Hubpages vs. Squidoo: An Experiment

Some years ago, I published a series of educational Hubs on Greek myth and culture. 10,000+ visitors later, Hubpages disabled those Hubs as "overly promotional" due to my photo credits' backlinks. I did not have time to investigate the policy change, and removing all links did not help, so I deleted the hubs and moved on.

Last spring, Hubpages got punched by the Panda Poleaxe. That drew my attention back to the site. I had predicted a major Google update in early January, when I first noticed some cryptic comments on GoogleBlog. Squidoo was untouched; Hubpages was hit hard. Having studied search engines and SEO for a few years, I wanted to know why. That meant making a study of the sites' similarities (which are many) and differences.

I made a bold prediction that Hubpages would recover within 3-4 months, just as Squidoo had recovered from its 2007 "slap." I could see that Hubpages was implementing the Energetic Policy Flail customary in such situations. Every time a site faces a major crisis of this sort, it implements new and more stringent rules, tosses out one part baby to two parts bathwater, drives away many good members while ridding itself of bad ones, and eventually, the lightning-struck tree puts forth new foliage.

Having no horses in the race, I took no collateral damage. In fact, I thought I might insert a few horses while Hubpage's stock was down.

But what sort of horses? I've published on all sorts of sites from VMS bulletin boards to MU-based virtual worlds. Hubpages and Squidoo are similar user-generated-content sites with a smidgen of social media, yet they still have different strengths and weaknesses. There's no point in doing the same thing on both sites. So how are Hubpaes and Squidoo different—functionally—and how might that dictate the best content to post on each site?

• Squidoo pays for interactivity, clickouts (users clicking on links to off-Squidoo webpages), sales; Hubpages pays for impressions.

This is a fundamental and striking distinction. Thoughtful editorials, useful how-tos, entertainment, information, and creative content earn readers, but may not earn clicks. More interactive content— quizzes, polls, debates, image galleries, free resources, and of course product reviews and "best of" lists— inspires clickouts. The former suits Hubpages; the latter suits Squidoo.

• Squidoo encourages links to related content; Hubpages is more link-shy.

Therefore, if I've got free resources or several related articles in the same niche, Squidoo's my nag. For stand-alone articles that visitors are liable to read straight through and not visit your other properties, use Hubpages.

• Squidoo permits you to use all kinds of affiliate programs including Amazon Associates; Hubpages is about to remove our Associate Links and substitute its own.

This is also significant. I've been amassing a volume bonus on Amazon, aiming for that elusive 7% commission threshold. Hubpages assures us its new commission structure will be higher, but only here; those sales won't count for our volume bonus anywhere else. That's a disadvantage if we publish on multiple platforms. Therefore, it's better to save commission-earning content for Squidoo.

• Hubpage's interface is cleaner and more professional-looking; Squidoo's is more casual.

Again, this suggests that opinions, educational articles, serious information and creative writing are better-suited to Hubpages.

• Squidoo's tags, traffic stats and subheadings are better for on-page SEO and cross-linking. Hubpages' author-based subdomains may give a slight SEO bonus to that entire subdomain based on the quality of its articles.

Therefore, Squidoo is better-suited to articles and clusters of articles focused on particular keywords and niches, and better if you build backlinks via cross-linking (I do.) Hubpages is better for a disparate collection of articles that may only be related by writing quality.

• Squidoo permits HTML. Hubpages does not.

This makes it easier to optimize presentation of products in product reviews on Squidoo, if you know what you're doing and don't abuse the CSS genie.

• Squidoo's Amazon Spotlight module is a more effective presentation of products and attracts more sales. Other selling modules like Cafepress and eBay are also better for conversions.

Visitors respond to visual cues like larger product images, a prominent "buy" button, the gray borders around items in Squidoo's Cafepress module. It's irrational, but it's so. That being the case, I think Squidoo is a slightly more effective platform for sales. You don't have to use it for that, but that's one of its strengths.

• Hubpages was hit by Panda. So far, Squidoo has shown few or no effects.

