.

Before deleting... Look at these Four things:

--How old is your hub?: Now the older the hub, the less traffic it will get without more links, so the first thing you'll need to do is to go to hub metrics and look at the numbers of stars by Incoming Links. Now be advised that if you just put a link up it takes a while to register with that particular stat. Also, You can only get five stars so if you have one star and personally put in 2 links to that hub, put more in: Facebook, Digg, any of the other Social Networking sites, your blogs and other hubs. Personally I aim for at 10 links. In an older hub I prefer at least 15 or more. Yes to do these links takes time but it is worth it.

--Does you hub have anything to keep people there? My success comes from the stuff I put into my hubs, for example I have amazon, and a picture and a comment section and text which is not in one big long piece. I break it down, and the reader will scroll down. Thereby spending more time on my hub. Not a trick but a way to give people a "reading break"

--Where is your traffic coming from? If it is coming primarily from hubpages, well then link between hubs. Really you need to know where your traffic comes from for each hub. For example if one hub gets its traffic form Google or another search engine try to put links to it, to improve its ranking.

--Is it making money? Okay this is simple if it making money, even a few cents you should think about fixing it up and interlinking it in some way. Really doing this will help it.

Okay looked at these four things.. but how long can it take to see results?

-- In terms of improving your website or blog, it can take a few days or even a few hours. Now of course when I refer to time here I am referring to increasing traffic, a lot of the time it is a domino effect add a link to all the social networking sites and then twitter and then add it as a link to say RedGage and then on a blog and a website of yours and the results will be quick. The key is gigving it a couple of days.

--Money really only comes in when the search engine traffic "sees" you, so have a good look at those keywords. I also sometimes will go to Google AdWords and paste the URL as a website to see keywords suggestions I might have missed. This will help a bit, not not say within a week or so. Unless you really want to work at it SEO is hard to do. This means if one website does not work on a domain change it.

--It depends upon your time frame as well. For some who want instant results now, or even now without work, well they won't see it. Expect most of these things to take about a week or two.

-- Did you add a few links, not only to your hubs but to other hub writers who you admire? Did you write a comment on one of their hubs telling them you've linked a hub on theirs on your hub? This is the best way to drive honest traffic provide you want to build trust and relationships. Links increase traffic and make money do to two things: traffic moving around and link between your hubs. You'll see results this way.

Fine that is great but what about my poorer preforming hubs?

I'll say this if it's below say 40 for a newer hub, one that is about 2 weeks old, fix it up and add a few more capsules, such as polls or quizzes or a few links, also try to comment on others hubs with some helpful comments as this will drive some traffic to hubs. Now, depending on your personal hub score (anything over 80) you can get a way with saying "wow what a great hub" because your name has been around a bit. For those who are new or have a hub score below 80... well something a bit more relevant to the hub will help.

-- Comments, what sort of comments, if any are you getting? Really once you publish a hub and have done these things, such as linking and writing on others hubs, and have done this to the best of your ability, and you are getting no comments, what else should you look for?

--New or old?  the older the hub the less chance there are for a lot of traffic or money or whatever, usually it is with followers that traffic starts so you will find that some hubs simply didn't get the exposure newer hubs do.  Relax, this can be fixed by adding them to social networking sites and other places. If this doesn't help....

Begin to think about the reasons for deleting, and if it is right for a particular hub.

-- Some hubs are seasonal, so the traffic will come and then go for a long while, but it will come back, especially if you spent the "down time" linking it to different hub and websites and blogs. This is not one you should consider deleting, unless the information has changed so much that it would be a disservice to others to keep it.

--Some hubs are how to hubs, and the traffic will spike and fall without warning and some need a ton of links to get traffic moving to them. For example if your hub is on how to write, or how to make money, you'll be waiting a while for these hubs to pick up steam, and that takes a bit of business knowledge and SEO and luck. Not to mention a lot of work on your part to get the traffic to the hub.

-- Where the traffic is coming from, if most of the traffic is from hubpages, that traffic will only last for so long, and then usually peter out for long periods, try adding links outside of hubpages. If that doesn't work then...

What you need to do is....

Delete that darling, because you'll be faced with a hub that does....

Nothing... so when does deleting come into play?

-- The hub in question has been up for at least 2 months. You have a lot of visitors to the hub, but no comments or less than 25, and the traffic while originally good, there is no spikes or anything. It can go almost months before seeing any traffic. This hub in question is also not seasonal or anything like a how to hub, that will see traffic for other reasons.

-- You've fixed this up and added links and everything, and nobody comes and nothing seems to work. By this you've added links, you've gone to look at your SEO and how that is preforming, you've taken some newer hubs and added links to them to this hub. nothing.

-- The hub in question is one that professionally is not good for you, or is now factually incorrect. We all have at least one of them. They aren't making money and they really could use a little bit of editing or something, but really you secretly hope no one, and I mean no one ever sees it again, that hub you should, no you need to delete. If you can't stand it or think it was a bad idea, it is time to delete it.

--When the only reason you keep this hub is to have the numbers, ( as in it has say 50 comment and 100 views... and you're five views away from a milestone...) this isn't a good enough reason to keep it. By numbers I am referring to my account stats, when you delete a hub you lose that stat, but really if it only has 100 people coming to see it ever, well there are ways you can do better. So take a deep breath and hit the delete button. Let it die. You can write and publish a hub that will be better than the one you deleted.

 One last word.. because I can:

I generally don't recommend deleting hub and then re-publishing them, I used to, but now after some careful thought I don't.  The reason is that most people don't like poor quality and at some point someone will see it is a much lower quality hub than what you normally write so never delete to re-publish a  hub.

Quality counts, so sometimes having say 50 hubs which make money, and get traffic form everywhere is often better than having say 300 hubs that go nowhere and simply look like spam to other hubbers.

Keep writing, and you will see success.  Love what you do, and everything will fall into place.  No excuses for not improving!

To your success.