...and Discussion Of What Former Squids Face
A Prologue
In an attempt to document an example of how Hubpages proved a challenge to those who were formerly Squids, I will be posting some articles that had to be moved.
A Squidoo Challenge
It began with one of the more ambitious challenges that Squidoo had issued as a combination writing prompt, SEO lesson, and marketing ploy.
Although not sure about the actual intent on their part (more writing? more engagement? entertainment for the masses?) the challenge was to write a large number of posts centered around one prevailing theme.
We were to choose something we knew quite a bit about or that we had a passion for, and I chose the central topic of "Belly Dancing", since I had spent a few years learning and performing and it had fascinated me on many levels. I thought it could reach out into numerous topics to allow for the 30 or so posts needed. ( I am foggy on the number, but remember I came just short of being able to finish the challenge).
Like most of those challenges, it stretched me outside my comfort zone and turned out to be both fun and educational.
It was supposed to illustrate the power of building a niche.
Niche Beginnings
It did show me how to loosely tie in a number of subjects, I think they did support one another, and there were definitely weak spots in my articles and in my writing , but it was a learning experience which improved my main writing topic which is "Gardening".
Because of the weaknesses inherent in trying to cover unfamiliar types of writing and stretch the topic, I was left with some work that was not going to ever transfer well into the new Hubpages system.
The topic, while lots of fun, is not one I can fit into my existing blogs which have completely different subjects and tone. ( An inspirational blog and a gardening website.)
So, the subject matter gets broken up, and no longer exists as a niche, and this orphaned hub finds its way here to serve as an example of Squidoo subject matter and style that is impossible to integrate into Hubpages.
What is Wrong With This Hub?
People ask this all the time, and the staff answer that it is too "spammy". IOW, has too many links and Amazon modules.
The "Top Internet Belly Dance Sites" has the raison d'etre of being a list of collated links with some products to round out the interest of the reader.
It would never work under the new rules that finds one or two Amazon products with about an equal number of links to outside sites to be the qualifications for featured status.
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| After looking at it, I knew the hub in question could not be sufficiently fixed . |
This page triggered a "Quality Alert" as well, which is one level worse than the usual scolding on the edit page itself.
This is a prime example of one of the unresolvable differences between what Hubs staff wants for its site, and what Squidoo had encouraged its writers to produce. Squidoo wanted a range of writing that included collation. but the internet changed and at the end, Squidoo no longer valued those types of writings either.
I don't protest that change, in a huge site with so many similar pages, it was bound to be more of a problem than say, in a site like mine where sprinkled in, the collations may have value.
Up For Examination, Next.
The "Lens/Hub" is not yet edited for publishing here, yet. When it is I will link, and may have more to say.
The editing is to remove the heavy coding that Hubpages uses. All the many inline css and div tags really bog down the pages, so I feel they should be stripped out. Also, another problem with Hubpages et al. is the way they have encouraged writers to constantly move around and tweak pages to keep them "updated". IOW, they want to signal Google to revisit these pieces and score better in the searches. (Google rewards "fresh" content.)
This created a problem with the logic of my pages, and I don't do so well with a module system, anyway.
It caused a choppy feeling to the flow of the writing and the pictures sometimes did not sync properly. I had problems with the entire tone of the pieces in some cases.
Another similar problem arose when deleting Amazon and Zazzle inclusions to comply with demands, Compounded by the fact that the transfer sometimes jumbled heading and attached them in odd places and all formatting disappeared in th emoveover ot Hubpages.
This is being corrected when moving writing to my own sites.
It ends up being quite a bit of time consuming work that is hard on my little fingers and wrists!
