The Hub Scrub Project - Revising and Refreshing Old Hubs

When I worked at a corporation, every project had to have a name, so we would all know what we were talking about. This project will be called the Hub Scrub, and I will be scrubbing my hubs and cleaning them. Why am I scrubbing my hubs when I just finished writing and publishing them recently?

After I finished the 30 Hubs in 30 Days Challenge as a brand new hubber, I dived right into the 100 Hubs in 30 Days Challenge. Now I have to decide what my new project will be. I have seen challenges that require writing 30 hubs in 30 days, and then spending the next 30 days to market the hubs. I really like that idea. But before I go off trying to market these hubs, I want to first make sure that all of my hubs are squeaky clean for an open house before I start inviting company. I know my hubs aren't old, but even brand new hubs can use a little polish.

I have read a lot about writing hubs during my time here on HubPages, and have learned a great deal. Instead of randomly fixing things on my old hubs, and having to go back again and again, I wanted to create a checklist, so I can be sure that I have cleaned each hub to be the best it can be, according to all of my newly found knowledge. And as I write new hubs, I can use the checklist to make sure it is the best it can be, right from the start.

The Hub Scrub Project should have a deadline, but I've decided to not do that to myself so close to the holidays. I will start now, and keep going until it is done. Plus, I want to continue to write hubs as ideas come to me, and I don't want this project to keep me from writing new hubs

I wanted to share this checklist with you, because I am generous like that. I am also sharing it because you are my neighbors. If my neighborhood is also clean, then maybe the value of my own hubs might go up as well.

The first thing I am going to do is print up a list of my existing hubs. I will use that list to check off the ones I have scrubbed. I think that I will clean it up and just have one check to say it is done. Other people may want to create a spreadsheet, and check off each thing they want to revise. To do that, they would go to My Accounts, and click on export csv button. It is right above the list of your hubs, on the left side. Then they can just add the columns for the revisions they want to make.

[Edited to add: Since February 2012, HubPages offers the date of the most recent change of the hub in the Account Statistics page. I am still using my printout so I can cross off each hub as I am finished with it for the Hub Scrub Project. But in the future, on an ongoing basis, every time I log into HubPages, I plan to check a hub for revision by using the oldest changed date on the statistics page. Even though just one hub a day is slower, it will make sure that all of my hubs stay refreshed and current.]

Ready? Let's think about all the ways you can amend, update, tweak, revise, refresh, revive, or fix your old hubs.

The following is a list of items I will check during the Hub Scrub. Some of these things will need revising in some hubs, but hopefully some things will be just fine.

The title should clearly tell the reader what the hub is about, preferably with keywords. If someone is searching for your hub, they should be able to find it by using keywords, and know they found the right hub by looking at the title.

Sometimes I like to leave my titles a little vague, hoping to pique someone's interest to read the article. This is great for a lure for articles that are in print, but it doesn't work well online. There are so many articles online, that people aren't interested in lures. They don't have time to sift through articles, hoping it has the information they want. Make sure the title tells them exactly what the hub is about.

This means that if your hub is a poem, maybe the word poem should be in the title. On any hub topics where the keyword tends to be assumed, but not stated, like book reviews, you should somehow find a way to tell Google what you wrote.

Look over the hubs to see if it is friendly to readers. Are there any paragraphs that are too long? I try to keep my paragraphs to four sentences or less.

Are there captions to separate out different ideas? Do the captions include some keywords?

Is there a pretty picture to catch their interest?

This is also the place to tweak any capsules. Are the videos links still working? Are the Amazon capsules reflecting the content of your hub? How about the RSS capsules?

Is there anything you should add to interest the reader, such as a video or a poll?

Sometimes the first few lines are all a reader will look at to see if the hub is worth reading. Is the introductory paragraph going to draw them in?

Here is another place to include the keywords so the reader knows they've reached a hub that they will understand, and is that it is written by someone who is knowledgeable on the topic.

The most important part of your hubs is the content. Read the entire hub, as if you are reading it for the first time. Is there anything that is not as clear as it could be? Check for spelling, grammar and ease of reading.

Make sure you have kept up with changes on the topic, and update the hub to reflect the changes. Sometimes it may be just a matter of changing the date, but other times you may have discussed the latest event, gadget or celebrity, and may want to discuss someone or something more recent.

If there are other things a reader would want to know on the topic, you could add them to your hub, or include a link to other topics. Some of my hubs are really short, especially the book reviews, and I want to beef them up to make sure they provide enough content to make them worthy of reading.

Most of my summary paragraphs were written quickly so I could get to the publish button. I want to make sure that I have provided a summary that will satisfy the reader that I delivered what I promised them in the title and introductory paragraph.

This is also a chance to make sure that Google knows the topic of your hub. If you find yourself using the word "it" frequently, you might want to consider replacing it with a noun that can serve as a keyword.

Unfortunately, there are people that may try to copy your hub, and republish it as if it were their own. There are several things you can do to prevent this.

1. Check each hub using one of the copy checkers out there. You can copy some phrases onto Google to see if other sites also use the same phrasing. You can also check the whole hub by using the URL on Copyscape.

2. Sign up for Google Alerts and / or Yahoo Alerts to notify you whenever your user name is used. You can set up the system to alert you whenever certain phrases are used. You can set up the notices once a day,or as they happen. You can create a separate alert for a phrase in each of your hubs.

