How to Keep Your HubPages Readers with Groups

When you finally get that elusive reader to come read one of your hubs, you want to give him a chance to stay as long as possible on your site. One way to do this is to provide your reader with additional links to navigate through your site with groups.

Groups serve many useful functions on HubPages. In order to make money writing online on HubPages, you need to establish a large portfolio of quality hubs. As you write all these quality hubs, you may find that you are losing track of all of your hubs. The list on the Accounts page gets longer and longer, and while the newest ones and the best ones get featured on the Profile page, there is a large section in the middle that gets no attention.

One way to give some attention to your hubs and keep track of them is to divide your hubs in groups. The smaller groups will be more manageable.

Hubs get used in two ways on HubPages. First, you can look at each group on your accounts page individually. It is a way to look at your hubs on a particular topic without having the clutter of all the hubs on other topics in the way. To do this, once you have created your groups, you can choose the Select an article group filter on your statistics page, and the drop arrow will show you the groups you have created.

Second, HubPages provides navigation through the groups at the bottom of each hub. Below the votes, you will see links that take you to other members of the group. Readers can cycle through to see all other hubs you have written within the group. This provides them a nice way to see other hubs you have written about the same topic.

When a reader has finished enjoying your hub, he or she can stay on your site and get a chance to read more of your hubs. When you divide your hubs into groups, HubPages automatically gives your readers will always have at least two links to your other hubs. When they click on those, you get the potential to get more revenue from HubPages.

Hopefully by now, I have convinced you that dividing your hubs into groups is useful and beneficial. The first thing you want to decide is what kinds of groups to have. Basically, think of the type of topics you write about, and use those as groups. For example, I write about Personal Finance, Genealogy, and Quilting, so I created separate groups for those. I had one category for Other Great Articles which covered any other topics I covered. Over time, as I wrote about other topics, I added other groups, such as Travel and Reviews.

It is up to you how many hubs you include in a group, but I personally would prefer to limit my groups to about 30 hubs to keep them manageable. I don't think that anyone is going to cycle through much more than 30 hubs. When my Personal Finance topic gets too big, I will further divide it into Increasing Revenue, Decreasing Expenses, and Investments. For now though, I think it is beneficial to keep them together because people should be doing all three. You also do not want your group to be too small. If you only have three hubs in one group, people will be going around in circles without a way to read any of your other fine hubs.

Follow these simple steps to create Groups on HubPages. First, go to the Accounts page by clicking on the link on the top right of your Profile or Home page. This will take you to the Statistics Page. On the left side of the screen, you will see a black box like the one on the right. Statistics will be highlighted in green.

You will also see other choices on this black box. All of these other choices serve useful functions and are worth exploring. They will help you get information to better manage your HubPages account. But for now, we are going to focus on the Groups

Click on the word "Groups" to get to the Groups page.

Click on Add New Group. This will add a few more spaces, so you can input the name of the group. Choose something short and descriptive to help you remember the group.

There is a box that asks you if you want to Display Name. If you click on the box, the name of the group will show up on each of your hub pages in front of the name of the hub. For example, if I chose HubPages as a group name, this hub would be called HubPages: How to Keep Your HubPage Viewers with Groups. Since there isn't enough space on the page for that many characters, part of the name would be truncated. Since I want the viewer to see as much of the title as possible, I generally refuse that by not clicking on the box.

Once you have created your Groups, it is time to assign your hubs to the Groups. While you can do this by going to each hub and assigning your hub to the Group there, HubPages allows you to easily do this right here on the same page. Right below the place where you created the group names, is the Assign Hubs to Group box.

All of your hubs will probably be listed under Orphan Hubs. Click on the plus sign in front of Orphan Hubs to see all of your hubs. Then simply drag and drop each hub to the proper category.

When you want to see all of your hubs in the category, you can expand that category. You can even drag your hubs within the group, so that your hubs are viewed in a particular order. I keep my increase revenue hubs together, my decrease expense hubs together, and my investment hubs together. Even though they all fall under the same Group, I think that people are more likely to want to read about the same subtopic.

I recommend that you do not assign your unpublished hubs into groups. When you are signed in, it looks like readers are being directed to unpublished hubs. When you aren't signed it, they are actually being directed to published hubs. In order for you to see exactly what the reader sees, it is best to keep the unpublished hubs as orphans until you are ready to publish them.

That's it, you are done. HubPages will automatically add the navigational links for you.

When you write a new hub, you can come back to the Groups page to put your hub into a Group. You can also assign the hub into a group while you are writing or editing it. On the right side of the page, where you create the summary and tags, choose the Groups link, and select the Group from the drop down arrow.

Many people have asked in the questions how they can use Groups to keep their readers cycling through a short story or other series of hubs. They create a separate Group for the story, and put the story chapters in order. Then when they add a new chapter, it appears that HubPages changes the order of the chapters, so they do not cycle correctly.

I think this has to do with the order that HubPages uses. When you create a new hub, and choose the Group while you are creating the page, I believe HubPages will add the hub to the top of the list. This means that when you are choosing the order of the group, you should have Chapter 1 on the bottom of the list, and the newest Chapter on the top. This should keep your chapters in the proper order.

I haven't created a series, so I am not sure if this will work. If other people have other recommendations, I would be happy to edit this hub and include them.

HubPages provides many different features for you to keep your HubPages readers, and for you to organize and manage your HubPages. By using these features, you can be sure that you are taking advantage of all that HubPages has to offer.

When you separate your hubs into different groups, you can keep each of your hub topics isolated, and show your reader that you are an expert on the subject by providing a variety of quality hubs on the same topic. HubPages will automatically provide the navigation at the bottom of each hub, so that your reader has access to at least two of your hubs. Of course, you can always offer more of your hubs through links and capsules, but this device saves space and is unobtrusive.

As a bonus, the groups will help you break out your statistics page into smaller pieces, so that you can see how each of the hubs in a particular topic fares against the others. This will help you see what types of hubs your readers prefer to read, and help you polish the ones that aren't doing well in each topic, thereby increasing the quality of your entire portfolio.