While Hubpages members were struggling for traffic and sales, Squidoo members were enjoying both. There have been a few scattered reports of traffic dips on Squidoo -- my visits were down to 11K a week fron 14K to 15K a week for a few weeks in October, although they came back -- but those seem to be the typical Google dance that has driven us batty for a decade, rather than Panda penalties which are specifically applied to entire domains.

• Since September, Google has been taking longer to index some Squidoo lenses.

This may be a temporary glitch; historically, I've found Squidoo lenses are indexed by Google within an hour even with no promotion anywhere. Right now, some lenses are getting indexed fast; others are taking several weeks. This means that sales lenses created now may catch only part of the shopping season (but they always do better their second season). I'm also not sure whether my Hubpages luck— new Hubs indexed instantly— is typical, or whether this is simply Google's "new, frequently updated content" factor favoring my Hubs. In which case veteran Hubbers starting on Squidoo may see the same effect in reverse.

• I earn 15,000 visitors a week and $700+ on Squidoo with 375 articles; on Hubpages, it's 450 visitors, $1/week with 35 Hubs.

These figures could be misleading, since I have not been active on Hubpages for long enough to master it. Also, I haven't been applying SEO techniques to most Hubs. This last point is a reminder to look at the bottom line when weighing ROI. Hundreds of dollars a week versus pennies a week is a difference one cannot ignore, if one is writing for self-support, not just for pleasure.

Therefore, I'm going to use Squidoo for topic-focused, keyword-relevant, interactive articles that provide resources, link to related content, and/or earn commissions. These kinds of pages demand and lend themselves to SEO.

I'm going to use Hubpages for educational, thoughtful, and creative content which attracts readers (impressions) but not clickouts. These types of pages tend to do poorly with SEO; they draw readers through social promotion, word of mouth, and establishing a reputation for interesting, useful, provocative content.

Until now, I have specialized in search engine optimization: on-page SEO in particular. I do not intend to switch to active social promotion techniques (Digg, Facebook fan pages, and so on). Rather, I hope to write compelling Hubs that appeal to readers, a passive social promotion approach that is analogous to passive on-page SEO techniques.

I believe that passive social promotion is the most challenging way to draw traffic. I wonder if I will be able to manage it.

It's hard to compare the two sites, since I'm publishing different kinds of material on each site, and I've had so much more time on one than the other.

It's been about eight months since I started over on Hubpages. I've got Google analytics tracking both accounts. So, here's what I'm seeing:

Obviously, I've built a bigger Squidoo reputation, but it's interesting that I'm getting more repeat visitors and longer stays on Squidoo. I wonder if my greater keyword optimization on many of those articles tends to attract search traffic more interested and engaged in the topic, so they stick around longer.

The visitor and earning counts per article are still far apart, but I suspect that I can bring both numbers up a bit on Hubpages.

One of the differences between Hubpages and Squidoo is that hubs can start earning from traffic immediately, whereas lenses don't start getting a cut of the ad pool until the first full month they exist. (Lenses are eligible for Amazon and other sales commissions right out of the gate.) That points out an important distinction: current, short-term trending topics will earn money on Hubpages but NOT Squidoo!

Longterm, Squidoo lenses that get lots of clickouts will probably earn more than hubs. For example, I've created several crossword puzzles and word searches lenses, where the lens features several printable puzzles I've created that are hosted on my own site and accessed via a link on the Squidoo lens. It gets a steady trickle of students and teachers clicking on the links, which pushes it to the second tier and pull in about $7-10 a month. The same amount of traffic wouldn't earn as much on Hubpages, which doesn't reward clickouts.

My best-earning hubs have been ones where I caught (or even started) buzz on a trending topic like Pinterest or the recent solar eclipse. Each of those had spikes of visitors of several thousand for a few days, earning more than all my other hubs combined for the whole month-- or even several months!

Of course, their earnings die down, but they still get a little long-term traffic too. That small trickle of long-term traffic wouldn't be enough to hold a Squidoo lens in tier 2, maybe not even in tier 3, but it can net the occasional ad impression, so that's a better candidate for a hub.

So, the best use of Hubpages (I think) is to nail current, trending topics. Of course, you have to post unique, useful material that people will actually link to and share.

This all assumes you can get hubs indexed by Google within a few hours. Linking to them from your other blogs or sharing them on Google Plus could get the ball rolling.