3 You can include some common phrasing in all of your hubs. Something with your user name and a link to your profile on it, like "This article was published on HubPages by Millionaire Tips. If you see it anywhere else, it has been duplicated without my permission." written someplace in the middle of each hub. This way, if someone is going to copy and paste, they are going to have to look for it to delete it. I will also come up with your own unique phrase that I can use in each hub, preferably somewhere in the middle of the hub. Set up an alert for this phrasel, and hopefully catch potential plagiarizers that way as well.

I want to create a signature line that I can add to the bottom of all of my hubs. This signature line will help my readers remember my screen name, and provide a link to my profile page. Please note that a banner that requests feedback is against HubPage's rules as of February 1, 2012.

I am sure that people who read my refreshed and revived hub will want to read more of my hubs. I don't want to kick them out before they are ready to leave. I want to make sure that I provide at least two links to other related hubs I have written so that they can stay and visit longer.

Remember though, that your readers are probably not here to read something just because you wrote it; they are here to learn about a specific topic. Make sure though that the links and RSS capsules are directed to related content. Otherwise your readers will be unhappy, and the hubs will get reported and unpublished by Hubpages.

While we are adding links, there are two things we need to check on all of our links.

Open Links in a New Window

Another thing I am going to do is to make sure that all links will open in a new window. This will make sure that we keep our readers on our page in case the reader is not finished reading the article. We don't want them to move on and forget where they started. Thanks for the reminder homesteadbound.

If the link is written with the text, I will click edit, then html. I will look for words that say <a href="name of link"> and insert a space and the code target="_blank" right before the right bracket. so now it will say <a href="http://millionairetips.hubpages.com/" target="_blank">

If the link is written in a capsule, then the quotation marks are written for you. I will need to add the closing quotation mark for the name of the link, write the code, and not add the last quotation mark since it is automatically added. To change them, I will click edit, then look at the name of the link. I will use my cursor to move to the very right of the link. There I will insert the code " target="_blank to the end and click done or save. Your link will now look like http://millionairetips.hubpages.com/" target="_blank. You will want to test this, because I think some of this code may disappear when you publish.

The other change I will make to links is to make sure that my referral code has been embedded in all of the links. One of the learning pages said that HubPages is considering taking away internal referrals from one page to another, but I haven't read that they have done that. This may mean that this code will eventually not help you with additional revenue. But even if it doesn't help with revenue, it does help you figure out how many of your readers come from your other pages, so it is good information to have.

To add the referral code, add an underline, then your referral code after the .com. You need to add a slash either before or after the code you added so it is in its own space.

So the link to the right, is now http://millionairetips.hubpages.com/_Millionairetips/hub/How-to-Make-Money-on-HubPages-Without-Writing-a-Single-Article" target=_blank to add both a referral link and the open in new window codes.

The comments title can easily include the name of the hub to remind the readers what you intended on the hub. This way, if they clicked on your hub knowing it was related but not exactly what they were looking for, they won't go away disappointed that you didn't promise more than you delivered. The comments title also is a great place to add the keywords. I think I will just revise mine to include the title of the hub, although I may ask a question to invite more comments.

Once we have finished polishing up the left side of our hub page, we have to work on the right side. The tags are keywords that will help Google and other search engines find the hub. Make sure all variations of the topics covered on the hub are included, including common misspellings. I personally like my keywords to have more than one word in them. Sure, someone may look up quilting, but the odds of my hub showing up at the top of such a wide category are low. If my category is narrower, scrap quilts, for example, then my hub will likely show up higher on the list. These are long tail keywords, and can help readers find the answers to specific questions about the topic.

The summary is another place that I quickly completed in order to get the hub published. They need more attention since they are the advertisement that will entice the readers to click on the link.

I need to spend some time polishing the summary of each of my hubs. I want to have a first sentence that is short and sweet, but will entice the reader to click on the link. Many of my RSS capsules include just a first sentence to keep it from taking up too much space. The remaining sentence or two will include enough descriptive words to describe the hub and use keywords.

Since I do not create the summaries in Word, it is very important to check the spelling and grammar of the summaries.

Some of my summaries are too long, and I need to make sure that the important words are at the beginning of the summary so they don't get ignored and are never seen.

The categories are the things we select when we first write the hub. This helps HubPages place our hub with other hubs that talk about the same thing. I want to make sure I have placed my hub in the proper category so that it will be seen by the viewers that will find it interesting. Sometimes that is very easy, but other times it can get complicated. For example, my hub, "How to Save Money and Eat Healthier at the Same Time," can fit under either the finance or the cooking categories. I may consider changing the category of poorly performing hubs that fall under more than one category to see if they fare better in the other category

Hub Groups are selected in the Accounts page. They control which hubs are linked to this hub, and will show up at the bottom of the page with the arrows. I have five groups on my hubs. I have reviewed them, and for the most part they are good groups. Personal Finance, Quilting, Book Reviews, and Genealogy are okay as they are, but the Miscellaneous category probably could use some tweaking. I will also take the time to arrange my hubs within the group so that people who are reading each hub will be interested in clicking on the hubs to the left and right of that hub.

By now, you may be thinking that you need to completely redo your entire hub. Yes, you will be reviewing everything. Hopefully, most of the work will be fine as it is and can be left alone. I was thinking the "scrub everything" idea would work, but then I think about the current condition of my hubs. If I could remember "everything" then they would be all clean already. They are okay, but most have some tweaking and revising that can be done to make them better. Having a checklist will make sure that I don't forget anything, so hopefully I will never have to scrub them again.

It is my hope that these edits will help them be easier for my readers to find them and read them. I hope that my readers are informed or entertained as a result of reading my hubs. I want them to like my hubs so much that they buy the Amazon products, click on the Google ads, and continue to read more of my hubs.

© Millionaire Tips 2011-2012